Safe disposal of nuclear waste is an important environmental challenge. Several countries are investigating deep geological disposal as a long-term solution for their high-level waste. In Belgium, the Oligocene Boom Clay is the reference host formation for research purposes and for the safety and feasibility assessment of the deep disposal of high-level and/or long-lived radioactive waste. The ...

In this work\ a new concept for a two!layered micro!channel heat sink with counter current ~ow arrangement for cooling of the electronic components is proposed[ The thermal performance and the temperature distribution for these types of micro channels were analyzed and a procedure for optimizing the geometrical design parameters is presented[ While the power supply system of the two!layered des...

Nanoscale control of structure in polymer nanocomposites is critical for their performance but has been difficult to investigate systematically due to the lack of a suitable experimental model. In this work, we investigated the role of nanoparticle layer separation in the finite deformation response of layered polyurethane(PU-) montmorillonite (MTM) nanocomposites. A series of multilayered nano...

Iron-bearing phyllosilicates strongly influence the redox state and mobility of uranium because of their limited hydraulic conductivity, high specific surface area, and redox reactivity. Standard extraction procedures cannot be accurately applied for the determination of clay-Fe(II/III) and U(IV/VI) in clay mineral-U suspensions such that advanced spectroscopic techniques are required. Instead,...

Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)/clay nanocomposites were prepared via a melt-compounding method using ester type TPU and two different modified organoclays (Cloisite 30B and Cloisite 15A) in different contents. The Effects of the chemical structure and content of the nanoclays on the thermal degradation and mechanical properties of TPU were also investigated. The effect of structural modificat...

The layered structure of two smectites (montmorillonite and saponite) are modified by the insertion SiO2–ZrO2 nanoparticles, with a Si/Zr molar ratio 5, to form porous clay heterostructures (PCHs). These PCHs exhibit clear improvement textural acid properties in comparison starting clays, due formation pillared presence Zr species, which provide an increase amount Lewis sites. materials studied...