A method for determining time-optimum medium temperature changes is presented. The heating of the pressure elements will be conducted so that the circumferential stress caused by pressure and fluid temperature variations at the edge of the opening at the point of stress concentration, do not exceed the allowable value. In contrast to present standards, two points at the edge of the opening are taken into consideration. The first point, P1, is located at the cross section and the second, P2, at the longitudinal section of the vessel. It will be shown that the optimum temperature courses should be determined with respect to the total circumferential stress at the point P2, and not, as in the existing standards due to the stress at the point P1. Optimum fluid temperature changes are assumed in the form of simple time functions. For practical reasons the optimum temperature in the ramp form is preferred. It is possible to increase the fluid temperature stepwise at the beginning of the heating process and then increase the fluid temperature with the constant rate. Allowing stepwise fluid temperature increase at the beginning of heating ensures that the heating time of a thick-walled component is shorter than heating time resulting from the calculations according to EN 12952-3 European Standard.

The chemical composition of bulk deposition is an important aspect of assessing ambient air pollution. It contributes significantly to the removal of pollutants from the atmosphere and their transfer to other ecosystems. Thus, it is a reliable determinant of environmental chemistry. Therefore, bulk deposition can be considered useful for tracking the migration path of substances from different sources. The aim of the study carried out at five measurement points in Zabrze and Bytom was to assess the content of selected physico-chemical parameters in bulk deposition. Samples were collected continuously from November 2019 to November 2020. In the collected samples the following were determined: COD, pH, conductivity, dissolved organic carbon, inorganic carbon and total carbon; inorganic anions (Cl-, SO42-, NO3-, NO2-, Br-, PO43-) and cations (Li+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Na+, K+, NH4+), metals and metalloids (Mn, Ni, Co, Cu, Zn, As, Cd, Pb, Cr, and Fe), and carboxylic acids (formic, acetic, oxalic). The obtained test results were statistically processed using Excel, and the normality of data distribution was verified by Shapiro-Wilk test. The results show that pollutants transported in the atmosphere and introduced with precipitation in the Zabrze and Bytom areas are a significant source of area pollution of the region.

Advances in photonic technologies, with new processes and scopes of photonic integrated circuits, have generated a lot of interest as the field allows to obtain sensors with reduced size and cost and build systems with high interconnectivity and information density. In this work, answering the needs of photonic sensors that must be portable, more energy-efficient, and more accurate than their electrical counterparts, also with a view to the emerging field of neuromorphic photonics, a versatile device is presented. The proposed device makes use of the well-known advantages provided by optical bistability. By combining two distributed feedback-multi quantum well semiconductor laser structures, this new optical multiple inputs - digital output device offers various essential purposes (such as logic gates, wavelength detector and monitoring) with no need for specific manufacturing for each of them. Through a commercial computer-aided design tool, VPIphotonics™, the necessary characterization of proposed device is also described.