[Shantou Bay Tunnel Ludao No. shield machine off the production line]On February 21, 2023, a Tunjima shield machine with the pattern of a brave tiger shark painted on the cutter head was completed and rolled off the production line smoothly. This is a domestically produced large-diameter mud-water balance shield machine jointly built by China Railway 14th Bureau and China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Group. It will be used in the construction of the Shantou Bay Tunnel on the Shantou Guang'ao Port Area Railway, and will soon start a journey through the sea.
Shantou Guangao Port Railway is located in Shantou City, Guangdong Province. It starts from Shantou Station of Guangmeishan Railway in the north and ends at Guangao Port in the south. The Guangzhou-Macao Port Area Railway Line 1 has a total length of 17.116 kilometers, including a tunnel, two bridges and other construction content. The Shantou Bay Tunnel is a key and difficult control project of the project, with a total length of 9965 meters, of which the shield section is 2990 meters long. The segment has an outer diameter of 12.9 meters and an inner diameter of 11.8 meters.
The excavation diameter of the cutter head of the Tunnel Tunneling Machine on the Gudao Island is 13.42 meters, the total length of the shield machine is 126 meters, the weight of the whole machine is about 3,300 tons, and the total installed power is 9,300 kilowatts. The shield cutter head has the functions of normal pressure tool change, hob exchange, hob wear detection, speed detection, and temperature detection. In order to deal with the problem of low construction efficiency in hard rock formations, the distance between cutterheads and cutters of the shield machine has been further reduced, and pressure hobs have been added to help improve rock breaking efficiency. The cutter head is equipped with a total of 185 cutters, of which 89 can be replaced under normal pressure, realizing full coverage of the cutter head's excavation trajectory. Editor / Zhao E
The European Parliament has formally adopted the revised Energy Performance Directive for Buildings (EPBD), which will become law after formal approval by the Council of Ministers. The directive requires all new residential buildings in the EU to be powered by rooftop solar from 2030, and public buildings and non-residential buildings will need to be phased in according to their scale and technical and economic assessments. The EPBD aims to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector in line with the EU's goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Currently, the building sector accounts for 40% of the EU's total energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of improving energy efficiency in buildings is to enhance energy independence and sustainability in this sector by reducing the use of imported oil and gas fuels. Under the forthcoming rules, all new buildings occupied or owned by public bodies will need to be zero-emission by 2028, and all new buildings from 2030 onwards. Member States need to clearly plan the measures taken to decarbonize heating systems in order to phase out fossil fuels in heating and cooling by 2040. From 2025, stand-alone fossil fuel boilers will no longer receive subsidies, but hybrid heating systems that use renewable energy will be eligible for financial incentives. Editor/Xu Shengpeng
Germany's Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger has announced a new fusion research funding program aimed at paving the way for the construction of the first fusion power plant in Germany by 2040. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has long supported fusion research at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching and Greifswald, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Jurich Research Centre (FZJ). "This institutional funding is complemented by the second pillar of the new Project Funding Scheme," the ministry said. "The project funding aims to advance the technologies, components and materials required for fusion power plants in the first phase by the early 2030s. The second phase focuses on integration into the power plant design. The funding program is open to technology and addresses so-called magnetic confinement and laser fusion technology." In order to achieve the construction of fusion power stations as soon as possible, the program is essentially application-oriented collaborative research as a form of public-private partnership. Projects on specific sub-technologies will be carried out jointly by research institutions, universities and industry. This allows new findings from the research to be applied at an early stage and know-how to be transferred to domestic industries for further use, the ministry said. Editor/Xu Shengpeng