Jo Mar 5, 2026
Although many serious problems are being caused due to the air pollution and rapid fossil fuel depletion, coal combustion is still a major method for energy generation. Therefore, most heat power plants use pulverized coal as the fuel for steam boilers. Even in this case, however, there are still many problems such as expensive cost of oil, difficulty in its storage and supply, stabilization of ignition and/or burning caused by hot corrosion of surface and heavy metals pollution. These problems require new ways of ignition and burning stabilization.
Due to additional pulverization of coal granules, excitation and dissociation of molecules, and production of free radicals, plasma-assisted combustion technique has drawn considerable attention as a promising method for enhancing combustion.
Plasma-assisted combustion can be classified into equilibrium plasma-assisted combustion (EPAC) and non-equilibrium plasma-assisted combustion (NEPAC). Most equilibrium plasma burners use a plasma torch of arc jet, which has some disadvantages such as fast consumption and frequent replacement of electrodes, complexity of cooling system and low energy efficiency. NEPAC produces incomparably higher vibrational temperature and electron temperature than the translational temperature in non-equilibrium plasmas. Therefore, the non-equilibrium plasma is of particular interest as far as combustion is concerned. The plasma generated by gliding arc discharge that includes both thermal effect and non-equilibrium characteristics is quasi non-equilibrium plasma suitable for fuel combustion.
Ri Thae Nam, a researcher at the Faculty of Physics, built a pulverized coal burner and conducted some experiments, on the basis of the understanding of the characteristics of non-equilibrium plasma generated by gliding arc discharge.
First, he performed a test on the experimental set-up composed of a plasmatron and a burner using gliding arc discharge with two electrodes. He drew distinctive temperature distribution curves at four measuring points of the set-up and confirmed the combustion possibility of low-grade coal. Then, he constructed a combustion system of pulverized coal for boiler ignition and obtained stabilized pulverized coal flame through the secondary burner. Finally, he analyzed the possibility and advantage of boiler ignition by the proposed combustion system in contrast to that of heavy oil or natural gas.
The analysis results showed that the introduction of the proposed combustion system could bring major economical effects by reducing the energy needed for ignition and combustion of coal.
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Jo Mar 4, 2026
The 39th Science and Technology Festival of Kim Chaek University of Technology took place from Feb. 24 to 27 on the theme “Steady Development of Sci-tech Capability”.
The festival was divided into 7 panels including metal and chemistry, machine and transport, etc. Presented there were more than 260-odd sci-tech achievements including “Robotization and streamlining of precision mold production process” and “Establishment of active lime production process”.
During the festival, there were presentation and examination of sci-tech proposals and technical exchange among visitors. Trophies, certificates and prizes were awarded to the highly-praised units and individuals.
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Jo Feb 28, 2026
NOMA (Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access) is the main technology of 5th generation communication system for controlling the throughputs of users by using power allocation corresponding to information transmission time.
In the previous researches, they assumed that all users have the same channel weights in the aspects of power allocation and sum rate.
However, their assumption makes it difficult to simultaneously satisfy the sum rate and user fairness.
Kim Tong Jin, a researcher at the Faculty of Communication, proposed an improved energy harvesting scheme to achieve the maximum sum rate by using weighted users.
The proposed scheme is based on an energy harvesting model and the sum rate is expressed by the throughput of the Nth user.
He set the channel weight of the Nth user to be a certain value and calculated the weights of other users by using the weight of the Nth user so that all users have the same rate and the scheme has the maximum sum rate. Then, he assumed that the sum rate does not depend on the number of users and the channel weight of the Nth user. Under this assumption, he calculated the optimal information transfer time to maximize the sum rate.
He compared the new scheme with the previous one in terms of the channel weight for the Nth user and information transfer time. The results showed that when the number of users in one source block is increased, the sum rate and user fairness are improved significantly.
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Jo Feb 27, 2026
Predicting the hydrodynamic load on a body entering the water is important in the field of marine engineering. When a ship moves in water, water entry adversely affects ship motion and can even damage the ship structure.
Therefore, water entry problems have been widely investigated with experimental, theoretical and numerical methods.
According to preceding researches, however, the moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method has not been widely applied to water entry problems.
Pak Chol Jun, a researcher at the Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, has investigated hydrodynamic load acting on a two-dimensional (2D) wedge during water entry by means of the widely-used moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method.
First, he proposed two techniques for enhancing the performance of MPS and a symmetry domain technique for reducing the computational cost. Additionally, he proposed a fluid–solid coupling algorithm using the MPS method.
The comparison results to verify the accuracy of the proposed techniques show that the MPS with the proposed schemes can provide reliable numerical prediction for water entry problems.
For further details, you can refer to his paper “Numerical Investigation on Water Entry of Two-dimensional Wedges with a Moving Particle Semi-implicit Method” in “Journal of Marine Science and Application” (SCOPUS).
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Jo Feb 26, 2026
Chip inductors are widely used in electronics applications including information, automotive and aerospace. In particular, the chip inductor is an integral fundamental component of antenna fabrication and at the same time, it is the main component of RF oscillator circuits such as low noise or power amplifiers and voltage-controlled oscillators.
So far, research on chip inductors has been active for a long time, and recently, the need for miniaturization and high-speed electronics has urgently led to the improvements in their reliability and performance.
Most chip inductors are made of copper electrodes and BaTiO3. During manufacture, especially during service, parts of the chip inductor are exposed to the stress by mechanical, thermal and electrical loads. Therefore, multiple reliability tests including thermal shock, substrate bending and temperature cycling tests are typically required to ensure the reliability of the chip inductor when applied to some high-tech applications.
Kim Mi Gyong, a researcher at the Faculty of Electronics, conducted fatigue life prediction, on the basis of the observation of the region of maximum stress and the extent of cross-section deformation occurring during the operation of the chip inductor.
She constructed a 3D model similar to the real device and obtained the results by finite element analysis under the bending load with four-point bending conditions. The simulation results show that the stress distribution inside the chip inductor will be different with the increase in the number of turns of the chip inductor, which will affect the lifetime of the device.
The proposed method enables more detailed and more practical fatigue life prediction of devices including multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) and chip resistors with similar structures as well as multilayer chip inductors.
For more information, you can refer to her paper “Fatigue life prediction of chip inductor using finite element analysis” in “International Journal of Applied Research” (SCI).
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Jo Feb 25, 2026
Electrochemical gas sensors are currently widely used in environmental industries due to their superior properties such as high sensitivity and gas selectivity, fast response and reproducibility, and low power consumption. Various kinds of gas sensors have already been commercialized and produced in series and there is a continuous effort to further improve their properties.
As reported in the previous literature, several sensor electrode structures have been used in the fabrication of electrochemical sensors, but there is no description of which structure is the most suitable for generation of current.
With an attempt to design a suitable electrode structure for widely-used electrochemical gas sensors, Kim Yong Hyok, a researcher at the Faculty of Electronics, has performed a simulation analysis of the electrolyte potential and current density of the sensor using COMSOL Multiphysics.
The simulation results show that the sensor of a circular ring-shaped electrode structure has larger current density among the two types of sensors designed. He has also performed an analysis and an experiment of the current density distribution for the variation of the electrode area of sensors with the circular ring-shaped electrode structure and for the variation of the gap between the electrodes. As a result, he has found that the larger the area of working electrodes and the smaller the gap between electrodes, the larger the current density.
For more information, you can refer to his paper “Current Characteristics with Electrode Structure and Geometric Changes of Electrochemical Gas Sensor” in “Journal of The Electrochemical Society” (SCI).
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