apricity

apricity (plural not attested)

1. (obsolete) The warmth of the Sun in winter.

barn

A barn (symbol b) is a unit of area. Originally used in nuclear physics for expressing the cross sectional area of nuclei and nuclear reactions, today it is used in all fields of high energy physics to express the cross sections of any scattering process. A barn is defined as 10 m² (100 fm) and is approximately the cross sectional area of a uranium nucleus. The barn is also the unit of area used in nuclear quadrupole resonance and nuclear magnetic resonance to quantify the interaction of a nucleus with an electric field gradient. While the barn is not an SI unit, it is accepted for use with the SI due to its continued use in particle physics. It is one of the very few units which are accepted to be used with SI units, and one of the most recent units to have been established (cf. the knot and the bar, other non-SI units acceptable in limited circumstances).

Two related units are the outhouse (10⁻³⁴ m, or 1 μb) and the shed (10⁻⁵² m, or 1 yb), although these are rarely used in practice.

terajoule

The terajoule (TJ) is equal to one trillion (10¹²) joules. About 63 terajoules were released by the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima.^[10] The International Space Station, at completion, with a mass of 450,000kg and orbital velocity of 7.7 km/s,^[11] will have a kinetic energy of roughly 13 terajoules.

Scoopwheel

A Scoop wheel or Scoopwheel pump is similar in construction to a water wheel, but works in the opposite manner: a waterwheel is water-powered and used to drive machinery, a scoop wheel is engine-driven and is used to lift water from one level to another. Principally used for land drainage, early scoop wheels were wind-driven but later steam-powered beam engines were used. It can be regarded as a form of pump.

cookprint

cookprint: the environmental footprint of cooking.

Superinsulation

Superinsulation is an approach to building design, construction, and retrofitting. A superinsulated house is intended to be heated predominantly by intrinsic heat sources (waste heat generated by appliances and the body heat of the occupants) with very small amounts of backup heat. This has been demonstrated to work in very cold climates but requires close attention to construction details in addition to the insulation.

Repowering

Repowering is the process of replacing old steam generation equipment in a power plant with new technologies. An example of this would be changing a coal fired electricity plant to run on biomass.

Cofiring

Cofiring is the combustion of two different types of materials at the same time. One of the advantages of cofiring is that an existing plant can be used to burn a new fuel, which may be cheaper or more environmentally friendly. For example, biomass is sometimes cofired in existing coal plants instead of new biomass plants. Cofiring can also be used to improve the combustion of fuels with low energy content. For example, landfill gas contains a large amount of carbon dioxide, which is non-combustible. If the landfill gas is burned without removing the carbon dioxide, the equipment may not perform properly or emissions of pollutants may increase. Cofiring it with natural gas increases the heat content of the fuel and improves combustion and equipment performance. As long as the electricity or heat produced with the biomass and landfill gas was otherwise going to be produced with non-renewable fuels, the benefits are essentially equivalent whether they are cofired or combusted alone. Also, cofiring can be used to lower the emission of some pollutants. For example, cofiring biomass with coal results in less sulfur emissions than burning coal by itself.