Search results for: soil pressure

Authors: Syeda Faiza Gardazi, Syed Ahsan Ali Gardazi, Ajmal Waheed

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The trend of overtime is increasing among workers due to more pressure to perform workloads, job insecurity, and financial issues. Overtime work affects the work-life balance conflict negatively as well positively. Work-life balance conflict has become an important issue as traditional work and family roles have changed. The purpose of the current research was to study the impact of overtime work on work-life balance conflict along with the moderating role of job satisfaction. For this purpose, data is collected from the employees working in different public and private sectors of Pakistan using simple random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics was used for data presentation and analysis. Correlation and regression analysis were used to test four research hypotheses proposed on the basis of research framework. The findings led to the acceptance of four hypotheses. The results show that high working hours and overtime in general lead to high work-life balance conflict. Moreover, job satisfaction moderates the relationship between overtime work and work-life balance conflict.

Keywords: family to work conflict, overtime work, work to family conflict, work-life balance conflict

Procedia PDF Downloads 258

Authors: Ikram Kamal, Mohamed Blaghen

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Petroleum hydrocarbons are serious problems and global pollutants in the environment due to their toxicity, carcinogenicity and persistent organic pollutant properties. One of the approaches to enhance biodegradation of petroleum hydrocarbons is to use biosurfactant. Biosurfactants are amphiphilic biomolecules produced as metabolic by-products from microorganisms they received considerable attention in the field of environmental remediation processes such as bioremediation. Biosurfactants have been considered as a desirable alternative to synthetic surfactants in various applications particularly in the environmental field. In comparison with their synthetic counterparts, biosurfactants have been reported to be less toxic, biodegradable and persistent. In this study we have investigated the potential of bacterial strains collected aseptically from the lagoon Marchika (water and soil) in Nador, Morocco; for the production of biosurfactants. This study also aimed to optimize the biosurfactant production process by changing the variables that influence the type and amount of biosurfactant produced by these microorganisms such as: carbon sources and also other physical and chemical parameters such as temperature and pH. Emulsification index, methylene blue test and thin layer chromatography (TLC) revealed the ability of strains used in this study to produce compounds that could emulsify gasoline. In addition, a HPLC/MS was used to separate and identify different biosurfactants purified.

Keywords: petroleum hydrocarbons, biosurfactants, biodegradation, lagoon marchika, emulsification index

Procedia PDF Downloads 262

Authors: Ahmed H. Elkholy

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The concept of applying a prescribed oscillation to viscous fluids to aid or increase flow is used to produce a maintenance free pump. Application of this technique to fluids presents unique problems such as physical separation; control of heat and mass transfer in certain industrial applications; and improvement of some fluid process methods. The problem as stated is to obtain the velocity distribution, wall shear stress and energy expended when a pipe containing a stagnant viscous fluid is externally excited by a sinusoidal pulse, one end of the pipe being pinned. On the other hand, the effect of different parameters on the results are presented. Such parameters include fluid viscosity, frequency of oscillations and pipe geometry. It was found that the flow velocity through the pump is maximum at the pipe wall, and it decreases rapidly towards the pipe centerline. The frequency of oscillation should be above a certain value in order to obtain meaningful flow velocity. The amount of energy absorbed in the system is mainly due to pipe wall strain energy, while the fluid pressure and kinetic energies are comparatively small.

Keywords: sinusoidal excitation, pump, shear stress, flow

Procedia PDF Downloads 315

Authors: Manatchanok Tantiphiphatthana, Lin Peng, Rujira Jitrwung, Kunio Yoshikawa

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Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a technique for obtaining clean biofuel from biomass in the presence of heat and pressure in an aqueous medium which leads to a decomposition of this biomass to the formation of various products. A role of operating conditions is essential for the bio-oil and other products’ yield and also quality of the products. The effects of these parameters were investigated in regards to the composition and yield of the products. Chlorellaceae microalgae were tested under different HTL conditions to clarify suitable conditions for extracting bio-oil together with value-added co-products. Firstly, different microalgae loading rates (5-30%) were tested and found that this parameter has not much significant to product yield. Therefore, 10% microalgae loading rate was selected as a proper economical solution for conditioned schedule at 250oC and 30 min-reaction time. Next, a range of temperature (210-290oC) was applied to verify the effects of each parameter by keeping the reaction time constant at 30 min. The results showed no linkage with the increase of the reaction temperature and some reactions occurred that lead to different product yields. Moreover, some nutrients found in the aqueous product are possible to be utilized for nutrient recovery.

Keywords: bio-oil, hydrothermal liquefaction, microalgae, aqueous co-product

Procedia PDF Downloads 410

Authors: H. Kazemi Esfeh, V. Akbari, M. Ehdaei, T. N. G. Borhani, A. Shamiri, M. Najafi

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In an industrial fluidized bed polymerization reactor, particle size distribution (PSD) plays a significant role in the reactor efficiency evaluation. The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models coupled with population balance equation (CFD-PBM) have been extensively employed to investigate the flow behavior in the poly-disperse multiphase fluidized bed reactors (FBRs) utilizing ANSYS Fluent code. In this study, an existing CFD-PBM/ DQMOM coupled modeling framework has been used to highlight its potential to analyze the industrial-scale gas phase polymerization reactor. The predicted results reveal an acceptable agreement with the observed industrial data in terms of pressure drop and bed height. The simulated results also indicate that the higher particle growth rate can be achieved for bigger particles. Hence, the 2D CFD-PBM/DQMOM coupled model can be used as a reliable tool for analyzing and improving the design and operation of the gas phase polymerization FBRs.

Keywords: computational fluid dynamics, population balance equation, fluidized bed polymerization reactor, direct quadrature method of moments

Procedia PDF Downloads 367

Authors: Khaled S. Al Salhen

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Aldehyde oxidase is molybdo-flavoenzyme involved in the oxidation of hundreds of endogenous and exogenous and N-heterocyclic compounds and environmental pollutants. Uncharged N-heterocyclic aromatic compounds such phenanthridine are commonly distributed pollutants in soil, air, sediments, surface water and groundwater, and in animal and plant tissues. Phenanthridine as uncharged N-heterocyclic aromatic compound was incubated with partially purified aldehyde oxidase from rainbow trout fish liver. Reversed-phase HLPC method was used to separate the oxidation products from phenanthridine and the metabolite was identified. The 6(5H)-phenanthridinone was identified the major metabolite by partially purified aldehyde oxidase from fish liver. Kinetic constant for the oxidation reactions were determined spectrophotometrically and showed that this substrate has a good affinity (Km = 78 ± 7.6 µM) for hepatic aldehyde oxidase, coupled with a relatively high oxidation rate (0.77± 0.03 nmol/min/mg protein). In addition, the kinetic parameters of hepatic fish aldehyde oxidase towards the phenanthridine substrate indicate that in vitro biotransformation by hepatic fish aldehyde oxidase will be a significant pathway. This study confirms that partially purified aldehyde oxidase from fish liver is indeed the enzyme responsible for the in vitro production 6(5H)-phenanthridinone metabolite as it is a major metabolite by mammalian aldehyde oxidase.

Keywords: aldehyde oxidase, fish, phenanthridine, specificity

Procedia PDF Downloads 364

Authors: Ashraf Y. Z. Khalifa, Mohammed A. Almalki

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Medicago sativa (Alfalfa) is an important forage crop legume worldwide including Saudia Arabia due to its high nutritive value. Soil bacteria exist in root or root-nodules of Medicago sativa in either symbiotic relationships or in associations. The aim of the present study was to isolate and characterize endophytic bacteria that live in association with non-nodulated roots of Medicago sativa growing in Al-Ahsaa region, Saudia Arabia. Several bacterial strains were isolated from sterilized roots of Medicago sativa. Strains were characterized using 16S rRNA gene sequences, phylogenetic relationships analysis, morphological and biochemical characteristics. The strains utilized 50% (10 out of 20) of the different chemical substrates contained in the API20E strip. In general, many strains had the ability to ferment/oxidise all the carbohydrate tested except for rhamnose and the polyol carbohydrate, inositol. Comparative sequence analysis of the 16S rDNA gene indicated that the strains were closely related to the genus Bacillus. Furthermore, the growth parameters of Vigna sinensis were enhanced upon single-inoculation of the isolated strains, compared to the uninoculated control plants. The results highlighted that the root-nodules of Medicago sativa harbor non-nodulating bacterial strains that could have significant agricultural applications.

Keywords: Medicago sativa, endophytic bacteria, Pisum sativum, Vigna sinensis

Procedia PDF Downloads 377

Authors: Malek Y. S. Ibrahim, Jeffrey A. Bennett, Milad Abolhasani

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Despite the potential of hydrogen (H2) storage in liquid organic carriers to achieve carbon neutrality, the energy required for H2 release and the cost of catalyst recycling has hindered its large-scale adoption. In response, a photo flow reactor packed with rhodium (Rh)/titania (TiO2) photocatalyst was reported for the continuous and selective acceptorless dehydrogenation of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroquinoline to H2 gas and quinoline under visible light irradiation at room temperature. The tradeoff between the reactor pressure drop and its photocatalytic surface area was resolved by selective in-situ photodeposition of Rh in the photo flow reactor post-packing on the outer surface of the TiO2 microparticles available to photon flux, thereby reducing the optimal Rh loading by 10 times compared to a batch reactor, while facilitating catalyst reuse and regeneration. An example of using quinoline as a hydrogen acceptor to lower the energy of the hydrogen production step was demonstrated via the water-gas shift reaction.

Keywords: hydrogen storage, flow chemistry, photocatalysis, solar hydrogen

Procedia PDF Downloads 98

Authors: Sofia Figueroa, Efrain Bernal, Silvia Del Pilar Forero, Humberto Ramirez

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This work shows a detailed review of the scope of global research on the road infrastructure using materials from Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW), also called RCD. In the first phase of this research, a segment of road was designed using recycled materials such as Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) on the top, the natural coarse base including 30% of RAP and recycled concrete blocks. The second part of this segment was designed using regular materials for each layer of the pavement. Both structures were built next to each other in order to analyze and measure the material properties as well as performance and environmental factors in the pavement under real traffic and weather conditions. Different monitoring devices were installed among the structure, based on the literature revision, such as soil cells, linear potentiometer, moisture sensors, and strain gauges that help us to know the C&DW as a part of the pavement structure. This research includes not only the physical characterization but also the measured parameters in a field such as an asphalt mixture (RAP) strain (ετ), vertical strain (εᵥ) and moisture control in coarse layers (%w), and the applied loads and strain in the subgrade (εᵥ). The results will show us what is happening with these materials in order to obtain not only a sustainable solution but also to know its behavior and lifecycle.

Keywords: sustainable pavements, construction & demolition waste-C&DW, recycled rigid concrete, reclaimed asphalt pavement-rap

Procedia PDF Downloads 161

Authors: Samira Taleb, Sakina Aoun, Slimane Ziani, Zoheir Mentouri, Adel Boudiaf

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Rolling is a pressure treatment technique that modifies the shape of steel ingots or billets between rotating rollers. During this process, defects may form on the surface of the rolled sheets and are likely to affect the performance and quality of the finished product. In our study, we developed a method for detecting surface hole defects using a pixel classification approach. This work includes several steps. First, we performed image preprocessing to delimit areas with and without hole defects on the sheet image. Then, we developed the histograms of each area to generate the gray level membership intervals of the pixels that characterize each area. As we noticed an intersection between the characteristics of the gray level intervals of the images of the two areas, we finally performed a learning step based on a series of detection tests to refine the membership intervals of each area, and to choose the defect detection criterion in order to optimize the recognition of the surface hole.

Keywords: classification, defect, surface, detection, hole

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Authors: Revant Nayar

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In this work, we recast the equations describing large scale structure, and by extension all nonlinear fluids, in the path integral formalism. We first calculate the well known two and three point functions using Schwinger Keldysh formalism used commonly to perturbatively solve path integrals in non- equilibrium systems. Then we include EFT corrections due to pressure, viscosity, and noise as effects on the time-dependent propagator. We are able to express results for arbitrary two and three point correlation functions in LSS in terms of differential operators acting on a triple K master intergral. We also, for the first time, get analytical results for more general initial conditions deviating from the usual power law P∝kⁿ by introducing a mass scale in the initial conditions. This robust field theoretic formalism empowers us with tools from strongly coupled QFT to study the strongly non-linear regime of LSS and turbulent fluid dynamics such as OPE and holographic duals. These could be used to capture fully the strongly non-linear dynamics of fluids and move towards solving the open problem of classical turbulence.

Keywords: quantum field theory, cosmology, effective field theory, renormallisation

Procedia PDF Downloads 135

Authors: Sung-Min Kim, Joon-Hong Park, Hyuk Choi

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This study is focused on the comparative analysis and improvement to grasp the flow characteristic of the anti-splash device located under the P/V valve and new concept design models using the CFD. The P/V valve located upper deck to solve the pressure rising and vacuum condition of inner tank of the liquid cargo ships occurred oil outflow accident by transverse and longitudinal sloshing force. Anti-splash device is fitted to improve and prevent this problem in the shipbuilding industry, but the oil outflow accidents are still reported by ship owners. Thus, 4 types of new design model are presented by this study, and then comparative analysis is conducted with new models and existing model. Mostly the key criterion of this problem is flux in the outlet of the anti-splash device. Therefore, the flow and velocity are grasped by transient analysis, and then it decided optimum model and design parameters to develop model. Later, it is needed to develop an anti-splash device by flow test to get certification and verification using experiment equipments.

Keywords: anti-splash device, P/V valve, sloshing, CFD

Procedia PDF Downloads 634

Authors: Faisal Bin Alam

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Most of the manufacturing entities cause negative footprint to nature that demand due attention. Textile industries have one of the longest supply chains and bear the liability of significant environmental impact to our planet. Issues of environmental safety, scarcity of energy and resources, and demand for eco-friendly products have driven research to search for safe and suitable alternatives in apparel processing. Consumer awareness, increased pressure from fashion brands and actions from local legislative authorities have somewhat been able to improve the practices. Objective of this paper is to reveal the best selection of raw materials and methods of production, taking environmental sustainability into account. Methodology used in this study is exploratory in nature based on personal experience, field visits in the factories of Bangladesh and secondary sources. Findings are limited to exploring better alternatives to conventional operations of a Readymade Garment manufacturing, from fibre selection to final product delivery, therefore showing some ways of achieving greener environment in the supply chain of a clothing industry.

Keywords: textile and apparel, environmental sustainability, supply chain, production, clothing

Procedia PDF Downloads 137

Authors: Osama H. Elsayed, Mohsen M. S. Asker, Mahmoud A. Swelim, Ibrahim H. Abbas, Aziza I. Attwa, Mohamed E. El Awady

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Hydroxy marilone C is a bioactive metabolite was produced from the culture broth of Streptomyces badius isolated from Egyptian soil. hydroxy marilone C was purified and fractionated by silica gel column with a gradient mobile phase dicloromethane (DCM) : Methanol then Sephadex LH-20 column using methanol as a mobile phase. It was subjected to many instruments as Infrared (IR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), Mass spectroscopy (MS) and UV spectroscopy to the elucidation of its structure. It was evaluated for antioxidant, cytotoxicity against human alveolar basal epithelial cell line (A-549) and human breast adenocarcinoma cell line (MCF-7) and antiviral activities; showed that the maximum antioxidant activity was 78.8 % at 3000 µg/ml after 90 min. and the IC50 value against DPPH radical found about 1500 µg/ml after 60 min. By Using MTT assay the effect of the pure compound on the proliferation of A-549 cells and MCF-7 cells were 443 µg/ml and 147.9 µg/ml, respectively. While for detection of antiviral activity using Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells the maximum cytotoxicity was at 27.9% and IC50 was 128.1µg/ml. The maximum concentration required for protecting 50% of the virus-infected cells against H1N1 viral cytopathogenicity (EC50) was 33.25% for 80 µg/ml. This results indicated that the hydroxy marilone C has a potential antitumor and antiviral activities.

Keywords: hydroxy marilone C, production, bioactive compound, Streptomyces badius

Procedia PDF Downloads 253

Authors: Deepak

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WEDM is an amazingly potential electro-wire process for machining of hard metal compounds and metal grid composites without making contact. Wire electrical machining is a developing noncustomary machining process for machining hard to machine materials that are electrically conductive. It is an exceptionally exact, precise, and one of the most famous machining forms in nontraditional machining. WEDM has turned into the fundamental piece of many assembling process ventures, which require precision, variety, and accuracy. In the present examination, AA-6063 is utilized as a workpiece, and execution investigation is done to discover the critical control factors. Impact of different parameters like a pulse on time, pulse off time, servo voltage, peak current, water pressure, wire tension, wire feed upon surface hardness has been researched while machining on AA-6063. RSM has been utilized to advance the yield variable. A variety of execution measures with input factors was demonstrated by utilizing the response surface methodology.

Keywords: AA-6063, response surface methodology, WEDM, surface roughness

Procedia PDF Downloads 116

Authors: Souhila Terfi, Fatma Hassaine-Sadi

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In the present study, wet digestion with HCl and HNO3 mixture was used to extract the heavy metals (copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd)) from the leaves, the stems and the roots of Malva sylvestris L., which were subsequently analyzed by AAS. The samples (soil and parts of species) were collected from different sites: the industrial area (IA) (Rouiba), the rubbish dump area (RDA) (Boudouaou), the residential area (RA) with large open fields and construction activities (Blida), the Montaigne area (MA) (Chrea) and the high plateau area (HPA) (Berouaguia). The study showed differences in metal concentrations according to the analysed parts and the different sampling locations. In the contaminated site of the industrial area (IA), high content of the toxic heavy metals (Cd: 3.18 µg/g DW and Pb: 34.48 µg/g DW) were found in the leaves of Malva sylvestris L. This finding suggests that the consumers of this species could be exposed to a risk associated with this higher level of these toxic metals. It was found that Malva sylvestris L. is rich by Zn and Cu in some sites, which are considered to be the essential elements for the human health. The obtained results with the control site (Montaigne area) suggest that this species can be applicable in both the health and food, feasible alternatives as medicinal plant without any risk.

Keywords: Malva sylvestris L., toxic heavy metal, medicinal plant, impact on human health

Procedia PDF Downloads 359

Authors: Dan Zhao, Y. W. Sheng

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The present work considers a convection-driven T-shaped pulse combustion system. Both experimental and numerical investigations are conducted to study the mechanism of pulse combustion and its potential application in fabric drying. To gain insight on flame-acoustic dynamic interaction and pulsating flow characteristics, 3D numerical simulation of the pulse combustion process of a premixed turbulent flame in a Rijke-type combustor is performed. Two parameters are examined: (1) fuel-air ratio, (2) inlet flow velocity. Their effects on triggering pulsating flow and Nusselt number are studied. As each of the parameters is varied, Nusselt number characterizing the heat transfer rate and the heat-driven pulsating flow signature is found to change. The main nonlinearity is identified in the heat fluxes. To validate our numerical findings, a cylindrical T-shaped Rijke-type combustor made of quartz-glass with a Bunsen burner is designed and tested.

Keywords: pulse combustion, fabric drying, heat transfer, combustion oscillations, pressure oscillations

Procedia PDF Downloads 241

Authors: Syed Jamil H. Kazmi, Faiza Sarwar

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The Indus delta of Sindh Province forms the largest creeks zone of Pakistan. The Sindh coast starts from the mouth of Hab River and terminates at Sir Creek area. In this paper, we have considered the major creeks from the site of Bin Qasim Port in Karachi to Jetty of Keti Bunder in Thatta District. A general decline in the mangrove forest has been observed that within a span of last 25 years. The unprecedented human interventions damage the creeks habitat badly which includes haphazard urban development, industrial and sewage disposal, illegal cutting of mangroves forest, reduced and inconsistent fresh water flow mainly from Jhang and Indus rivers. These activities not only harm the creeks habitat but affected the fish stock substantially. Fishing is the main livelihood of coastal people but with the above-mentioned threats, it is also under enormous pressure by fish catches resulted in unchecked overutilization of the fish resources. This pressure is almost unbearable when it joins with deleterious fishing methods, uncontrolled fleet size, increase trash and by-catch of juvenile and illegal mesh size. Along with these anthropogenic interventions study area is under the red zone of tropical cyclones and active seismicity causing floods, sea intrusion, damage mangroves forests and devastation of fish stock. In order to sustain the natural resources of the Indus Creeks, this study was initiated with the support of FAO, WWF and NIO, the main purpose was to develop a Geo-Spatial dataset for fish stock assessment. The study has been spread over a year (2013-14) on monthly basis which mainly includes detailed fish stock survey, water analysis and few other environmental analyses. Environmental analysis also includes the habitat classification of study area which has done through remote sensing techniques for 22 years’ time series (1992-2014). Furthermore, out of 252 species collected, fifteen species from estuarine and marine groups were short-listed to measure the weight, health and growth of fish species at each creek under GIS data through SPSS system. Furthermore, habitat suitability analysis has been conducted by assessing the surface topographic and aspect derivation through different GIS techniques. The output variables then overlaid in GIS system to measure the creeks productivity. Which provided the results in terms of subsequent classes: extremely productive, highly productive, productive, moderately productive and less productive. This study has revealed the Geospatial tools utilization along with the evaluation of the fisheries resources and creeks habitat risk zone mapping. It has also been identified that the geo-spatial technologies are highly beneficial to identify the areas of high environmental risk in Sindh Creeks. This has been clearly discovered from this study that creeks with high rugosity are more productive than the creeks with low levels of rugosity. The study area has the immense potential to boost the economy of Pakistan in terms of fish export, if geo-spatial techniques are implemented instead of conventional techniques.

Keywords: fish stock, geo-spatial, productivity analysis, risk

Procedia PDF Downloads 245

Authors: Asmir Gogic, Aljo Mujcic, Sandra Ibric, Nermin Suljanovic

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Ubiquity of natural disasters during last few decades have risen serious questions towards the prediction of such events and human safety. Every disaster regardless its proportion has a precursor which is manifested as a disruption of some environmental parameter such as temperature, humidity, pressure, vibrations and etc. In order to anticipate and monitor those changes, in this paper we propose an overall system for disaster prediction and monitoring, based on wireless sensor network (WSN). Furthermore, we introduce a modified and simplified WSN routing protocol built on the top of the trickle routing algorithm. Routing algorithm was deployed using the bluetooth low energy protocol in order to achieve low power consumption. Performance of the WSN network was analyzed using a real life system implementation. Estimates of the WSN parameters such as battery life time, network size and packet delay are determined. Based on the performance of the WSN network, proposed system can be utilized for disaster monitoring and prediction due to its low power profile and mesh routing feature.

Keywords: bluetooth low energy, disaster prediction, mesh routing protocols, wireless sensor networks

Procedia PDF Downloads 385

Authors: Wen-Lih Chen, Chao-Kuang Chen, Mao-Ju Fang, Hsiang-Cheng Hsu

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In this study, we conducted CFD simulation to study the gas cycle of a medium-temperature-differential (MTD) γ-type Stirling engine. Mesh compression and expansion as well as overset mesh techniques are employed to simulate the moving parts of the engine. Shear-Stress Transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model has been adopted because the model is not prone to generate excessive turbulence upon impingement regions. Hence, wall heat transfer rates at the hot and cold ends will not be overestimated. The effects of several different displacer-cylinder-wall temperature setups, including smooth and finned walls, on engine performance are investigated. The results include temperature contours, pressure versus volume diagrams, and variations of heat transfer rates, indicated power, and efficiency. It is found that displacer-wall heat transfer is one of the most important factors on engine performance, and some wall-temperature setups produce better results than others.

Keywords: CFD, finned wall, MTD Stirling engine, heat transfer

Procedia PDF Downloads 376

Authors: Hany Mohamed Abdu, Mohamed Hassan Gadallah, El-Giushi Mokhtar, Yehia Mahmoud Ismail

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Laser beam cutting is one nontraditional machining process. This paper optimizes the parameters of Laser beam cutting machining parameters of Stainless steel (316L) by considering the effect of input parameters viz. power, oxygen pressure, frequency and cutting speed. Statistical design of experiments are carried in three different levels and process responses such as 'Average kerf taper (Ta)' and 'Surface Roughness (Ra)' are measured accordingly. A quadratic mathematical model (RSM) for each of the responses is developed as a function of the process parameters. Responses predicted by the models (as per Taguchi’s L27 OA) are employed to search for an optimal parametric combination to achieve desired yield of the process. RSM models are developed for mean responses, S/N ratio, and standard deviation of responses. Optimization models are formulated as single objective problem subject to process constraints. Models are formulated based on Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) using MATLAB environment. Optimum solutions are compared with Taguchi Methodology results.

Keywords: optimization, laser cutting, robust design, kerf width, Taguchi method, RSM and DOE

Procedia PDF Downloads 620

Authors: Kumaresh Selvakumar, Man Young Kim

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A wet scrubber is an air pollution control device that removes particulate matter and acid gases from waste gas streams found in marine engine exhaust. If the flue gases in the exhaust is employed for CFD simulation, it makes the problem complicate due to the involvement of emissions. Owing to the fact, the scrubber system in this paper is handled with appropriate approach by designing with the flow properties of hot air and water droplet injections to evaluate the flow behavior inside the system. Since the wet scrubber has the capability of operating over wide range of mixture compositions, the current scrubber model with the designing approach doesn’t deviate from the actual behavior of the system. The scrubber design is constructed with engine exhaust pipe with the purpose of measuring the flow properties inside the scrubber by the influence of exhaust pipe characteristics. The flow properties are computed by the thermodynamic variables such as temperature and pressure with the flow velocity. In this work, numerical analyses have been conducted for the flow of fluid in the scrubber system through CFD technique.

Keywords: wet scrubber, water droplet injections, thermodynamic variables, CFD technique

Procedia PDF Downloads 345

Authors: Xiaoci Li, Yonghua Huang, Hui Lin

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Optimization of the concentration of components in mixed refrigerants leads to potential improvement of either thermodynamic cycle performance or safety performance of heat pumps and refrigerators. R32+R1234yf and R125+R290 are two promising binary mixed refrigerants for the application of heat pumps working in the cold areas. The p-ρ-T data of these mixtures are one of the fundamental and necessary properties for design and evaluation of the performance of the heat pumps. Although the property data of mixtures can be predicted by the mixing models based on the pure substances incorporated in programs such as the NIST database Refprop, direct property measurement will still be helpful to reveal the true state behaviors and verify the models. Densities of the mixtures of R32+R1234yf an d R125+R290 are measured by an Anton Paar U shape oscillating tube digital densimeter DMA-4500 in the range of temperatures from 0°C to 100 °C and pressures up to 10 MPa. The accuracy of the measurement reaches 0.00005 g/cm³. The experimental data are compared with the predictions by Refprop in the corresponding range of pressure and temperature.

Keywords: mixed refrigerant, density measurement, densimeter, thermodynamic property

Procedia PDF Downloads 295

Authors: Ranj Tofik

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This article aims to demonstrate a link and/or correlation between the rise of China and the US-Iranian conflict, from a US point of view. To demonstrate this link, the article relies on the content analysis method by analyzing American reports and official data. This article concludes that this correlation indicates that the more China rises and the greater the Chinese threat to America, the more changes will occur in the US-Iranian conflict and the US actions regarding this conflict will increase – in the form of imposing sanctions and using means of pressure on Iran, or trying to reach an agreement and settlement with Iran. This article, via noting and observing that correlation, also claims that before 2012, Iran was a regional threat to US interests in the Middle East. However, after 2012 when the rise of China became one of the major threats to America, Iran, because of its rapprochement with China, became also part of the Chinese threat, which is a threat to America's global standing. In addition, observing this correlation indicates the possibility that the rise of China and its threat to the USA has become one of the main drivers in the US-Iranian conflict. Consequently, it can be said that Iran has become a vital issue in the US-China rivalry, as it has become an appropriate gateway for China to enter the Middle East and undermine US hegemony there.

Keywords: China-Iran relations, China's rise, JCPOA, US-Chinese competition, US-Iranian conflict

Procedia PDF Downloads 101

Authors: Katsumi Hirano, Yusuke Kakuta, Koji Yoshida, Shozo Itagaki, Masahiko Kajioka, Toshihiko Okada

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A conversion technology of cellulosic biomass and waste plastics to liquid fuel at low pressure and low temperature has been investigated. This study aims at the production of the liquefied fuel (CPLF) of substituting diesel oil by mixing cellulosic biomass and waste plastics in the presence of solvent. Co-liquefaction of cellulosic biomass (Japan cedar) and polypropylene (PP) using wood tar or mineral oil as solvent at 673K with an autoclave was carried out. It was confirmed that the co-liquefaction gave CPLF in a high yield among the cases of wood or of polypropylene Which was ascribed the acceleration of decomposition of plastics by radicals derived from the decomposition of wood. The co-liquefaction was also conducted by a small twin screw extruder. It was found that CPLF was obtained in the co-liquefaction, And the acceleration of decomposition of plastics in the presence of cellulosic biomass. The engine test of CPLF showed that the engine performances, Compression ignition and combustion　characteristics were almost similar to those of diesel fuel at any mixing ratio of CPLF and any load, Therefore, CPLF could be practically used as alternative fuel for diesel engines.

Keywords: Cellulosic Biomass, Co-liquefaction, Solvent, Waste Plastics

Procedia PDF Downloads 372

Authors: Bhim Singh

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Due to increased pressure from global competitors, manufacturing organizations are switching over to lean philosophies from traditional mass production. Lean manufacturing is a manufacturing philosophy which focuses on elimination of various types of wastes and creates maximum value for the end customers. Lean thinking aims to produce high quality products and services at the lowest possible cost with maximum customer responsiveness. Indian Industry is facing lot of problems in this transformation from traditional mass production to lean production. Through this paper an attempt has been made to identify various lean implementation hurdles in Indian industries with the help of a structured survey. Identified hurdles are grouped with the help of factor analysis and rated by calculating descriptive statistics. To show the effect of lean implementation hurdles a hypothesis “Organizations having higher level of lean implementation hurdles will have poor (negative) performance” has been postulated and tested using correlation matrix between performance parameters of the organizations and identified hurdles. The findings of the paper will be helpful to prepare road map to identify and eradicate the lean implementation hurdles.

Keywords: factor analysis, global competition, lean implementation, lean hurdles

Procedia PDF Downloads 248

Authors: Mohamed Amine Ferhat, Mohamed Nadjib Bouhatem, Farid Chemat

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One of the principal aims of sustainable and green processing development remains the dissemination and teaching of green chemistry to both developed and developing nations. This paper describes one attempt to show that “north-south” collaborations yield innovative sustainable and green technologies which give major benefits for both nations. In this paper we present early results from a solvent free microwave extraction (SFME) of essential oils using fresh orange peel, a byproduct in the production of orange juice. SFME is performed at atmospheric pressure without added any solvent or water. SFME increases essential oil yield and eliminate wastewater treatment. The procedure is appropriate for the teaching laboratory, and allows the students to learn extraction, chromatographic and spectroscopic analysis skills, and are expose to dramatic visual example of rapid, sustainable and green extraction of essential oil, and are introduced to commercially successful sustainable and green chemical processing with microwave energy.

Keywords: essential oil, extraction, green processing, microwave

Procedia PDF Downloads 544

Authors: T. Garba, Y. Y. Babanyara, M. Isah, A. K. Muktari, R. Y. Abdullahi

Abstract:

The increased in demand of fuel wood for heating, cooking and sometimes bakery has continued to exert appreciable impact on natural vegetation. This study focus on the use of multi-temporal data from land sat TM of 1986, land sat EMT of 1999 and lands sat ETM of 2006 to investigate the changes of Natural Vegetation resulting from charcoal production activities. The three images were classified based on bare soil, built up areas, cultivated land, and natural vegetation, Rock out crop and water bodies. From the classified images Land sat TM of 1986 it shows natural vegetation of the study area to be 308,941.48 hectares equivalent to 50% of the area it then reduces to 278,061.21 which is 42.92% in 1999 it again depreciated to 199,647.81 in 2006 equivalent to 30.83% of the area. Consequently cultivated continue increasing from 259,346.80 hectares (42%) in 1986 to 312,966.27 hectares (48.3%) in 1999 and then to 341.719.92 hectares (52.78%). These show that within the span of 20 years (1986 to 2006) the natural vegetation is depreciated by 119,293.81 hectares. This implies that if the menace is not control the natural might likely be lost in another twenty years. This is because forest cleared for charcoal production is normally converted to farmland. The study therefore concluded that there is the need for alternatives source of domestic energy such as the use of biomass which can easily be accessible and affordable to people. In addition, the study recommended that there should be strong policies enforcement for the protection forest reserved.

Keywords: charcoal, classification, data, images, land use, natural vegetation

Procedia PDF Downloads 364

Authors: Ali J. Ghandour, Houssam A. Krayem, Abedelkarim A. Jezzini

Abstract:

High-resolution satellite images and remote sensing can provide global information in a fast way compared to traditional methods of data collection. Under such high resolution, a road is not a thin line anymore. Objects such as cars and trees are easily identifiable. Automatic vehicles enumeration can be considered one of the most important applications in traffic management. In this paper, autonomous vehicle detection and classification approach in highway environment is proposed. This approach consists mainly of three stages: (i) first, a set of preprocessing operations are applied including soil, vegetation, water suppression. (ii) Then, road networks detection and delineation is implemented using built-up area index, followed by several morphological operations. This step plays an important role in increasing the overall detection accuracy since vehicles candidates are objects contained within the road networks only. (iii) Multi-level Otsu segmentation is implemented in the last stage, resulting in vehicle detection and classification, where detected vehicles are classified into cars and trucks. Accuracy assessment analysis is conducted over different study areas to show the great efficiency of the proposed method, especially in highway environment.

Keywords: remote sensing, object identification, vehicle and road extraction, vehicle and road features-based classification

Procedia PDF Downloads 231

Authors: Issam Aouari, Abdelmalek Abdelhamid

Abstract:

For seismologists, the characterization of seismic demand should include the amplitude and duration of strong shaking in the system. The duration of ground shaking is one of the key parameters in earthquake resistant design of structures. This paper proposes a nonlinear statistical model to estimate earthquake ground motion duration in soft soils using multiple seismicity indicators. Three definitions of ground motion duration proposed by literature have been applied. With a comparative study, we select the most significant definition to use for predict the duration. A stochastic model is presented for the McCann and Shah Method using nonlinear regression analysis based on a data set for moment magnitude, source to site distance and site conditions. The data set applied is taken from PEER strong motion databank and contains shallow earthquakes from different regions in the world; America, Turkey, London, China, Italy, Chili, Mexico...etc. Main emphasis is placed on soft site condition. The predictive relationship has been developed based on 600 records and three input indicators. Results have been compared with others published models. It has been found that the proposed model can predict earthquake ground motion duration in soft soils for different regions and sites conditions.

Keywords: duration, earthquake, prediction, regression, soft soil

Procedia PDF Downloads 153