Search results for: filter regeneration

Authors: Bharti Garg, Ashleigh Cousins, Pauline Pearson, Vincent Verheyen, Paul Feron

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The presence of SO₂ in power plant flue gases makes flue gas desulfurization (FGD) an essential requirement prior to post combustion CO₂ (PCC) removal facilities. Although most of the power plants worldwide deploy FGD in order to comply with environmental regulations, generally the achieved SO₂ levels are not sufficiently low for the flue gases to enter the PCC unit. The SO₂ level in the flue gases needs to be less than 10 ppm to effectively operate the PCC installation. The existing FGD units alone cannot bring down the SO₂ levels to or below 10 ppm as required for CO₂ capture. It might require an additional scrubber along with the existing FGD unit to bring the SO₂ to the desired levels. The absence of FGD units in Australian power plants brings an additional challenge. SO₂ concentrations in Australian power station flue gas emissions are in the range of 100-600 ppm. This imposes a serious barrier on the implementation of standard PCC technologies in Australia. CSIRO’s developed CS-Cap process is a unique solution to capture SO₂ and CO₂ in a single column with single absorbent which can potentially bring cost-effectiveness to the commercial deployment of carbon capture in Australia, by removing the need for FGD. Estimated savings of removing SO₂ through a similar process as CS-Cap is around 200 MMUSD for a 500 MW Australian power plant. Pilot plant trials conducted to generate the proof of concept resulted in 100% removal of SO₂ from flue gas without utilising standard limestone-based FGD. In this work, removal of absorbed sulfur from aqueous amine absorbents generated in the pilot plant trials has been investigated by reactive crystallisation and thermal reclamation. More than 95% of the aqueous amines can be reclaimed back from the sulfur loaded absorbent via reactive crystallisation. However, the recovery of amines through thermal reclamation is limited and depends on the sulfur loading on the spent absorbent. The initial experimental work revealed that reactive crystallisation is a better fit for CS-Cap’s sulfur-rich absorbent especially when it is also capable of generating K₂SO₄ crystals of highly saleable quality ~ 99%. Initial cost estimation carried on both the technologies resulted in almost similar capital expenditure; however, the operating cost is considerably higher in thermal reclaimer than that in crystalliser. The experimental data generated in the laboratory from both the regeneration techniques have been used to generate the simulation model in Aspen Plus. The simulation model illustrates the economic benefits which could be gained by removing flue gas desulfurization prior to standard PCC unit and replacing it with a CS-Cap absorber column co-capturing CO₂ and SO₂, and it's absorbent regeneration system which would be either reactive crystallisation or thermal reclamation.

Keywords: combined capture, cost analysis, crystallisation, CS-Cap, flue gas desulfurisation, regeneration, sulfur, thermal reclamation

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Authors: N. Khater, I. Djbablia, A. Telaoumaten, S. A. Menina, H. Benbouza

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Thureferous Juniper is an endemic cupressacée constitutes a forest cover in the mountains of Aures (Algeria ). It is an heritage and important ecological richness, but continues to decline, highly endangered species in danger of extinction, these populations show significant originality due to climatic conditions of the environment, because of its strength and extraordinary vitality, made a powerful but fragile and unique ecosystem in which natural regeneration by seed is almost absent in Algeria. Because of the quality of seeds that are either dormant or affected at the tree and the ground level by a large number of pests and parasites, which will lead to the total disappearance of this species and consequently leading to the biodiversity. View the ecological and social- economic interest presented by this case, it deserves to be preserved and produced in large quantities in this respect. The present work aims to try to regenerate the Juniperus thurefera via vegetative propagation. We studied the potential of cuttings to form adventitious roots and buds. Cuttings were taken from young subjects from 5 to 20 years treated with indole butyric acid (AIB) and planted out inside perlite under atomizer whose temperature and light are controlled. The results show that the rate of rooting is important and encourages the regeneration of this species through vegetative propagation.

Keywords: juniperus thurefera, indole butyric acid, cutting, buds, rooting

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Authors: Irit Rutman Halili, Tehila Zvulun, Natali Elgabsi, Revaya Cohen, Shlomo Sarig

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Active sand dunes (ASD) may cause significant damage to field crops and livelihood, and therefore, it is necessary to find a treatment that would enhance ADS soil stability. Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) contain microorganisms on the soil surface. Metabolic polysaccharides secreted by biocrust cyanobacteria glue the soil particles into aggregates, thereby stabilizing the soil surface. Filter cake powder (FCP) is a waste by-product in the final stages of the production of sugar from sugarcane, and its disposal causes significant environmental pollution. FCP contains high concentrations of polysaccharides and has recently been shown to be soil stability enhancing agent in ASD. It has been reported that adding FCP to the ASD soil surface by dispersal significantly increases the level of penetration resistance of soil biocrust (PRSB) nine weeks after a single treatment. However, it was not known whether a similar effect could be obtained by administering the FCP in liquid form by means of spraying. It has now been found that spraying a water solution of FCP onto the ASD soil surface significantly increased the level of penetration resistance of soil biocrust (PRSB) three weeks after a single treatment. These results suggest that FCP spraying can be used as a short-term soil stability-enhancing agent for ASD, while administration by dispersal might be more efficient over the long term. Finally, an additional benefit of using FCP as a soil stabilizer, either by dispersal or by spraying, is the reduction in environmental pollution that would otherwise result from the disposal of FCP solid waste.

Keywords: active sand dunes, filter cake powder, biological soil crusts, penetration resistance of soil biocrust

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Authors: N. Hatraf, l. Merabeti, M. Abbas

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The interest in air conditioning using renewable energies is increasing. The Thermal energy produced from the solar energy can be transformed to useful cooling and heating through the thermo chemical or thermo physical processes by using thermally activated energy conversion system. Solid desiccant conditioning systems can represent a reliable alternative solution compared with other thermal cooling technologies. Their basic characteristics refer to the capability to regulate both temperature and humidity of the conditioned space in one side and to its potential in electrical energy saving in the other side. The ambient air contains so much water that very high dehumidification rates are required. For a continuous dehumidification of the process air the water adsorbed on the desiccant material has to be removed, which is done by allowing hot air to flow through the desiccant material (regeneration). Basically, solid desiccant cooling system transfers moisture from the inlet air to the silica gel by using two processes: absorption process and the regeneration process; The silica gel in the desiccant wheel which is the most important device in the system absorbs the moisture from the incoming air to the desiccant material in this case the silica gel, then it changes the heat with an rotary heat exchanger, after that the air passes through an humidifier to have the humidity required before entering to the local. The main aim of this paper is to study how the dehumidification rate, the generation temperature and many other factors influence the efficiency of a solid desiccant system by using TRNSYS software.

Keywords: desiccation, dehumidification, TRNSYS, efficiency

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Authors: Salah Al-Din I. Badran, Samad Ahmadi, Ismail Shahin

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A blind source separation method is proposed; in this method, we use a non-uniform filter bank and a novel normalisation. This method provides a reduced computational complexity and increased convergence speed comparing to the full-band algorithm. Recently, adaptive sub-band scheme has been recommended to solve two problems: reduction of computational complexity and increase the convergence speed of the adaptive algorithm for correlated input signals. In this work, the reduction in computational complexity is achieved with the use of adaptive filters of orders less than the full-band adaptive filters, which operate at a sampling rate lower than the sampling rate of the input signal. The decomposed signals by analysis bank filter are less correlated in each subband than the input signal at full bandwidth, and can promote better rates of convergence.

Keywords: blind source separation, computational complexity, subband, convergence speed, mixture

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Authors: Abdalrahman D. Alsulaili, Sheikha Y. Aljeraiwi, Athba N. Almanaie, Raghad Y. Alhajeri, Mariam Z. Almijren

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The water accompanying oil in the oil production process is increasing and due to its increasing rates a problem with handling it occurred. Current solutions like discharging into the environment, dumping water in evaporation pits, usage in the industry and reinjection in oil reservoirs to enhance oil production are used worldwide. The water injection method has been introduced to the oil industry with a process that either immediately injects water to the reservoir or goes to the filtration process before injection all depending on the porosity of the soil. Reinjection of unfiltered effluent water with high Total Suspended Solid (TSS) and Oil in Water (O/W) into soils with low porosity cause a blockage of pores, whereas soils with high porosity do not need high water quality. Our study mainly talks about the filtration and adsorption of the water using organic media as the adsorbent. An adsorbent is a substance that has the ability to physically hold another substance in its surface. Studies were done on nutshell and date pits with different surface areas and flow rates by using a 10inch filter connected with three tanks to perform as one system for the filtration process. Our approach in the filtration process using different types of medias went as follow: starting first with crushed nutshell, second with ground nutshell, and third using carbonized date pits with medium flow rate then high flow rate to compare different results. The result came out nearly as expected from our study where both O/W and TSS were reduced from our oily water sample by using this organic material. The effect of specific area was noticed when using nutshell as the filter media, where the crushed nutshell gave us better results than ground nutshell. The effect of flow rate was noticed when using carbonized date pits as the filter media whereas the treated water became more acceptable when the flow rate was on the medium level.

Keywords: date pits, nutshell, oil water, TSS

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Authors: Vijay Kumar, Mack Moyo, Johannes Van Staden

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Lachenalia viridiflora is a critically endangered bulbous plant with high potential on the international floriculture market. In the present study, an efficient protocol for in vitro plantlet regeneration through somatic embryogenesis was developed. Embryogenic callus was established on Murashige and Skoog (MS) basal medium supplemented with various concentrations and combinations of picloram and thidiazuron (TDZ). A high number of SEs (28.5 ± 1.49) with at different developmental stages of somatic embryos (SEs: globular embryos, torpedo and cotyledon embryo with bipolar characteristics) was obtained on Murashige and Skoog (MS) (Murashige and Skoog 1962) medium with 2.5 μM picloram, and 1.0 μM TDZ. Histological and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) analysis confirmed the presence of somatic embryos. Mature somatic embryos germinated and developed into plantlets after 6 weeks on half/full strength MS medium. High plant regeneration frequency (91.11 %) was achieved on full-strength MS medium supplemented with 5 μM phloroglucinol (PG). Well-developed healthy plantlets were successfully acclimatized in the greenhouse with a survival rate of 80%. The result of this study is beneficial in the mass propagation of high-quality Lachenalia viridiflora clonal plants for the commercial horticultural market and also provides a platform for future genetic transformation studies on the plant.

Keywords: horticultural plant, Lachenalia viridiflora, phloroglucinol, somatic embryogenesis, thidiazuron

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Authors: Nassima Noufail, Sara Bouhali

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In this work, we develop a semi-supervised solution for the purpose of action detection in videos and propose an efficient algorithm for video segmentation. The approach is divided into video segmentation, feature extraction, and classification. In the first part, a video is segmented into clips, and we used the K-means algorithm for this segmentation; our goal is to find groups based on similarity in the video. The application of k-means clustering into all the frames is time-consuming; therefore, we started by the identification of transition frames where the scene in the video changes significantly, and then we applied K-means clustering into these transition frames. We used two image filters, the gaussian filter and the Laplacian of Gaussian. Each filter extracts a set of features from the frames. The Gaussian filter blurs the image and omits the higher frequencies, and the Laplacian of gaussian detects regions of rapid intensity changes; we then used this vector of filter responses as an input to our k-means algorithm. The output is a set of cluster centers. Each video frame pixel is then mapped to the nearest cluster center and painted with a corresponding color to form a visual map. The resulting visual map had similar pixels grouped. We then computed a cluster score indicating how clusters are near each other and plotted a signal representing frame number vs. clustering score. Our hypothesis was that the evolution of the signal would not change if semantically related events were happening in the scene. We marked the breakpoints at which the root mean square level of the signal changes significantly, and each breakpoint is an indication of the beginning of a new video segment. In the second part, for each segment from part 1, we randomly selected a 16-frame clip, then we extracted spatiotemporal features using convolutional 3D network C3D for every 16 frames using a pre-trained model. The C3D final output is a 512-feature vector dimension; hence we used principal component analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction. The final part is the classification. The C3D feature vectors are used as input to a multi-class linear support vector machine (SVM) for the training model, and we used a multi-classifier to detect the action. We evaluated our experiment on the UCF101 dataset, which consists of 101 human action categories, and we achieved an accuracy that outperforms the state of art by 1.2%.

Keywords: video segmentation, action detection, classification, Kmeans, C3D

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Authors: Nur Nadhirah Rusyda Rosnan, Nursuhaili Najwa Masrol, Nurul Fatiha MD Nor, Mohammad Zafrullah Mohammad Salim, Sim Choon Cheak

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Accurate inventories of oil palm planted areas are crucial for plantation management as this would impact the overall economy and production of oil. One of the technological advancements in the oil palm industry is semi-automated palm counting, which is replacing conventional manual palm counting via digitizing aerial imagery. Most of the semi-automated palm counting method that has been developed was limited to mature palms due to their ideal canopy size represented by satellite image. Therefore, immature palms were often left out since the size of the canopy is barely visible from satellite images. In this paper, an approach using a morphological filter and high-resolution satellite image is proposed to detect immature palm trees. This approach makes it possible to count the number of immature oil palm trees. The method begins with an erosion filter with an appropriate window size of 3m onto the high-resolution satellite image. The eroded image was further segmented using watershed segmentation to delineate immature palm tree regions. Then, local minimum detection was used because it is hypothesized that immature oil palm trees are located at the local minimum within an oil palm field setting in a grayscale image. The detection points generated from the local minimum are displaced to the center of the immature oil palm region and thinned. Only one detection point is left that represents a tree. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated on three subsets with slopes ranging from 0 to 20° and different planting designs, i.e., straight and terrace. The proposed method was able to achieve up to more than 90% accuracy when compared with the ground truth, with an overall F-measure score of up to 0.91.

Keywords: immature palm count, oil palm, precision agriculture, remote sensing

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Authors: Qian Zhao

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With global increasing demand for phosphorus and intensively depleting reserves, it is urgent need to explore innovative approaches towards capturing phosphate from sewage, which is also an effective way to reduce phosphate contamination and avoid eutrophication of water bodies. In the present article, the superparamagnetic nano-sorbents containing Fe₃O₄ core and hafnium-modified MgAl/MgFe layered double hydroxides shell (abbreviated as MgAlHf-NP and MgFeHf-NP) was developed using a simple and low-cost synthesis protocol. The obtained Hf-coated nano-materials showed well-defined crystal structure and sufficient saturation magnetization and exhibited higher adsorption capacity for phosphate. Meanwhile, high selectivity was also confirmed since coexisting foreign anions and biomacromolecules showed little competitive effect on phosphate adsorption. The enhancement via doping with Hf should be explained by the stronger ligand complexation built by the pair of hard acid Hf ion and hard base phosphate that matched up the bonding preferences. Sufficient OH⁻ concentration and clear pH shift during the desorption/regeneration allowed for regeneration rate of higher than 90% after 5 cycles of adsorption desorption. This article attempts to provide a competitive candidate for phosphate-capture, which is highly effective, easily separable and repeatedly usable.

Keywords: phosphate recovery, nanoparticles, superparamagnetic, adsorption, reusability

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Authors: Okafor C. Uche, Agbo P. Ejiofor, Okezie C. Eziuche

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This study provides a regeneration protocol for Treculia africana Decne (an endangered plant) through embryo culture. Mature zygotic embryos of T. africana were excised from the seeds aseptically and cultured on varied strengths (full, half and quarter) of Murashige and Skoog (MS) basal medium supplemented. All treatments experienced 100±0.00 percent sprouting except for half and quarter strengths. Plantlets in MS full strength had the highest fresh weight, leaf area, and longest shoot length when compared to other treatments. All explants in full, half, quarter strengths and control had the same number of leaves and sprout rate. Between the treatments, there was a significant difference (P>0.05) in their effect on the length of shoot and root, number of adventitious root, leaf area, and fresh weight. Full strength had the highest mean value in all the above-mentioned parameters and differed significantly (P>0.05) from others except in shoot length, number of adventitious roots, and root length where it did not differ (P<0.05) from half strength. The result of this study indicates that full strength MS basal medium offers a better option for the optimum growth for Treculia africana regeneration in vitro.

Keywords: medium strengths, Murashige and Skoog, Treculia africana, zygotic embryos

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Authors: Eya Hentati, Mona Lamine, Jalel Bouzid

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In this study, a laboratory-scale was designed and fabricated to treat single house greywater in the north of Tunisia with a combination of physical and natural treatments systems. The combined system includes a bio-filter composed of LECA® (lightweight expanded clay aggregate) followed by a vertical up-flow constructed wetland planted with Iris pseudacorus and Typha Latifolia. Applied two hydraulic retention times (HRTs) with two different plants types showed that a bio-filter planted with Typha Latifolia has an optimum removal efficiency for degradation of organic matter and transformation of nitrogen and phosphate at HRT of 30 h. The optimum removal efficiency of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and suspended solids (SS) ranged between 48-65%, between while the nutrients removal was in the range of 70% to 90%. Fecal coliforms dropped by three to four orders of magnitude from their initial concentration, but this steel does not meet current regulations for unlimited irrigation. Hence further improvement procedures are suggested.

Keywords: constructed wetland, greywater treatment, nutriments, organics

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Authors: Tayyaba Bari, Muhammad Hamza Anjum, Samra Kanwal, Fakhera Ikram

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Osteoarthritis, a degenerative condition, affects more than 213 million individuals globally. Since articular cartilage has no or limited vessels, therefore, after deteriorating, it is unable to rejuvenate. Traditional approaches for cartilage repair, like autologous chondrocyte implantation, microfracture and cartilage transplantation are often associated with postoperative complications and lead to further degradation. Decellularized human umbilical cord has gained interest as a viable treatment for cartilage repair. Decellularization removes all cellular contents as well as debris, leaving a biologically active 3D network known as extracellular matrix (ECM). This matrix is biodegradable, non-immunogenic and provides a microenvironment for homeostasis, growth and repair. UC derived bioink function as 3D scaffolding material, not only mediates cell-matrix interactions but also adherence, proliferation and propagation of cells for 3D organoids. This study comprises different physical, chemical and biological approaches to optimize the decellularization of human umbilical cord (UC) tissues followed by the solubilization of these tissues to bioink formation. The decellularization process consisted of two cycles of freeze thaw where the umbilical cord at -20˚C was thawed at room temperature followed by dissection in small sections from 0.5 to 1cm. Similarly decellularization with ionic and non-ionic detergents Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and Triton-X 100 revealed that both concentrations of SDS i.e 0.1% and 1% were effective in complete removal of cells from the small UC tissues. The results of decellularization was further confirmed by running them on 1% agarose gel. Histological analysis revealed the efficacy of decellularization, which involves paraffin embedded samples of 4μm processed for Hematoxylin-eosin-safran and 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI). ECM preservation was confirmed by Alcian Blue, and Masson’s trichrome staining on consecutive sections and images were obtained. Sulfated GAG’s content were determined by 1,9-dimethyl-methylene blue (DMMB) assay, similarly collagen quantification was done by hydroxy proline assay. This 3D bioengineered scaffold will provide a typical atmosphere as in the extracellular matrix of the tissue, which would be seeded with the mesenchymal cells to generate the desired 3D ink for in vitro and in vivo cartilage regeneration applications.

Keywords: umbilical cord, 3d printing, bioink, tissue engineering, cartilage regeneration

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Authors: Abdelaziz Fellah, Allaoua Maamir

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We propose a domain-independent merging-cluster filter approach complemented with a set of algorithms for identifying approximate duplicate entities efficiently and accurately within a single and across multiple data sources. The near-optimal merging-cluster filter (MCF) approach is based on the Monge-Elkan well-tuned algorithm and extended with an affine variant of the Smith-Waterman similarity measure. Then we present constant, variable, and function threshold algorithms that work conceptually in a divide-merge filtering fashion for detecting near duplicates as hierarchical clusters along with their corresponding representatives. The algorithms take recursive refinement approaches in the spirit of filtering, merging, and updating, cluster representatives to detect approximate duplicates at each level of the cluster tree. Experiments show a high effectiveness and accuracy of the MCF approach in detecting approximate duplicates by outperforming the seminal Monge-Elkan’s algorithm on several real-world benchmarks and generated datasets.

Keywords: data mining, data cleaning, approximate duplicates, near-duplicates detection, data mining applications and discovery

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Authors: L. Angiuli, L. Trizio, R. Giua, A. Digilio, M. Tutino, P. Dambruoso, F. Mazzone, C. M. Placentino

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In the winter of 2014 a series of measurements were performed to evaluate the behavior of real-time PAHs and black carbon analyzers in a coke oven plant located in Taranto, a city of Southern Italy. Data were collected both insides than outside the plant, at air quality monitoring sites. Contemporary measures of PM2.5 and PM1 were performed. Particle-bound PAHs were measured by two methods: (1) aerosol photoionization using an Ecochem PAS 2000 analyzer, (2) PM2.5 and PM1 quartz filter collection and analysis by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Black carbon was determined both in real-time by Magee Aethalometer AE22 analyzer than by semi-continuous Sunset Lab EC/OC instrument. Detected PM2.5 and PM1 levels were higher inside than outside the plant while PAHs real-time values were higher outside than inside. As regards PAHs, inside the plant Ecochem PAS 2000 revealed concentrations not significantly different from those determined on the filter during low polluted days, but at increasing concentrations the automated instrument underestimated PAHs levels. At the external site, Ecochem PAS 2000 real-time concentrations were steadily higher than those on the filter. In the same way, real-time black carbon values were constantly lower than EC concentrations obtained by Sunset EC/OC in the inner site, while outside the plant real-time values were comparable to Sunset EC values. Results showed that in a coke plant real-time analyzers of PAHs and black carbon in the factory configuration provide qualitative information, with no accuracy and leading to the underestimation of the concentration. A site specific calibration is needed for these instruments before their installation in high polluted sites.

Keywords: black carbon, coke oven plant, PAH, PAS, aethalometer

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Authors: Galo D. Soria, Jenny S. Casame, Eddy F. Pazmino

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In Ecuador, mining operations have significantly impacted water sources. Artisanal mining extensively relies in mercury amalgamation. Mercury is a neurotoxic substance even at low concentrations. The objective of this investigation is to exploit Hg-removal capacity of sulfur-limonene polysulfide (SLP), which is a low-cost polymer, in order to prepare granular media (sand) coated with SLP to be used in laboratory scale column-filtration systems. Preliminary results achieved 85% removal of Hg⁺⁺ from synthetic effluents using 20-cm length and 5-cm diameter columns at 119m/day average pore water velocity. During elution of the column, the SLP-coated sand indicated that Hg⁺⁺ is permanently fixed to the collector surface, in contrast, uncoated sand showed reversible retention in Hg⁺⁺ in the solid phase. Injection of 50 pore volumes decreased Hg⁺⁺ removal to 46%. Ongoing work has been focused in optimizing the synthesis of SLP and the polymer content in the porous media coating process to improve Hg⁺⁺ removal and extend the lifetime of the column-filter.

Keywords: column-filter, mercury, mining, polysulfide, water treatment

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Authors: Adewole A. Ayoade, Marshall R. Sweatt, John P. H. Steele, Qi Han, Khaled Al-Wahedi, Hamad Karki, William A. Yearsley

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Understanding the behavioral characteristics of sensors is a crucial step in fusing data from several sensors of different types. This paper introduces a practical, real-time approach to integrate heterogeneous sensor data to achieve higher accuracy than would be possible from any one individual sensor in localizing a mobile robot. We use this approach in both indoor and outdoor environments and it is especially appropriate for those environments like oil and gas refineries due to their sparse and featureless nature. We have studied the individual contribution of each sensor data to the overall combined accuracy achieved from the fusion process. A Sequential Update Extended Kalman Filter(EKF) using validation gates was used to integrate GPS data, Compass data, WiFi data, Inertial Measurement Unit(IMU) data, Vehicle Velocity, and pose estimates from Fiducial marker system. Results show that the approach can enable a mobile robot to navigate autonomously in any environment using a priori information.

Keywords: inspection mobile robot, navigation, sensor fusion, sequential update extended Kalman filter

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Authors: Pogula Rakesh, T. Kishore Kumar

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Speech enhancement is a long standing problem with numerous applications like teleconferencing, VoIP, hearing aids, and speech recognition. The motivation behind this research work is to obtain a clean speech signal of higher quality by applying the optimal noise cancellation technique. Real-time adaptive filtering algorithms seem to be the best candidate among all categories of the speech enhancement methods. In this paper, we propose a speech enhancement method based on Recursive Least Squares (RLS) adaptive filter of speech signals. Experiments were performed on noisy data which was prepared by adding AWGN, Babble and Pink noise to clean speech samples at -5dB, 0dB, 5dB, and 10dB SNR levels. We then compare the noise cancellation performance of proposed RLS algorithm with existing NLMS algorithm in terms of Mean Squared Error (MSE), Signal to Noise ratio (SNR), and SNR loss. Based on the performance evaluation, the proposed RLS algorithm was found to be a better optimal noise cancellation technique for speech signals.

Keywords: adaptive filter, adaptive noise canceller, mean squared error, noise reduction, NLMS, RLS, SNR, SNR loss

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Authors: K. Uyanga, W. Daoud

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Hydrogels have attracted much academic and industrial attention due to their unique properties and potential biomedical and non-biomedical applications. Limitations on extending their applications have resulted from the synthesis of hydrogels using toxic materials and complex irreproducible processing techniques. In order to promote environmental sustainability, hydrogel efficiency, and wider application, this study focused on the synthesis of composite hydrogels matrices from an edible non-toxic crosslinker-citric acid (CA) using a simple low energy processing method based on carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and chitosan (CSN) natural polymers. Composite hydrogels were developed by chemical crosslinking. The results demonstrated that CMC:2CSN:CA exhibited good performance properties and super-absorbency 21× its original weight. This makes it promising for biomedical applications such as chronic wound healing and regeneration, next generation skin substitute, in situ bone regeneration and cell delivery. On the other hand, CMC:CSN:CA exhibited durable well-structured internal network with minimum swelling degrees, water absorbency, excellent gel fraction, and infra-red reflectance. These properties make it a suitable composite hydrogel matrix for warming effect and controlled and efficient release of loaded materials. CMC:2CSN:CA and CMC:CSN:CA composite hydrogels developed also exhibited excellent chemical, morphological, and thermal properties.

Keywords: citric acid, fumaric acid, tartaric acid, zinc nitrate hexahydrate

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Authors: Jayotpaul Chaudhuri, Lutz Goedeke, Torsten Hallenga, Peter Ehrhard

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Purification of gases from aerosols or airborne particles via filters is widely applied in the industry and in our daily lives. This separation especially in the micron and submicron size range is a necessary step to protect the environment and human health. Fibrous filters are often employed due to their low cost and high efficiency. For designing any filter the two most important performance parameters are capture efficiency and pressure drop. Since the capture efficiency is directly proportional to the pressure drop which leads to higher operating costs, a detailed investigation of the separation mechanism is required to optimize the filter designing, i.e., to have a high capture efficiency with a lower pressure drop. Therefore a two-dimensional flow simulation around a single fiber using Ansys CFX and Matlab is used to get insight into the separation process. Instead of simulating a solid fiber, the present Ansys CFX model uses a fictitious domain approach for the fiber by implementing a momentum loss model. This approach has been chosen to avoid creating a new mesh for different fiber sizes, thereby saving time and effort for re-meshing. In a first step, only the flow of the continuous fluid around the fiber is simulated in Ansys CFX and the flow field data is extracted and imported into Matlab and the particle trajectory is calculated in a Matlab routine. This calculation is a Lagrangian, one way coupled approach for particles with all relevant forces acting on it. The key parameters for the simulation in both Ansys CFX and Matlab are the porosity ε, the diameter ratio of particle and fiber D, the fluid Reynolds number Re, the Reynolds particle number Rep, the Stokes number St, the Froude number Fr and the density ratio of fluid and particle ρf/ρp. The simulation results were then compared to the single fiber theory from the literature.

Keywords: BBO-equation, capture efficiency, CFX, Matlab, fibrous filter, particle trajectory

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Authors: Kimberly J. Cribbs, Ryan M. Lefers, TorOve Leiknes, Noreddine Ghaffour

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In Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, domestic agriculture is hindered by a lack of freshwater, poor soil quality, and ambient temperatures unsuitable for cultivation resulting in a heavy reliance on imported food. Attempts to minimize the risk of food insecurity by growing crops domestically creates a significant demand on limited freshwater resources in this region. Cultivating food in a greenhouse allows some of these challenges, such as poor soil quality and temperatures unsuitable for cultivation, to be overcome. One of the most common methods for greenhouse cooling is evaporative cooling. This method cools the air by the evaporation of water and requires a large amount of water relative to that needed for plant growth and air with a low relative humidity. Considering that much of the population in GCC countries live within 100 km of a coast and that sea water can be utilized for evaporative cooling, coastal agriculture could reduce the risk of food insecurity and water demand. Unfortunately, coastal regions tend to experience both high temperatures and high relative humidity causing evaporative cooling by itself to be inadequate. Therefore, dehumidification is needed prior to utilizing evaporative cooling. Utilizing a liquid desiccant for air dehumidification is promising, but the desiccant regeneration to retain its dehumidification potential remains a significant obstacle for the adoption of this technology. This project studied the regeneration of a magnesium chloride (MgCl₂) desiccant solution from 20wt% to 30wt% by direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) and explored the possibility of using the recovered water for irrigation. Two 0.2 µm hydrophobic PTFE membranes were tested at feed temperatures of 80, 70, and 60°C and with a permeate temperature of 20°C. It was observed that the permeate flux increases as the difference between the feed and coolant temperature increases and also as the feed concentration decreases. At 21wt% the permeate flux was 34,17, and 14 L m⁻² h⁻¹ for feed temperatures of 80, 70, and 60°C, respectively. Salt rejection decreased overtime; however, it remained greater than 99.9% over an experimental time span of 10 hours. The results show that DCMD can successfully regenerate the magnesium chloride desiccant solution.

Keywords: agriculture, direct contact membrane distillation, GCC countries, liquid desiccant, water recovery

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Authors: H. M. Imam, H. M. Rezk, A. F. Tohamy

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Background: Human umbilical cord blood (HUCB) is considered as a unique source for stem cells. HUCB contain different types of progenitor cells which could differentiate into hepatocytes. Aims: To investigate the potential of rat's liver damage repair using human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUCMSCs). We investigated the feasibility for hUCMSCs in recovery from liver damage. Moreover, investigating fibrotic liver repair and using the CCl4-induced model for liver damage in the rat. Methods: Rats were injected with 0.5 ml/kg CCl4 to induce liver damage and progressive liver fibrosis. hUCMSCs were injected into the rats through the tail vein; Stem cells were transplanted at a dose of 1×106 cells/rat after 72 hours of CCl4 injection without receiving any immunosuppressant. After (6 and 8 weeks) of transplantation, blood samples were collected to assess liver functions (ALT, AST, GGT and ALB) and level of Procollagen III as a liver fibrosis marker. In addition, hepatic tissue regeneration was assessed histopathologically and immunohistochemically using antihuman monoclonal antibodies against CD34, CK19 and albumin. Results: Biochemical and histopathological analysis showed significantly increased recovery from liver damage in the transplanted group. In addition, HUCB stem cells transdifferentiated into functional hepatocytes in rats with hepatic injury which results in improving liver structure and function. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that transplantation of hUCMSCs may be a novel therapeutic approach for treating liver fibrosis. Therefore, hUCMSCs are a potential option for treatment of liver cirrhosis.

Keywords: carbon tetra chloride, liver fibrosis, mesenchymal stem cells, rat

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Authors: Hatem Hajri, Mohamed-Cherif Rahal

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Both Lidars and Radars are sensors for obstacle detection. While Lidars are very accurate on obstacles positions and less accurate on their velocities, Radars are more precise on obstacles velocities and less precise on their positions. Sensor fusion between Lidar and Radar aims at improving obstacle detection using advantages of the two sensors. The present paper proposes a real-time Lidar/Radar data fusion algorithm for obstacle detection and tracking based on the global nearest neighbour standard filter (GNN). This algorithm is implemented and embedded in an automative vehicle as a component generated by a real-time multisensor software. The benefits of data fusion comparing with the use of a single sensor are illustrated through several tracking scenarios (on a highway and on a bend) and using real-time kinematic sensors mounted on the ego and tracked vehicles as a ground truth.

Keywords: ground truth, Hungarian algorithm, lidar Radar data fusion, global nearest neighbor filter

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Authors: Seyed Mohamad Rasool Mirkarimi, David Chiaramonti, Samir Bensaid

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Catalytic methane decomposition (CMD, reaction 4) is a one-step process for hydrogen production where carbon in the methane molecule is sequestered in the form of stable and higher-value carbon materials. Metallic catalysts and carbon-based catalysts are two major types of catalysts utilized for the CDM process. Although carbon-based catalysts have lower activity compared to metallic ones, they are less expensive and offer high thermal stability and strong resistance to chemical impurities such as sulfur. Also, it would require less costly separation methods as some of the carbon-based catalysts may not have an active metal component in them. Since the regeneration of metallic catalysts requires burning of the C on their surfaces, which emits CO/CO2, in some cases, using carbon-based catalysts would be recommended because regeneration can be completely avoided, and the catalyst can be directly used in other processes. This work focuses on the effect of biochar as a carbon-based catalyst for the conversion of methane into hydrogen and carbon. Biochar produced from the pyrolysis of poplar wood and activated biochar are used as catalysts for this process. In order to observe the impact of carbon-based catalysts on methane conversion, methane cracking in the absence and presence of catalysts for a gas stream with different levels of methane concentration should be performed. The results of these experiments prove conversion of methane in the absence of catalysts at 900 °C is negligible, whereas in the presence of biochar and activated biochar, significant growth has been observed. Comparing the results of the tests related to using char and activated char shows the enhancement obtained in BET surface area of the catalyst through activation leads to more than 10 vol.% methane conversion.

Keywords: hydrogen production, catalytic methane decomposition, biochar, activated biochar, carbon-based catalyts

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Authors: M. Ahmed Eldesouky, S. Nasr, A. Beltagy

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Groundwater is generally considered as the best source for aquaculture as it is well protected from contamination. The most common problem limiting the use of groundwater in Egypt is its high iron, manganese and ammonia content. This problem is often overcome by applying the treatment before use. Aeration in many cases is not enough to oxidize iron and manganese in complex forms with organics. Most of the treatment we use potassium permanganate as an oxidizer followed by a pressurized closed green sand filter. The aim of present study is to investigate the optimum characteristics of groundwater to give lowest iron, manganese and ammonia, maximum production and quality of fish in aquaculture in El-Max Research Station. The major design goal of the system was determined the optimum time for harvesting the treated water, pH, and Glauconite weight to use it for aquaculture process in the research site and achieve the Egyptian law (48/1982) and EPA level required for aquaculture. The water characteristics are [Fe = 0.116 mg/L, Mn = 1.36 mg/L,TN = 0.44 mg/L , TP = 0.07 mg/L , Ammonia = 0.386 mg/L] by using the glauconite filter we obtained high efficiency for removal for [(Fe, Mn and Ammonia] ,but in the Lab we obtained result for (Fe, 43-97), ( Mn,92-99 ), and ( Ammonia, 66-88 )]. We summarized the results to show the optimum time, pH, Glauconite weight, and the best model for design in the region.

Keywords: aquaculture, ammonia in groundwater, groundwater, iron and manganese in water, groundwater treatment

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Authors: Iram Siddique

Abstract:

Synthetic seed technology is an alternative to traditional micropropagation for production and delivery of cloned plantlets. Synthetic seeds were produced by encapsulating nodal segments of C. angustifolia in calcium alginate gel. 3% (w/v) sodium alginate and 100 mM CaCl2. 2H2O were found most suitable for encapsulation of nodal segments. Synthetic seeds cultured on half strength Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with thidiazuron (5.0 µM) + indole -3- acetic acid (1.0 µM) produced maximum number of shoots (10.9 ± 0.78) after 8 weeks of culture exhibiting (78%) in vitro conversion response. Encapsulated nodal segments demonstrated successful regeneration after different period (1-6 weeks) of cold storage at 4 °C. The synthetic seeds stored at 4 °C for a period of 4 weeks resulted in maximum conversion frequency (93%) after 8 weeks when placed back to regeneration medium. The isolated shoots when cultured on half strength MS medium supplemented with 1.0 µM indole -3- butyric acid (IBA), produced healthy roots and plantlets with well developed shoot and roots were successfully hardened off in plastic pots containing sterile soilrite inside the growth chamber and gradually transferred to greenhouse where they grew well with 85% survival rate. Changes in the content of photosynthetic pigments, net photosynthetic rate (PN), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activity in C. angustifolia indicated the adaptation of micropropagated plants to ex vitro conditions.

Keywords: biochemical studies, nodal segments, rooting, synthetic seeds, thidiazuron

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Authors: Zayedali Shaikh

Abstract:

Increasingly now more than ever, UV damage brings with it a litany of minor deformities that can range from mild lesions and discoloring to cataracts and blindness. Pluripotent stem cells in planaria and human skin can be used to treat wounds and skin damage, with the primary limitations being inadequate growth factors. Photobiomodulation therapy in the form of low-intensity red light therapy has been proven to provide helpful benefits in the healing of skin that displays some of the symptoms of UV damage, such as burns and lesions, along with stimulating the proliferation of stem cells in recellularizing tissue. This paper puts forth an alternate means by which to treat the effects of UV damage using the freshwater planarian model system, Dugesia dorotocephala, known for its regenerative abilities and abundance of pluripotent stem cells, which allow for the rapid growth and repair of missing or damaged structures. Our work consisted of exposing planaria to different types of light: red light, blue light, white light, darkness, red and blue light together, UV light, and finally, red and UV light together. The primary focus of this research was on the red and UV lights, with six controls acting as metrics to compare our findings. Through computer-assisted morphological analysis, the results show that there is no significant difference in the rates of regeneration of planaria treated with simultaneous exposure to red and UV light versus planaria in darkness (p > .05), a representation of their preferred natural habitat. Our research suggests the viability of red-light therapy in actively combating UV damage and expediting the growth of epidermal stem cells by acting as another growth factor.

Keywords: regenerative medicine, stem cells, planaria, photobiomodulation

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Authors: Priyanka Chaudhary, M. Rizwan

Abstract:

This paper presents a grid synchronization technique based on adaptive notch filter for SPV (Solar Photovoltaic) system along with MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) techniques. An efficient grid synchronization technique offers proficient detection of various components of grid signal like phase and frequency. It also acts as a barrier for harmonics and other disturbances in grid signal. A reference phase signal synchronized with the grid voltage is provided by the grid synchronization technique to standardize the system with grid codes and power quality standards. Hence, grid synchronization unit plays important role for grid connected SPV systems. As the output of the PV array is fluctuating in nature with the meteorological parameters like irradiance, temperature, wind etc. In order to maintain a constant DC voltage at VSC (Voltage Source Converter) input, MPPT control is required to track the maximum power point from PV array. In this work, a variable step size P & O (Perturb and Observe) MPPT technique with DC/DC boost converter has been used at first stage of the system. This algorithm divides the dPpv/dVpv curve of PV panel into three separate zones i.e. zone 0, zone 1 and zone 2. A fine value of tracking step size is used in zone 0 while zone 1 and zone 2 requires a large value of step size in order to obtain a high tracking speed. Further, adaptive notch filter based control technique is proposed for VSC in PV generation system. Adaptive notch filter (ANF) approach is used to synchronize the interfaced PV system with grid to maintain the amplitude, phase and frequency parameters as well as power quality improvement. This technique offers the compensation of harmonics current and reactive power with both linear and nonlinear loads. To maintain constant DC link voltage a PI controller is also implemented and presented in this paper. The complete system has been designed, developed and simulated using SimPower System and Simulink toolbox of MATLAB. The performance analysis of three phase grid connected solar photovoltaic system has been carried out on the basis of various parameters like PV output power, PV voltage, PV current, DC link voltage, PCC (Point of Common Coupling) voltage, grid voltage, grid current, voltage source converter current, power supplied by the voltage source converter etc. The results obtained from the proposed system are found satisfactory.

Keywords: solar photovoltaic systems, MPPT, voltage source converter, grid synchronization technique

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Authors: Chafik Barnoussi, Mourad Talbi, Adnane Cherif

Abstract:

In this paper we propose a new speech compression system based on the application of the Bionic Wavelet Transform (BWT) combined with the psychoacoustic model. This compression system is a modified version of the compression system using a MDCT (Modified Discrete Cosine Transform) filter banks of 32 filters each and the psychoacoustic model. This modification consists in replacing the banks of the MDCT filter banks by the bionic wavelet coefficients which are obtained from the application of the BWT to the speech signal to be compressed. These two methods are evaluated and compared with each other by computing bits before and bits after compression. They are tested on different speech signals and the obtained simulation results show that the proposed technique outperforms the second technique and this in term of compressed file size. In term of SNR, PSNR and NRMSE, the outputs speech signals of the proposed compression system are with acceptable quality. In term of PESQ and speech signal intelligibility, the proposed speech compression technique permits to obtain reconstructed speech signals with good quality.

Keywords: speech compression, bionic wavelet transform, filterbanks, psychoacoustic model

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Authors: Ankur Gupta, Jayant Raj Saurav, Shantanu Bhattacharya

Abstract:

In this work we report an effective water filtration system based on the photo catalytic performance of semiconducting dense nano-brushes under natural sunlight. During thin-film photocatalysis usually performed by a deposited layer of photocatalyst, a stagnant boundary layer is created near the catalyst which adversely affects the rate of adsorption because of diffusional restrictions. One strategy that may be used is to disrupt this laminar boundary layer by creating a super dense nanostructure near the surface of the catalyst. Further it is adequate to fabricate a structured filter element for a through pass of the water with as grown nanostructures coming out of the surface of such an element. So, the dye remediation is performed through solar means. This remediation was initially limited to lower efficiency because of diffusional restrictions but has now turned around as a fast process owing to the development of the filter materials with standing out dense nanostructures. The effect of increased surface area due to microholes on fraction adsorbed is also investigated and found that there is an optimum value of hole diameter for maximum adsorption.

Keywords: nano materials, photocatalysis, waste water treatment, water remediation

Procedia PDF Downloads 325