Mass transport is responsible for the substantial rise in reaction selectivity with increasing thickness of mesostructured silver catalyst films.

a b s t r a c tThe performance of high-temperature solar reactors incorporating porous ceramic materials that serve as radiative absorbers and chemical reaction sites can be improved significantly by tailoring their pore structure. We investigated the changes in their effective heat and mass transport properties with increasing mass loading of porous ceramics fabricated by the replica method. We applied a methodology consisting of the experimental characterization of the structure via 3D tomographic techniques coupled to pore-level direct numerical simulations for the determination of the effective transport properties. This approach was extended by using digital image processing on the structure data to allow for artificial changes in the morphological characteristics -corresponding to actual variations in the fabrication process. We derived transport correlations of porous ceria foam with varying mass loading, i.e. reticulate to dense foams with porosity from 0.85 to 0.45. We observed that the correlations proposed in literature do not accurately describe the behavior of low-porosity foams. The numerical findings of this study provide guidance for pore-level engineering of materials used in solar reactors and other high-temperature heat and mass transfer applications.

Tropical floodplains play an important role in organic matter transport, storage, and transformation between headwaters and oceans. However, the fluxes and quality of organic carbon (OC) and organic nitrogen (ON) in tropical river-floodplain systems are not well constrained. We explored the quantity and characteristics of dissolved and particulate organic matter (DOM and POM, respectively) in the Kafue River flowing through the Kafue Flats (Zambia), a tropical river-floodplain system in the Zambezi River basin. During the flooding season, > 80% of the Kafue River water passed through the floodplain, mobilizing large quantities of OC and ON, which resulted in a net export of 69–119 kg OC km⁻² d⁻¹ and 3.8–4.7 kg ON km⁻² d⁻¹, 80% of which was in the dissolved form. The elemental C : N ratio of ~ 20, the comparatively high δ¹³C values of −25‰ to −21‰, and its spectroscopic properties (excitation-emission matrices) showed that DOM in the river was mainly of terrestrial origin. Despite a threefold increase in OC loads due to inputs from the floodplain, the characteristics of the riverine DOM remained relatively constant along the sampled 410-km river reach. This suggests that floodplain DOM displayed properties similar to those of DOM leaving the upstream reservoir and implied that the DOM produced in the reservoir was relatively short-lived. In contrast, the particulate fraction was ¹³C-depleted (−29‰) and had a C : N ratio of ~ 8, which indicated that POM originated from phytoplankton production in the reservoir and in the floodplain, rather than from plant debris or resuspended sediments. While the upstream dam had little effect on the DOM pool, terrestrial particles were retained, and POM from algal and microbial sources was released to the river. A nitrogen mass balance over the 2200 km² flooded area revealed an annual deficit of 15 500–22 100 t N in the Kafue Flats. The N isotope budget suggests that these N losses are balanced by intense N-fixation. Our study shows that the Kafue Flats are a significant local source of OC and ON to downstream ecosystems and illustrates how the composition of riverine OM can be altered by dams and floodplains in tropical catchments