Enhancing gas-liquid mass transfer is key to promote gas hydrate formation kinetics. Encapsulation of CO2 hydrate is expected to dramatically increase gas-liquid contact to enhance mass transfer. However, gas hydrate encapsulation has never been proposed as the technical issues of gas permeation through capsule shells have never been addressed. In this work, based on the principles of biomimetics, we proposed a novel red blood cell (RBC) inspired carbon capture capsule to promote CO2 hydrate formation kinetics. An experimentally validated model is established to compare the carbon capture performance in an RBC-shaped and a spherical capsule. It is revealed that the gas uptake efficiency of the RBC-shaped capsule is 143% higher than that of the spherical one. The effect of initial pressure and capsule size on CO2 hydrate formation kinetics is also investigated. Furthermore, the structure of RBC is optimised and it is found the average amount of hydrate formation per surface area achieves a peak when the ratio of the height at the centre to the width of the ring is between 0.128 and 0.160, which is close to that of real RBCs in human bodies. This work enables the informed design of hydrate-based carbon capture units with high gas uptake efficiency.@en

Several methods of polarized neutron scattering call for a zero magnetic field (ZF) region to reduce magnetic field integral aberrations while preserving the neutron polarization. Though the design for large angle neutron scattering has been presented in various places, the design characterization and tuning has not been discussed before. In this report, the tuning procedure will be discussed with both neutron polarization transport method and utilization of fluxgate magnetometers. As a tuning procedure, polarized neutrons are sensitive to any local field distortions along all trajectories within the beam, but the process is slow. With fluxgates, the entire beam region cannot be accessed simultaneously, but very fast and precise measurements can be made in accessible regions of interest. Consequently, we would like to benchmark the usage of fluxgates as a fast tuning probe compared with polarization measurements made with neutrons. Polarization transport results for tuned ZF chambers, up to 2.25 m in length, are presented.@en