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World’s First Commercial Diesel Engine with Brake Thermal Efficiency Above 50% Launched by Weichai

9-16-20 was a historical day in the development of internal combustion engines as China-based automaker Weichai Group 潍柴动力 officially launched the world’s first commercial vehicle diesel engine with a brake thermal efficiency (BTE) above 50%.

During a launch ceremony held in China earlier today, Germany’s TÜV SÜD and the China Automotive Technology and Research Center—the country’s national internal combustion engine testing organization—awarded Weichai certificates for BTE of 50.26%. The engine was jointly unveiled by Ling Wen, vice governor of Shandong Province and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; and Tan Xuguang, chairman of Shandong Heavy Industry Group and Weichai Group.

Since the development of the first diesel engine in 1897, the engine’s brake thermal efficiency increased from 26% to 46%, where it remained until now, according to Weichai. To further improve the diesel engine BTE, Weichai drew on its 70 years of experience in the internal combustion engine R&D. For the past 10 years, the company invested $4.4 billion USD in diesel engine development.

Since 2015, Weichai’s special technical research team has conducted a large number of simulations and bench tests to improve the efficiency of its engines, eventually leading to this historic breakthrough, the company said. Weichai credits the high brake thermal efficiency rate to five proprietary technologies: advanced fields synergy combustion technology, harmonious design technology, exhaust energy distribution technology, subzone lubrication technology, and WISE control technology:

Weichai’s fields synergy combustion technology optimizes the design of the air passage, fuel injection, combustion chamber profile and other systems to make the relationship between the velocity field and concentration field in the combustion chamber more harmonious, increasing combustion speed by 30%.
Harmonious design technology enables the diesel engine body’s to withstand high peak firing pressure (PFP), which greatly limits combustion improvement, by about 60%. The technology also strengthens the engine’s overall structure.
The company’s exhaust energy distribution technology, developed in response to the increased difficulty of emission control caused by improved combustion, pioneered reconstruction of the exhaust system design. The technology adapts to the demand for exhaust gas recirculation while ensuring the efficiency of turbines, meeting regulations and standards, and achieving 1% increase in brake thermal efficiency.
Subzone lubrication technology, developed based on the different characteristics of the friction pairs of the system, uses several friction reduction technologies to reduce the overall friction by 20%.
WISE control technology takes advantage of Weichai’s self-developed ECU by developing a series of more precise control predictive models, making every part of the diesel engine more efficient.
Weichai’s achievement is a historical moment in the development of internal combustion engines, the company said. Several diesel engine experts including Bosch, AVL, FEV, SAE, China Machinery Industry Federation, China Internal Combustion Engine Industry Association, and China-SAE congratulated Weichai on this breakthrough and praised the company for setting a new benchmark for the diesel engine BTE.

The Weichai 50% BTE engine has a 13 L displacement, is rated at 560 hp at 1900 rpm, and utilizes a 2500 bar fuel injection system. The engine meets China VI/Euro VI emission requirements. Increasing brake thermal efficiency from 46 to 50% reduces diesel fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by 8%.

Weichai said it has received strong support from Bosch Group and other global suppliers and R&D consulting firms in the development of this program. Weichai’s future plans include partnering with more global companies to move toward a goal of 55% thermal efficiency, Chairman Tan Xuguang announced during today’s ceremony.

Until now, a 50% BTE has been only commercially available in large, low-speed, two-stroke marine diesel engines.

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Chinese-led team makes breakthrough in animal-to-human transplant research

An international team led by Chinese researchers has used gene-editing technology to produce “Pig 3.0” prototypes, a leap forward for life-saving organ transplants from animals to humans.

In a recent paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers from China and the United States reported the successful production of pigs whose organs are more compatible with the human immune system and are free of active porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV).

Globally, there is a huge gap between the number of people who need organ transplants and the number of organs available, said Yang Luhan, a corresponding author of the research as well as co-founder and chief executive officer of Qihan Biotech.

It has long been hoped that the challenge could be alleviated through animal organ transplants — a concept known as xenotransplantation.

The Pig 3.0 immunological and blood-coagulation compatibility with the human immune system was enhanced and PERV was eradicated. Engineered pigs also exhibit normal physiology and fertility.

In 2017, Yang and her team produced the first batch of live pigs free of PERV, setting the stage for xenotransplantation. In 2018, Pig 2.0 was born, addressing concerns about pig-to-human immunocompatibility.

Pigs have been especially promising candidates due to their similar size and physiology to humans. But one of the biggest safety concerns has been the fact that most mammals, including pigs, contain repetitive, latent retrovirus fragments in their genomes — present in all their living cells — that are harmless to their native hosts but can lead to disease in other species.

Yang said they are now testing organ function and safety in primate preclinical studies.

James F. Markmann, chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and a co-author of the study, said that Pig 3.0 demonstrates critical progress toward what could be a truly transformational option for millions of patients.

The paper was also authored by researchers from Harvard University, China’s Zhejiang University, Yunnan Agricultural University, Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, and Massachusetts-based biotechnology company eGenesis.

Yang told Xinhua that the transplant gap, cancer and COVID-19 are global issues. She noted that her team hopes to maintain close contact with outstanding scientists, doctors and regulatory agencies around the world, so as to create globally recognized products.

Yang said the study is only the first step toward xenotransplantation. The functional compatibility of organs between species remains a challenge for researchers. Whether transplanted porcine organs can function as fully as original human organs in maintaining hormone secretion and metabolic balance remains to be seen.

The researchers are currently testing if the primates that have undergone pig kidney transplants are able to maintain their bodies’ hydro-salinity balances.

Xenotransplantation also faces challenges in ethics and supervision, Yang noted. “How can we balance animal ethics with organ supply? How can we supervise and guide research institutes in the development of related technologies in an active and responsible way? There are questions that need to be answered.”

She noted that regulations, ethics guidelines and public awareness usually come after technology has advanced. Researchers should think about these questions and share their logic, to truly promote the technology so that it can change society.

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Drone war is the future

  • From Strato Energetics: The Stinger is our first mass-produced mini-weapon. It’s fully autonomous with wide-field cameras, tactical sensors, facial recognition, processors that can react 100 times faster than a human, and its stochastic motion is an anti-sniper feature. Inside it are three grams of shaped explosives that offer just enough power to penetrate the skull and kill the target with surgical precision.
  • In 8-18, two drones loaded with C4 explosives swept past a parade of soldiers to launch an attack on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
  • 9-14-19 Drone attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck two key oil installations inside Saudi Arabia on Saturday, damaging facilities that process the vast majority of the country’s crude output and raising the risk of a disruption in world oil supplies.
  • 1-2-20 Iran’s top security and intelligence commander Qassim Suleimani was killed early Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Trump, American officials said.
  • 9-28-20 A major conflict has erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the long-disputed mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region, with casualties being reported on both sides after just two days of fighting. The Azerbaijani military says that its expanding drone fleet, which may now include Turkey’s increasingly popular Bayraktar TB2, has been particularly active already, destroying multiple Armenian mobile air defense systems, tanks, and other vehicles.
https://youtu.be/HiSTvlBYx14?t=5
  • 9-29-20 China’s first independently developed unmanned helicopter that will focus on plateau operation successfully completed its maiden flight in a plateau region, a milestone that demonstrates the capability of this agile drone. The AR-500C prototype completed its first plateau flight at the Daocheng Yading Airport, which is the world’s highest civilian airport with an elevation of 4,411 meters, the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC), the aircraft’s developer, said in a statement on Monday. This flight broke the record for the elevation at which a domestically built unmanned helicopter took off and landed.
    Unlike fixed-wing drones, a helicopter drone is more flexible since it does not require long runways.
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Cauchari photovoltaic solar project in Jujuy Province, Argentina

9-26-20 The China-built Cauchari photovoltaic solar project in Jujuy Province, Argentina, the largest solar project in the country was put into use on Sat. The project is to bring self-sufficient electricity and an annual income of $50 million to the province.

The Cauchari solar project in Argentina’s northernmost province Jujuy is one of the biggest photovoltaic (PV) solar power projects in South America. Located at an elevation of more than 4km above the sea level, it is also the world’s highest-altitude solar power project.
Construction on the 300MW Cauchari solar project phase one was started in October 2017, with an investment of £301m ($390m). The phase one was inaugurated after the completion of trial run in October 2019.

The 300MW Cauchari solar farm, with an estimated lifespan of 25 years, is expected to generate approximately 660GWh of clean electricity a year, which will be enough to power more than 160,000 households.

It is further planned for a 200MW expansion in the next phase to bring the total capacity to 500MW, which will be enough to meet the electricity needs of approximately 260,000 Argentine homes.

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China’s independently developed superconducting cyclotron reaches design target

The 230 MeV superconducting cyclotron, in which 71 million proton beam clusters can be accelerated to about 60% of the speed of light per second, is continuously delivered. Such high-speed continuous proton beams provide new conditions for materials science and aerospace engineering for special materials, high-power devices, and radiation damage testing of space chips, as well as for radiobiological research on the biological effects of space radiation and DNA damage.
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China has completed the research and development of Guohe-1

Guohwa No. 1, also known as CAP1400, is a large and advanced nuclear power model with independent intellectual property rights developed by China on the basis of the introduction and absorption of international advanced third-generation nuclear power technology and relying on the national large-scale advanced pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant major special project, with high safety factor, good economic performance and many innovative achievements.

China has completed the research and development of Guohe-1 国和一号 , a third-generation nuclear power technology with completely independent intellectual property rights. “As one of China’s 16 major science and technology projects, Guohe-1 represents the advanced level of third-generation nuclear power technology in the world today and is the latest achievement in China’s nuclear power technology research and development and industrial innovation.

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“Jinghua” extra-large diameter shield machine

9-27-20, “Jinghua” 京华号 extra-large diameter shield machine rolled off the production line in Changsha.

　　The shield machine is 150 meters long, weighs 4,300 tons and has a maximum excavation diameter of 16.07 meters.

　　This is China’s largest diameter shield machine developed so far, it will be involved in the construction of the sixth ring of the East Beijing reconstruction project after delivery.

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HJ-2A and HJ-2B environmental monitoring satellites

A Chinese Long March-4B carrier rocket carrying two environmental monitoring satellites was launched from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province at 11:23 a.m. Sunday.


The new HJ–2A and HJ–2B satellites will replace the previous generation of environmental monitoring satellites HJ-1A and HJ-1B, to provide services concerning environmental protection, natural resources, water conservancy, agriculture and forestry,
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HY-2C satellite


China successfully launched its HY-2C ocean-observation satellite into planned orbit on Monday afternoon via a Long March-4B carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in North China’s Shanxi Province. , forming a network with HY-2B and subsequent HY-2D satellites to carry out 24/7 all-weather high precision monitoring of maritime data.