Multidimensional analyses of the effect of exercise on women with depression: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: The proportion of women is higher than men in depression. This is mainly due to women's physiological regulation is different from men, especially in puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, among others. Therefore, treating depressive women is still a health challenge. Besides, recent studies of exercise therapy have a more outstanding performance in treating depression, especially in contrast to drug therapy and psychotherapy. Its main advantages are convenience, quickness, no side effects, real-time, and long-term effectiveness. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to systematically review the clinical efficacy of exercise on women with depressive symptoms. METHODS: Searching PubMed, The Cochrane Library, and Embase databases to collect randomized controlled trials about exercise in the treatment of depressive women. After literature screening, data extraction, and literature quality evaluation, the meta-analysis of acquirement data was performed with RevMan5.3 software. RESULTS: A total of 2294 patients were included in 25 different articles totally. Meta-analysis shows that compared with the control group, exercise could relieve female depression (standard mean difference [95% confidence interval, CI] = -0.64 [-0.89 to -0.39], Z = 4.99, P < .001). Subgroup analysis shows that different types of exercise have significant effects in improving depression symptoms. Exercise therapy has better effect on depressive patients induced by physiology or disease than ordinary depressive patients. CONCLUSION: Exercise can significantly improve depressive symptoms in women.

A "flexible" carborane-cored luminogen: variable emission behaviours in aggregates.

The performance of tunable emissions in aggregates is highly desirable but challenging owing to the restricted molecular conformations of luminogens. Herein, we designed and synthesized a new "flexible" luminogen, a carborane-cored compound NAPH, which exhibits variable photophysical behaviours in aggregates, such as aggregation-induced emission, crystallization-induced emission, polymorph-dependent emission, and mechanochromic luminescence. Moreover, the two polymorphs with different emission colors show opposite mechano-responsive luminescence, which is rarely observed for single-component luminescent materials. Both theoretical calculations and photophysical experiments reveal that the carborane-cored luminogen could afford variable conformations. This endows the whole molecule with multiple conformations in aggregates, thus leading to variable emission behaviours. Therefore, the present work provides new access to the construction of multifunctional single-component solid-state luminescent materials.

Energy, exergy and economic analyses of a novel biomass fueled power plant with carbon capture and sequestration.

The biomass based power plants, especially those with the carbon capture unit, usually suffer the issue of low electric efficiency, which is adverse to their commercial application. As one approach to solving this issue, a novel biomass fueled power plant with carbon capture and sequestration (BFP-CCS) is proposed in this work. The BFP-CCS subunit models are first validated before the integrated model of BFP-CCS is built. Then, the BFP-CCS characteristics are analyzed in terms of energy, exergy and economics, and the optimum operation condition of BFP-CCS is determined. Based on this research, it is found that BFP-CCS performs best at the H2O/Mn2O3 mass ratio of 1.6, the H2O/O2 molar ratio of 2.8, the O2/biomass mass ratio of 0.22 and the fuel utilization factor of 0.65. The corresponding net efficiency, the life cycle CO2 emission and the levelized cost of electricity of BFP-CCS are 51.7%, $0.0501 /kWh and -0.591 kg/kWh, respectively. The biggest contributors of the energy and exergy losses are the steam turbine and the solid oxide fuel cell in BFP-CCS, respectively. The major implication of this study is that an efficient and economical BFP-CCS system is put forward, which is promising for CO2 removal during power generation.

Investigation on biomass steam gasification in a dual fluidized bed reactor with the granular kinetic theory.

The dual fluidized bed (DFB) reactor is promising to convert biomass into high-quality syngas efficiently. In this work, a three-dimensional model is built based on the granular kinetic theory to predict the biomass steam gasification in dual fluidized bed reactors. The model is firstly validated against a series of experimental results. Then, the effects of some essential operation parameters including the biomass flow rate (Fb), the steam to fuel ratio (Rsf) and the gasification temperature (Tg) on the biomass steam gasification properties in a DFB reactor are comprehensively analyzed with the orthogonal method. In the concerned ranges of the operation parameters, the cold gas efficiency is found to be the most sensitive to Fb and least sensitive to Tg. The optimal cold gas efficiency of the DFB gasifier is 82.9% when Fb, Rsf and Tg are 15 kg/h, 1.5 and 900 °C, respectively, and the H2 mole fraction is 46.62%.

Characterization of a dual fluidized bed gasifier with blended biomass/coal as feedstock.

A one-dimensional model is built based on the commercial Aspen Plus software to kinetically simulate the biomass/coal co-gasification process in a dual fluidized bed gasifier. The synergistic effect on the co-gasification kinetics is allowed for, and is coupled with the gas-solid flow hydrodynamics. With the developed model, the effects of different key operating parameters including the biomass blending ratio (Rb), the initial bed temperature (Tg), the feedstock mass flow rate (Ffs), the bed material flux (Fbm) and the steam to carbon ratio (Rsc) on the resultant syngas composition and the supplemental fuel mass flow rate (Fsf) are investigated, and the operation parameters are optimized. It is found that increasing Rb and Tg can enhance the gasification, while increasing Ffs and Rsc restricts the gasification. Increasing Fbm has slight effect on the gasification results but can reduce Fsf. The cold gas efficiency is up to 78.9% under the proposed optimum condition.

On a clean power generation system with the co-gasification of biomass and coal in a quadruple fluidized bed gasifier.

A clean power generation system was built based on the steam co-gasification of biomass and coal in a quadruple fluidized bed gasifier. The chemical looping with oxygen uncoupling technology was used to supply oxygen for the calciner. The solid oxide fuel cell and the steam turbine were combined to generate power. The calcium looping and mineral carbonation were used for CO2 capture and sequestration. The aim of this work was to study the characteristics of this system. The effects of key operation parameters on the system total energy efficiency (ŋten), total exergy efficiency (ŋtex) and carbon sequestration rate (Rcs) were detected. The energy and exergy balance calculations were implemented and the corresponding Sankey and Grassmann diagrams were drawn. It was found that the maximum energy and exergy losses occurred in the steam turbine. The system ŋten and ŋtex could be ∼50% and ∼47%, and Rcs could be over unit.

Simulation of biomass-steam gasification in fluidized bed reactors: Model setup, comparisons and preliminary predictions.

A user-defined solver integrating the solid-gas surface reactions and the multi-phase particle-in-cell (MP-PIC) approach is built based on the OpenFOAM software. The solver is tested against experiments. Then, biomass-steam gasification in a dual fluidized bed (DFB) gasifier is preliminarily predicted. It is found that the predictions agree well with the experimental results. The bed material circulation loop in the DFB can form automatically and the bed height is about 1m. The voidage gradually increases along the height of the bed zone in the bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) of the DFB. The U-bend and cyclone can separate the syngas in the BFB and the flue gas in the circulating fluidized bed. The concentration of the gasification products is relatively higher in the conical transition section, and the dry and nitrogen-free syngas at the BFB outlet is predicted to be composed of 55% H2, 20% CO, 20% CO2 and 5% CH4.

Thermodynamic analyses of a biomass-coal co-gasification power generation system.

A novel chemical looping power generation system is presented based on the biomass-coal co-gasification with steam. The effects of different key operation parameters including biomass mass fraction (Rb), steam to carbon mole ratio (Rsc), gasification temperature (Tg) and iron to fuel mole ratio (Rif) on the system performances like energy efficiency (ηe), total energy efficiency (ηte), exergy efficiency (ηex), total exergy efficiency (ηtex) and carbon capture rate (ηcc) are analyzed. A benchmark condition is set, under which ηte, ηtex and ηcc are found to be 39.9%, 37.6% and 96.0%, respectively. Furthermore, detailed energy Sankey diagram and exergy Grassmann diagram are drawn for the entire system operating under the benchmark condition. The energy and exergy efficiencies of the units composing the system are also predicted.