This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis to examine changes in levels of technical efficiency over time in China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) during 1980-1989. Our paper adds to the growing body of literature in this area by obtaining measures of technical efficiency of individual SOEs over...

In this work, the electronic structure and magnetic coupling properties of Gd doped AlN have been investigated using first-principles method. We found that in the AlN:Gd system, due to the s-f coupling allowed by the symmetry, the exchange splitting of the conduction band is much larger than...

A cold storage air-conditioning system using tetra-n-butyl ammonium bromide (TBAB) clathrate hydrate slurry (CHS) as cold storage medium was built to investigate the high-efficiency method of TBAB CHS generation. In the present study, four kinds of different TBAB CHS generation methods were...

Phase change material slurries (PCS) can be employed in the refrigeration and air conditioning systems as both secondary refrigerant and cold energy storage media simultaneously, which benefits not only the system efficiency improvement by the high cold carry capacity but also the reduction of...

Based on the model set-up in Laffont and Tirole (1986)'s seminal paper 'Using Cost Observation to Regulate Firms', we provide a general method of computing the cut-off point above which inefficient firms should be shut down under asymmetric information. With the help of the transversality...

The utilization of paraffin in the latent thermal energy storage (LTES) system for solar energy storage is hampered by its low thermal conductivity. Paraffin/nickel foam and paraffin/copper foam composite phase change materials (PCMs) were prepared using a vacuum impregnation method in the...

The solid-gas reaction heat transformer, which can upgrade the temperature of middle-grade heat (such as industrial waste heat, solar energy, geothermal energy, etc.) is considered promising for energy-saving in the near future. It provides high storage capacity of heat, wide range of working...

Due to the complexity of the fluid flow and heat transfer in packed bed latent thermal energy storage (LTES) systems, many hypotheses were introduced into the previous packed bed models, which consequently influenced the accuracy and authenticity of the numerical calculation. An effective packed...