Search results for: rate of recovery

Authors: Homoud Bourisli, Haitham Safar

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Oil is one of main resources of energy in the world. As conventional oil is drying out, oil recovery is crucial to maintain the same level of oil production. Since water injection is one of the commonly used methods to increase and maintain pressure in oil wells, oil-water separation processes of the water associated with oil production for water injection oil recovery is very essential. Therefore, Gas Flotation Units are used for oil-water separation to be able to re-inject the treated water back into the wells to increase pressure.

Keywords: Kuwait oil company, dissolved gas flotation unit, induced gas flotation unit, oil-water separation

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Authors: Liping Qiu, Xiaofeng Zhang

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The ion chromatography method for the rapid determination of four anions (F⁻、Cl⁻、SO₄²⁻、NO₃⁻) in burial ground poles was optimized. The L₉(₃⁴) orthogonal test was used to determine the optimal parameters of sample pretreatment: accurately weigh 2.000g of sample, add 10mL of ultrapure water, and extract for 40min under the conditions of shaking temperature 40℃ and shaking speed 180 r·min-1. The eluent was 25 mmol/L KOH solution, the analytical column was Ion Pac® AS11-SH (250 mm × 4.0 mm), and the purified filtrate was measured by a conductivity detector. Under this method, the detection limit of each ion is 0.066～0.078mg/kg, the relative standard deviation is 0.86%～2.44% (n=7), and the recovery rate is 94.6～101.9.

Keywords: ion chromatography, tomb, anion (F⁻, Cl⁻, SO₄²⁻, NO₃⁻), environmental protection

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Authors: Nidhi S. Bisht

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The study examines the role of work-home interference, on enhancing emotional exhaustion in the branch officers of private MFIs in India. Additionally, the moderating role of recovery experiences and technology-assisted supplemental work (TASW) were studied. With the increasing expectations to perform job related tasks at home, technology-assisted supplemental work (TASW) was hypothesized to positively moderate the relationship between work-home interference and emotional exhaustion. Further, it was expected that recovery experiences-psychological detachment, relaxation will help to recover and unwind from work and negatively moderate the relationship between work-home interference and emotional exhaustion. Results of SEM-analyses largely offered support for the hypotheses. These findings increase our insight in the processes leading to increased emotional exhaustion and suggest that employees can protect themselves from emotional exhaustion by keeping a tab on technology-assisted supplemental work and facilitating recovery experiences.

Keywords: emotional exhaustion, India, microfinance institutions (MFIs), work-home interference

Procedia PDF Downloads 188

Authors: Franky Michael Hamonangan Siagian, Affan Maulana, Himawan Tri Bayu Murti Petrus, Panut Mulyono, Widi Astuti

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In this study, the feasibility of the direct electrowinning method was used to produce zero-valent iron from red mud. The bauxite residue sample came from the Tayan mine, Indonesia, which contains high hematite (Fe₂O₃). Before electrolysis, the samples were characterized by various analytical techniques (ICP-AES, SEM, XRD) to determine their chemical composition and mineralogy. The direct electrowinning method of red mud suspended in NaOH was introduced at low temperatures ranging from 30 - 110 °C. Variations of current density, red mud: NaOH ratio and temperature were carried out to determine the optimum operation of the direct electrowinning process. Cathode deposits and residues in electrochemical cells were analyzed using XRD, XRF, and SEM to determine the chemical composition and current recovery. The low-temperature electrolysis current efficiency on Redmud can reach 20% recovery at a current density of 920,945 A/m². The moderate performance of the process was investigated with red mud, which was attributed to the troublesome adsorption of red mud particles on the cathode, making the reduction far less efficient than that with hematite.

Keywords: alumina, red mud, electrochemical reduction, iron production

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Authors: T. Malmir, U. Eicker

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Landfilling of organic waste is still the predominant waste management method in the USA and Canada. Strategic plans for waste diversion from landfills are needed to increase material recovery and energy generation from waste. In this paper, we carried out a statistical survey on waste flow in the two cities New York and Montréal and estimated the energy recovery potential for each case. Data collection and analysis of the organic waste (food waste, yard waste, etc.), paper and cardboard, metal, glass, plastic, carton, textile, electronic products and other materials were done based on the reports published by the Department of Sanitation in New York and Service de l'Environnement in Montréal. In order to calculate the gas generation potential of organic waste, Buswell equation was used in which the molar mass of the elements was calculated based on their atomic weight and the amount of organic waste in New York and Montréal. Also, the higher and lower calorific value of the organic waste (solid base) and biogas (gas base) were calculated. According to the results, only 19% (598 kt) and 45% (415 kt) of New York and Montréal waste were diverted from landfills in 2017, respectively. The biogas generation potential of the generated food waste and yard waste amounted to 631 million m³ in New York and 173 million m³ in Montréal. The higher and lower calorific value of food waste were 3482 and 2792 GWh in New York and 441 and 354 GWh in Montréal, respectively. In case of yard waste, they were 816 and 681 GWh in New York and 636 and 531 GWh in Montréal, respectively. Considering the higher calorific value, this amount would mean a contribution of around 2.5% energy in these cities.

Keywords: energy recovery, organic waste, urban energy modelling with INSEL, waste flow

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Authors: Abhinav Bajpayee, Shubham Damke, Rupal Ranjan, Neha Bharti

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Polymer flooding is a dramatic improvement in water flooding and quickly becoming one of the EOR technologies. Used for improving oil recovery. With the increasing energy demand and depleting oil reserves EOR techniques are becoming increasingly significant .Since most oil fields have already begun water flooding, chemical EOR technique can be implemented by using fewer resources than any other EOR technique. Polymer helps in increasing the viscosity of injected water thus reducing water mobility and hence achieves a more stable displacement .Polymer flooding helps in increasing the injection viscosity as has been revealed through field experience. While the injection of a polymer solution improves reservoir conformance the beneficial effect ceases as soon as one attempts to push the polymer solution with water. It is most commonly applied technique because of its higher success rate. In polymer flooding, a water-soluble polymer such as Polyacrylamide is added to the water in the water flood. This increases the viscosity of the water to that of a gel making the oil and water greatly improving the efficiency of the water flood. It also improves the vertical and areal sweep efficiency as a consequence of improving the water/oil mobility ratio. Polymer flooding plays an important role in oil exploitation, but around 60 million ton of wastewater is produced per day with oil extraction together. Therefore the treatment and reuse of wastewater becomes significant which can be carried out by electro dialysis technology. This treatment technology can not only decrease environmental pollution, but also achieve closed-circuit of polymer flooding wastewater during crude oil extraction. There are three potential ways in which a polymer flood can make the oil recovery process more efficient: (1) through the effects of polymers on fractional flow, (2) by decreasing the water/oil mobility ratio, and (3) by diverting injected water from zones that have been swept. It has also been suggested that the viscoelastic behavior of polymers can improve displacement efficiency Polymer flooding may also have an economic impact because less water is injected and produced compared with water flooding. In future we need to focus on developing polymers that can be used in reservoirs of high temperature and high salinity, applying polymer flooding in different reservoir conditions and also combine polymer with other processes (e.g., surfactant/ polymer flooding).

Keywords: fractional flow, polymer, viscosity, water/oil mobility ratio

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Authors: Zhenyu Zhang, Hsi-Hsien Wei

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Highway networks play a vital role in post-disaster recovery for disaster-damaged areas. Damaged bridges in such networks can disrupt the recovery activities by impeding the transportation of people, cargo, and reconstruction resources. Therefore, rapid restoration of damaged bridges is of paramount importance to long-term disaster recovery. In the post-disaster recovery phase, the key to restoration scheduling for a highway network is prioritization of bridge-repair tasks. Resilience is widely used as a measure of the ability to recover with which a network can return to its pre-disaster level of functionality. In practice, highways will be temporarily blocked during the downtime of bridge restoration, leading to the decrease of highway-network functionality. The failure to take downtime effects into account can lead to overestimation of network resilience. Additionally, post-disaster recovery of highway networks is generally divided into emergency bridge repair (EBR) in the response phase and long-term bridge repair (LBR) in the recovery phase, and both of EBR and LBR are different in terms of restoration objectives, restoration duration, budget, etc. Distinguish these two phases are important to precisely quantify highway network resilience and generate suitable restoration schedules for highway networks in the recovery phase. To address the above issues, this study proposes a novel resilience quantification method for the optimization of long-term bridge repair schedules (LBRS) taking into account the impact of EBR activities and restoration downtime on a highway network’s functionality. A time-dependent integer program with recursive functions is formulated for optimally scheduling LBR activities. Moreover, since uncertainty always exists in the LBRS problem, this paper extends the optimization model from the deterministic case to the stochastic case. A hybrid genetic algorithm that integrates a heuristic approach into a traditional genetic algorithm to accelerate the evolution process is developed. The proposed methods are tested using data from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, based on a regional highway network in Sichuan, China, consisting of 168 highway bridges on 36 highways connecting 25 cities/towns. The results show that, in this case, neglecting the bridge restoration downtime can lead to approximately 15% overestimation of highway network resilience. Moreover, accounting for the impact of EBR on network functionality can help to generate a more specific and reasonable LBRS. The theoretical and practical values are as follows. First, the proposed network recovery curve contributes to comprehensive quantification of highway network resilience by accounting for the impact of both restoration downtime and EBR activities on the recovery curves. Moreover, this study can improve the highway network resilience from the organizational dimension by providing bridge managers with optimal LBR strategies.

Keywords: disaster management, highway network, long-term bridge repair schedule, resilience, restoration downtime

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Authors: Panupong Lohrattanarungrot, Falan Srisuriyachai

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Polymer flooding is a well-known technique used for controlling mobility ratio in heterogeneous reservoirs, leading to improvement of sweep efficiency as well as wellbore profile. However, low injectivity of viscous polymer solution attenuates oil recovery rate and consecutively adds extra operating cost. An attempt of this study is to improve injectivity of polymer solution while maintaining recovery factor, enhancing effectiveness of polymer flooding method. This study is performed by using reservoir simulation program to modify conventional single polymer slug into sequential polymer flooding, emphasizing on increasing of injectivity and also reduction of polymer amount. Selection of operating conditions for single slug polymer including pre-injected water, polymer concentration and polymer slug size is firstly performed for a layered-heterogeneous reservoir with Lorenz coefficient (Lk) of 0.32. A selected single slug polymer flooding scheme is modified into sequential polymer flooding with reduction of polymer concentration in two different modes: Constant polymer mass and reduction of polymer mass. Effects of Residual Resistance Factor (RRF) is also evaluated. From simulation results, it is observed that first polymer slug with the highest concentration has the main function to buffer between displacing phase and reservoir oil. Moreover, part of polymer from this slug is also sacrificed for adsorption. Reduction of polymer concentration in the following slug prevents bypassing due to unfavorable mobility ratio. At the same time, following slugs with lower viscosity can be injected easily through formation, improving injectivity of the whole process. A sequential polymer flooding with reduction of polymer mass shows great benefit by reducing total production time and amount of polymer consumed up to 10% without any downside effect. The only advantage of using constant polymer mass is slightly increment of recovery factor (up to 1.4%) while total production time is almost the same. Increasing of residual resistance factor of polymer solution yields a benefit on mobility control by reducing effective permeability to water. Nevertheless, higher adsorption results in low injectivity, extending total production time. Modifying single polymer slug into sequence of reduced polymer concentration yields major benefits on reducing production time as well as polymer mass. With certain design of polymer flooding scheme, recovery factor can even be further increased. This study shows that application of sequential polymer flooding can be certainly applied to reservoir with high value of heterogeneity since it requires nothing complex for real implementation but just a proper design of polymer slug size and concentration.

Keywords: polymer flooding, sequential, heterogeneous reservoir, residual resistance factor

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Authors: D. Hephzibah, P. Kumaran, N. M. Saifuddin

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Anaerobic digestion is a well-known technique for sustainable energy recovery from sewage sludge. However, sewage sludge digestion is restricted due to certain factors. Pre-treatment methods have been established in various publications as a promising technique to improve the digestibility of the sewage sludge and to enhance the biogas generated which can be used for energy recovery. In this study, continuous flow microwave (MW) pre-treatment with different intensities were compared by using 5 L semi-continuous digesters at a hydraulic retention time of 27 days. We focused on the effects of MW at different intensities on the sludge solubilization, sludge digestibility, and biogas production of the untreated and MW pre-treated sludge. The MW pre-treatment demonstrated an increase in the ratio of soluble chemical oxygen demand to total chemical oxygen demand (sCOD/tCOD) and volatile fatty acid (VFA) concentration. Besides that, the total volatile solid (TVS) removal efficiency and tCOD removal efficiency also increased during the digestion of the MW pre-treated sewage sludge compared to the untreated sewage sludge. Furthermore, the biogas yield also subsequently increases due to the pre-treatment effect. A higher MW power level and irradiation time generally enhanced the biogas generation which has potential for sustainable energy recovery from sewage treatment plant. However, the net energy balance tabulation shows that the MW pre-treatment leads to negative net energy production.

Keywords: anaerobic digestion, biogas, microwave pre-treatment, sewage sludge

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Authors: Yasser Elhenaw, A. Farag, Mohamed El-Ghandour, M. Shatat, G. H. Moustafa

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This study investigates the performance of two spiral-wound Air Gap Membrane Distillation (AGMD) units. These units are connected in two different configurations in order to be tested and compared experimentally. In AGMD, the coolant water is used to condensate water vapor leaving membrane via condensing plate. The rejected cooling water has a relativity high temperature which can be used, depending on operation parameters, to increase the thermal efficiency and water productivity. In the first configuration, the seawater feed flows parallel and equally through both units then rejected. The coolant water is divided into the two units, and the heat source is divided into the two heat exchangers. In the second one, only the feed of the first unit is heated while the cooling rejected from the unit is used in heating the feed to the second. The performance of the system, estimated by the water productivity as well as the Gain Output Ratio (GOR), is measured for the two configurations at different feed flow rates, temperatures and salinities. The results show that at steady state condition, the heat recovery configurations lead to an increase in water productivity by 25%.

Keywords: membrane distillation, heat transfer, heat recovery, desalination

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Authors: Daniel E. Martin, Chenghai Yang

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Variable-rate aerial application systems are becoming more readily available; however, aerial applicators typically only use the systems for constant-rate application of materials, allowing the systems to compensate for upwind and downwind ground speed variations. Much of the resistance to variable-rate aerial application system adoption in the U.S. pertains to applicator’s trust in the systems to turn on and off automatically as desired. The objectives of this study were to evaluate a commercially available variable-rate aerial application system under field conditions to demonstrate both the response and accuracy of the system to desired application rate inputs. This study involved planting oats in a 35-acre fallow field during the winter months to establish a uniform green backdrop in early spring. A binary (on/off) prescription application map was generated and a variable-rate aerial application of glyphosate was made to the field. Airborne multispectral imagery taken before and two weeks after the application documented actual field deposition and efficacy of the glyphosate. When compared to the prescription application map, these data provided application system response and accuracy information. The results of this study will be useful for quantifying and documenting the response and accuracy of a commercially available variable-rate aerial application system so that aerial applicators can be more confident in their capabilities and the use of these systems can increase, taking advantage of all that aerial variable-rate technologies have to offer.

Keywords: variable-rate, aerial application, remote sensing, precision application

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Authors: Teerapon Pirom, Ura Pancharoen

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Amoxicillin is an antibiotic which is widely used to treat various infections in both human beings and animals. However, when amoxicillin is released into the environment, it is a major problem. Amoxicillin causes bacterial resistance to these drugs and failure of treatment with antibiotics. Liquid membrane is of great interest as a promising method for the separation and recovery of the target ions from aqueous solutions due to the use of carriers for the transport mechanism, resulting in highly selectivity and rapid transportation of the desired metal ions. The simultaneous processes of extraction and stripping in a single unit operation of liquid membrane system are very interesting. Therefore, it is practical to apply liquid membrane, particularly the HFSLM for industrial applications as HFSLM is proved to be a separation process with lower capital and operating costs, low energy and extractant with long life time, high selectivity and high fluxes compared with solid membranes. It is a simple design amenable to scaling up for industrial applications. The extraction and recovery for (Amoxicillin) through the hollow fiber supported liquid membrane (HFSLM) using aliquat336 as a carrier were explored with the experimental data. The important variables affecting on transport of amoxicillin viz. extractant concentration and operating time were investigated. The highest AMOX- extraction percentages of 85.35 and Amoxicillin stripping of 80.04 were achieved with the best condition at 6 mmol/L [aliquat336] and operating time 100 min. The extraction reaction order (n) and the extraction reaction rate constant (kf) were found to be 1.00 and 0.0344 min-1, respectively.

Keywords: aliquat336, amoxicillin, HFSLM, kinetic

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Authors: Z. Arabshahi, I. Afara, A. Oloyede, H. Moody, J. Kashani, T. Klein

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Articular cartilage is a fluid-swollen tissue of synovial joints that functions by providing a lubricated surface for articulation and to facilitate the load transmission. The biomechanical function of this tissue is highly dependent on the integrity of its ultrastructural matrix. Any alteration of articular cartilage matrix, either by injury or degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis (OA), compromises its functional behaviour. Therefore, the assessment of articular cartilage is important in early stages of degenerative process to prevent or reduce further joint damage with associated socio-economic impact. Therefore, there has been increasing research interest into the functional assessment of articular cartilage. This study developed a characterization parameter for articular cartilage assessment based on the response of cartilage surface to loading/unloading. This is because the response of articular cartilage to compressive loading is significantly depth-dependent, where the superficial zone and underlying matrix respond differently to deformation. In addition, the alteration of cartilage matrix in the early stages of degeneration is often characterized by PG loss in the superficial layer. In this study, it is hypothesized that the response of superficial layer is different in normal and proteoglycan depleted tissue. To establish the viability of this hypothesis, samples of visually intact and artificially proteoglycan-depleted bovine cartilage were subjected to compression at a constant rate to 30 percent strain using a ring-shaped indenter with an integrated ultrasound probe and then unloaded. The response of articular surface which was indirectly loaded was monitored using ultrasound during the time of loading/unloading (deformation/recovery). It was observed that the rate of cartilage surface response to loading/unloading was different for normal and PG-depleted cartilage samples. Principal Component Analysis was performed to identify the capability of the cartilage surface response to loading/unloading, to distinguish between normal and artificially degenerated cartilage samples. The classification analysis of this parameter showed an overlap between normal and degenerated samples during loading. While there was a clear distinction between normal and degenerated samples during unloading. This study showed that the cartilage surface response to loading/unloading has the potential to be used as a parameter for cartilage assessment.

Keywords: cartilage integrity parameter, cartilage deformation/recovery, cartilage functional assessment, ultrasound

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Authors: Krzysztof Buczak, Sonia Lachowska, Pawel Kucharski, Agnieszka Antonczyk

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Tiletamine - zolazepam combination is increasingly used in veterinary anaesthesiology in wild animals, including snakes. The available literature shows a lack of information about anesthesia in this mixture in ovoviviparous snakes. The studies show the possibility of using the combination at a dose of 20 mg/kg or more for snake immobilization. This paper presents an anesthetic protocol with the use of a combination of tiletamine - zolazepam at the dose of 10 mg/kg intramuscularly and maintenance with inhalant anesthesia with isoflurane in pure oxygen. The objective of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the anesthetic protocol to proceed with coeliotomy in Amazon Tree Boa. The patient was a five years old bicolor female Amazon Tree Boa (Corallus hortulanus) with dystocia. The clinical examination reveals significant emaciation (bodyweight 520g), high degree of dehydration, heart rate (HR = 60 / min), pale mucous membranes and poor reactivity. Meloxicam (1 mg/kg) and tramadol (10 mg/kg) were administered subcutaneously and the patient was placed in an incubator with access to fresh oxygen. Four hours later, the combination of tiletamine - zolazepam (10 mg/kg) was administered intramuscularly for induction of anesthesia. The snake was intubated and connected to inhalant anesthesia equipment. For maintenance, the anesthesia isoflurane in pure oxygen was used due to apnea, which occurs 30 minutes after the induction semi-closed system was attached and the ventilator was turned on (PCV system, four breaths per minute, 8 cm of H2O). Cardiopulmonary parameters (HR, RR, SPO2, ETCO2, ETISO) were assessed throughout the procedure. During the entire procedure, the operating room was heated to a temperature of 26 degrees Celsius. Additionally, the hose was placed on a heating mat, which maintained a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius. For 15 minutes after induction, the loss of muscle tone was observed from the head to the tail. Induction of general anesthesia was scored as good because of the possibility of intubation. During the whole procedure, the heart rate was at the rate of 58 beats per minute (bpm). Ventilation parameters were stable throughout the procedure. The recovery period lasts for about 4 hours after the end of general anesthesia. The muscle tension returned from tail to head. The snake started to breathe spontaneously within 1,5 hours after the end of general anesthesia. The protocol of general anesthesia with the combination of tiletamine- zolazepam with a dose of 10 mg/kg is useful for proceeding with the emergency coeliotomy in maintenance with isoflurane in oxygen. Further study about the impact of the combination of tiletamine- zolazepam for the recovery period is needed.

Keywords: anesthesia, corallus hortulanus, ovoviparous, snake, tiletamine, zolazepam

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Authors: L. Raczynski, P. Moskal, P. Kowalski, W. Wislicki, T. Bednarski, P. Bialas, E. Czerwinski, A. Gajos, L. Kaplon, A. Kochanowski, G. Korcyl, J. Kowal, T. Kozik, W. Krzemien, E. Kubicz, Sz. Niedzwiecki, M. Palka, Z. Rudy, O. Rundel, P. Salabura, N.G. Sharma, M. Silarski, A. Slomski, J. Smyrski, A. Strzelecki, A. Wieczorek, M. Zielinski, N. Zon

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The J-PET scanner, which allows for single bed imaging of the whole human body, is currently under development at the Jagiellonian University. The J-PET detector improves the TOF resolution due to the use of fast plastic scintillators. Since registration of the waveform of signals with duration times of few nanoseconds is not feasible, a novel front-end electronics allowing for sampling in a voltage domain at four thresholds was developed. To take fully advantage of these fast signals a novel scheme of recovery of the waveform of the signal, based on ideas from the Tikhonov regularization (TR) and Compressive Sensing methods, is presented. The prior distribution of sparse representation is evaluated based on the linear transformation of the training set of waveform of the signals by using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) decomposition. Beside the advantage of including the additional information from training signals, a further benefit of the TR approach is that the problem of signal recovery has an optimal solution which can be determined explicitly. Moreover, from the Bayes theory the properties of regularized solution, especially its covariance matrix, may be easily derived. This step is crucial to introduce and prove the formula for calculations of the signal recovery error. It has been proven that an average recovery error is approximately inversely proportional to the number of samples at voltage levels. The method is tested using signals registered by means of the single detection module of the J-PET detector built out from the 30 cm long BC-420 plastic scintillator strip. It is demonstrated that the experimental and theoretical functions describing the recovery errors in the J-PET scenario are largely consistent. The specificity and limitations of the signal recovery method in this application are discussed. It is shown that the PCA basis offers high level of information compression and an accurate recovery with just eight samples, from four voltage levels, for each signal waveform. Moreover, it is demonstrated that using the recovered waveform of the signals, instead of samples at four voltage levels alone, improves the spatial resolution of the hit position reconstruction. The experiment shows that spatial resolution evaluated based on information from four voltage levels, without a recovery of the waveform of the signal, is equal to 1.05 cm. After the application of an information from four voltage levels to the recovery of the signal waveform, the spatial resolution is improved to 0.94 cm. Moreover, the obtained result is only slightly worse than the one evaluated using the original raw-signal. The spatial resolution calculated under these conditions is equal to 0.93 cm. It is very important information since, limiting the number of threshold levels in the electronic devices to four, leads to significant reduction of the overall cost of the scanner. The developed recovery scheme is general and may be incorporated in any other investigation where a prior knowledge about the signals of interest may be utilized.

Keywords: plastic scintillators, positron emission tomography, statistical analysis, tikhonov regularization

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Authors: In Su Na, Gunwon Lee, Seiyong Kim

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This study analyzed the effect of area variables and economic variables on the length of each period of the project in order to analyze the effect of agreement rate on project implementation in housing renewal projects. In conclusion, as can be seen from these results, a low agreement rate may not translate into project promotion, and a higher agreement rate may not translate into project delay. The expectation of the policy is that the lower the agreement rate, the more projects would be promoted, but that is not the actual effect. From a policy consistency viewpoint, changing the agreement rate frequently, depending on the decision of the public, is not reasonable. The policy of using agreement rate as a necessary condition for project implementation should be reconsidered.

Keywords: Area and Economic Variables, Elapsed time, Housing Renewal Project

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Authors: Douglas Shabe

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The world of the performing musician is one of high pressure that comes from the expected high standards they have to live up to and that they expect from themselves. The pressure that musicians put themselves under can manifest itself in physical problems such as focal dystonia. Knowledge of the contributing factors and potential rehabilitation strategies cannot only give players hope for recovery but also the information to prevent it from happening in the first place. This dissertation presents a multiple case study of two performing brass musicians who developed focal dystonia of the embouchure, also known as embouchure dystonia, combined with an autoethnography of the author’s experience of battling embouchure dystonia and our attempts at recovery. Extensive research into the current state of focal dystonia research was done to establish a base of knowledge. That knowledge was used to develop interview questions for the two participants and interpret the findings of the qualitative data collected. The research knowledge, as well as the qualitative data from the case studies, was also used to interpret the author’s experience. The author determined that behavioral, environmental, and psychological factors were of prime importance in the subjects’ development of focal dystonia and that modifications of those factors are essential for the best chance at recovery.

Keywords: focal dystonia, embouchure dystonia, music teaching and learning, music education

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Authors: Yuvarani Naidu, Yasmeen Siddiqui, Mohd Yusof Rafii , Abu Seman Idris

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Sustainability of oil palm production in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, is jeopardized by Ganoderma boninense, the fungus which causes basal stem rot (BSR) in oil palm. The root contact with unattended infected debris left in the plantations during replanting is known to be the primary source of inoculum. Abiding by the law, potentially effective technique of managing Ganoderma infected oil palm debris is deemed necessary because of the zero-burning policy in Malaysian oil palm plantations. White-rot hymenomycetes antagonistic to Ganoderma sp were selected to test their efficacy as log treatments in degrading Ganoderma infected oil palm logs and to minimize the survival of Ganoderma inoculum. Decay rate in terms of mass loss was significantly higher after the application of solid-state cultivation (SSC) of Trametes lactinea FBW (64% ±1.2), followed by Pycnoporus sanguineus FBR (55% ±1.7) in infected log block tissues, after 10 months of treatments. The degradation pattern was clearly distinguished between the treated and non-treated log blocks with the developed SSC formulations. The control infected log blocks showed the highest, whereas infected log blocks treated with either P. sanguineus FBR or T. lactinea FBW SSC formulations exhibited statistically lowest number of Ganoderma spp. recovery on Ganoderma Selective Medium (GSM), after 8 months of treatment. Out of that, the lowest recovery of Ganoderma spp. was reported in infected log blocks inoculated with the strain T. lactinea FBW (21% ± 0.9) followed by P. sanguineus FBR (33% ± 2.2), after 8 months, Further, no recovery of Ganoderma was noticeable, 10 months after treatment applications in log blocks treated with both of the formulations. This is the first nursery-base study to substantiate the initial colonization of white-rot hymenomycetes on oil palm log blocks previously infected with BSR pathogen, G. boninense. The present study has indicated that log blocks treatment with white-rot hymenomycetes significantly affected the mass loss of diseased and healthy log block tissues. This study provides a basis of biotechnological approaches inefficient degradation of oil palm-generated crop debris, under natural conditions with an ultimate aim of reducing the Ganoderma inoculum under heavy BSR infection pressure in eco-friendly manner.

Keywords: basal stem rot disease, ganoderma boninense, oil palm, white-rot fungi

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Authors: Enayat Enayati, Reza Behtash

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The purpose of the H2 removal system is to reduce a content of hydrogen and other combustibles in the CO2 feed owing to avoid developing a possible explosive condition in the synthesis. In order to reduce the possibility of forming an explosive gas mixture in the synthesis as much as possible, the hydrogen percent in the fresh CO2, will be removed in hydrogen converter. Therefore the partly compressed CO2/Air mixture is led through Hydrogen converter (Reactor) where the H2, present in the CO2, is reduced by catalytic combustion to values less than 50 ppm (vol). According the following exothermic chemical reaction: 2H2 + O2 → 2H2O + Heat. The catalyst in hydrogen converter consist of platinum on a aluminum oxide carrier. Low catalyst activity maybe due to catalyst poisoning. This will result in an increase of the hydrogen content in the CO2 to the synthesis. It is advised to shut down the plant when the outlet of hydrogen converter increased above 100 ppm, to prevent undesirable gas composition in the plant. Replacement of catalyst will be time exhausting and costly so as to prevent this, we increase the inlet temperature of hydrogen converter according to following Arrhenius' equation: K=K0e (-E_a/RT) K is rate constant of a chemical reaction where K0 is the pre-exponential factor, E_a is the activation energy, and R is the universal gas constant. Increment of inlet temperature of hydrogen converter caused to increase the rate constant of chemical reaction and so declining the amount of hydrogen from 125 ppm to 70 ppm.

Keywords: catalyst, converter, poisoning, temperature

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Authors: Flordeliza L. Mercado, Teresito G. Aguinaldo, Helen F. Gavino, Victorino T. Taylan

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Most fruits and vegetables are available in large quantities during peak season which are oftentimes marketed at low price and left to rot or fed to farm animals. The lack of efficient storage facilities, and the additional cost and unavailability of small machinery for food processing, results to low price and wastage. Incidentally, processed fresh fruits and vegetables are gaining importance nowadays and health conscious people are also into ‘juicing’. One way to reduce wastage and ensure an all-season availability of crop juices at reasonable costs is to develop equipment for effective extraction of juice. The study was conducted to design, fabricate and evaluate a multi-juice extractor using locally available materials, making it relatively cheaper and affordable for medium-scale enterprises. The study was also conducted to formulate juice blends using extracted juices and calamansi juice at different blending percentage, and evaluate its chemical properties and sensory attributes. Furthermore, the chemical properties of extracted meals were evaluated for future applications. The multi-juice extractor has an overall dimension of 963mm x 300mm x 995mm, a gross weight of 82kg and 5 major components namely; feeding hopper, extracting chamber, juice and meal outlet, transmission assembly, and frame. The machine performance was evaluated based on juice recovery, extraction efficiency, extraction rate, extraction recovery, and extraction loss considering type of crop as apple and carrot with three replications each and was analyzed using T-test. The formulated juice blends were subjected to sensory evaluation and data gathered were analyzed using Analysis of Variance appropriate for Complete Randomized Design. Results showed that the machine’s juice recovery (73.39%), extraction rate (16.40li/hr), and extraction efficiency (88.11%) for apple were significantly higher than for carrot while extraction recovery (99.88%) was higher for apple than for carrot. Extraction loss (0.12%) was lower for apple than for carrot, but was not significantly affected by crop. Based on adding percentage mark-up on extraction cost (Php 2.75/kg), the breakeven weight and payback period for a 35% mark-up is 4,710.69kg and 1.22 years, respectively and for a 50% mark-up, the breakeven weight is 3,492.41kg and the payback period is 0.86 year (10.32 months). Results on the sensory evaluation of juice blends showed that the type of juice significantly influenced all the sensory parameters while the blending percentage including their respective interaction, had no significant effect on all sensory parameters, making the apple-calamansi juice blend more preferred than the carrot-calamansi juice blend in terms of all the sensory parameter. The machine’s performance is higher for apple than for carrot and the cost analysis on the use of the machine revealed that it is financially viable with a payback period of 1.22 years (35% mark-up) and 0.86 year (50% mark-up) for machine cost, generating an income of Php 23,961.60 and Php 34,444.80 per year using 35% and 50% mark-up, respectively. The juice blends were of good qualities based on the values obtained in the chemical analysis and the extracted meal could also be used to produce another product based on the values obtained from proximate analysis.

Keywords: food processing, fruits and vegetables, juice extraction, multi-juice extractor

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Authors: Myles Frederick McLellan

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When errors in the criminal justice process lead to wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice, it falls upon the State to make reparation for the egregious harms brought to innocent individuals. Of all the remedies available to seek compensation, private and public law litigation against the police and prosecution services is the most widely used. Unfortunately, all levels of court including the Supreme Court of Canada have explicitly endorsed the prospect of striking out or dismissing these claims at the outset on an expedited basis. The burden on agents of the State as defendants to succeed on motions for such relief is so low that very few actions will survive to give an innocent accused his or her day in court. This paper will be a quantitative and qualitative analysis on the occurrence and success of motions to strike and dismiss to forestall financial recovery for the damage caused when a criminal investigation and prosecution goes wrong. This paper will also include a comparative component on the private law systems at common law (e.g. USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand) with respect to the availability of a similar process to pre-emptively terminate litigation for the recovery of compensation to an innocent individual.

Keywords: compensation, innocence, miscarriages of justice, wrongful convictions

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Authors: Hong-Ming Chen

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This work considers the resolution of the Hull and White interest rate model with the jump process. A deterministic process is adopted to model the random behavior of interest rate variation as deterministic perturbations, which is depending on the time t. The Brownian motion and jumps uncertainty are denoted as the integral functions piecewise constant function w(t) and point function θ(t). It shows that the interest rate function and the yield function of the Hull and White interest rate model with jump process can be obtained by solving a nonlinear semi-infinite programming problem. A relaxed cutting plane algorithm is then proposed for solving the resulting optimization problem. The method is calibrated for the U.S. treasury securities at 3-month data and is used to analyze several effects on interest rate prices, including interest rate variability, and the negative correlation between stock returns and interest rates. The numerical results illustrate that our approach essentially generates the yield functions with minimal fitting errors and small oscillation.

Keywords: optimization, interest rate model, jump process, deterministic

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Authors: Eva L. Suarez, Daniel E. Meeroff, Yan Yong

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Current flooding risk modeling focuses on resilience, defined as the probability of recovery from a severe flooding event. However, the long-term damage to property and well-being by nuisance flooding and its long-term effects on communities are not typically included in risk assessments. An approach was developed to address the probability of recovering from a severe flooding event combined with the probability of community performance during a nuisance event. A consolidated model, namely the conflation flooding recovery (&FR) model, evaluates risk-coping mitigation strategies for communities based on the recovery time from catastrophic events, such as hurricanes or extreme surges, and from everyday nuisance flooding events. The &FR model assesses the variation contribution of each independent input and generates a weighted output that favors the distribution with minimum variation. This approach is especially useful if the input distributions have dissimilar variances. The &FR is defined as a single distribution resulting from the product of the individual probability density functions. The resulting conflated distribution resides between the parent distributions, and it infers the recovery time required by a community to return to basic functions, such as power, utilities, transportation, and civil order, after a flooding event. The &FR model is more accurate than averaging individual observations before calculating the mean and variance or averaging the probabilities evaluated at the input values, which assigns the same weighted variation to each input distribution. The main disadvantage of these traditional methods is that the resulting measure of central tendency is exactly equal to the average of the input distribution’s means without the additional information provided by each individual distribution variance. When dealing with exponential distributions, such as resilience from severe flooding events and from nuisance flooding events, conflation results are equivalent to the weighted least squares method or best linear unbiased estimation. The combination of severe flooding risk with nuisance flooding improves flood risk management for highly populated coastal communities, such as in South Florida, USA, and provides a method to estimate community flood recovery time more accurately from two different sources, severe flooding events and nuisance flooding events.

Keywords: community resilience, conflation, flood risk, nuisance flooding

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Authors: Eoin Kirwan, Christopher Nulty, Declan Browne

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The professional ice hockey season consists of approximately 60 regular season games with periods of fixture congestion occurring several times in the average season. These periods of congestion provide limited time for recovery, exposing the athletes to the risk of competing whilst not fully recovered. Although a body of research is growing with respect to monitoring fatigue, particularly during periods of congested fixtures in team sports such as rugby and soccer, it has received little to no attention thus far in ice hockey athletes. Consequently, there is limited knowledge on monitoring tools that might effectively detect a fatigue response and the magnitude of fatigue that can accumulate when recovery is limited by competitive fixtures. The benefit of quantifying and establishing fatigue status is the ability to optimise training and provide pertinent information on player health, injury risk, availability and readiness. Some commonly used methods to assess fatigue and recovery status of athletes include the use of perceived fatigue and wellbeing questionnaires, tests of muscular force and ratings of perceive exertion (RPE). These measures are widely used in popular team sports such as soccer and rugby and show promise as assessments of fatigue and recovery status for ice hockey athletes. As part of a larger study, this study explored the magnitude of changes in adductor muscle strength after game play and throughout a period of fixture congestion and examined the relationship between internal game load and perceived wellbeing with adductor muscle strength. Methods 8 professional ice hockey players from a British Elite League club volunteered to participate (age = 29.3 ± 2.49 years, height = 186.15 ± 6.75 cm, body mass = 90.85 ± 8.64 kg). Prior to and after competitive games each player performed trials of the adductor squeeze test at 0˚ hip flexion with the lead investigator using hand-held dynamometry. Rate of perceived exertion was recorded for each game and from data of total ice time individual session RPE was calculated. After each game players completed a 5- point questionnaire to assess perceived wellbeing. Data was collected from six competitive games, 1 practice and 36 hours post the final game, over a 10 – day period. Results Pending final data collection in February Conclusions Pending final data collection in February.

Keywords: Conjested fixtures, fatigue monitoring, ice hockey, readiness

Procedia PDF Downloads 107

Authors: Sadi Ali, Yaser Kishawi

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As part of Palestine, Gaza Strip (365 km2 and 1.8 million habitants) is considered a semi-arid zone relies solely on the Coastal Aquifer. The coastal aquifer is only source of water with only 5-10% suitable for human use. This barely covers the domestic and agricultural needs of Gaza Strip. Palestinian Water Authority Strategy is to find non-conventional water resource from treated wastewater to irrigate 1500 hectares and serves over 100,000 inhabitants. A new WWTP project is to replace the old-overloaded Biet Lahia WWTP. The project consists of three parts; phase A (pressure line & 9 infiltration basins - IBs), phase B (a new WWTP) and phase C (Recovery and Reuse Scheme – RRS – to capture the spreading plume). Currently, phase A is functioning since Apr 2009. Since Apr 2009, a monitoring plan is conducted to monitor the infiltration rate (I.R.) of the 9 basins. Nearly 23 million m3 of partially treated wastewater were infiltrated up to Jun 2014. It is important to maintain an acceptable rate to allow the basins to handle the coming quantities (currently 10,000 m3 are pumped an infiltrated daily). The methodology applied was to review and analysis the collected data including the I.R.s, the WW quality and the drying-wetting schedule of the basins. One of the main findings is the relation between the Total Suspended Solids (TSS) at BLWWTP and the I.R. at the basins. Since April 2009, the basins scored an average I.R. of about 2.5 m/day. Since then the records showed a decreasing pattern of the average rate until it reached the lower value of 0.42 m/day in Jun 2013. This was accompanied with an increase of TSS (mg/L) concentration at the source reaching above 200 mg/L. The reducing of TSS concentration directly improved the I.R. (by cleaning the WW source ponds at Biet Lahia WWTP site). This was reflected in an improvement in I.R. in last 6 months from 0.42 m/day to 0.66 m/day then to nearly 1.0 m/day as the average of the last 3 months of 2013. The wetting-drying scheme of the basins was observed (3 days wetting and 7 days drying) besides the rainfall rates. Despite the difficulty to apply this scheme accurately a control of flow to each basin was applied to improve the I.R. The drying-wetting system affected the I.R. of individual basins, thus affected the overall system rate which was recorded and assessed. Also the ploughing activities at the infiltration basins as well were recommended at certain times to retain a certain infiltration level. This breaks the confined clogging layer which prevents the infiltration. It is recommended to maintain proper quality of WW infiltrated to ensure an acceptable performance of IBs. The continual maintenance of settling ponds at BLWWTP, continual ploughing of basins and applying soil treatment techniques at the IBs will improve the I.R.s. When the new WWTP functions a high standard effluent quality (TSS 20mg, BOD 20 mg/l, and TN 15 mg/l) will be infiltrated, thus will enhance I.R.s of IBs due to lower organic load.

Keywords: soil aquifer treatment, recovery and reuse scheme, infiltration basins, North Gaza

Procedia PDF Downloads 206

Authors: Joao Almeida, Ana Azevedo, Myriam Kanoun-Boule, Maria Ines Santos, Antonio Tadeu

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The effects of the increasing expansion of cities and climate changes have encouraged European countries and regions to adopt nature-based solutions with ability to mitigate environmental issues and improve life in cities. Among these strategies, green roofs and urban gardens have been considered ingenious solutions, since they have the desirable potential to improve air quality, prevent floods, reduce the heat island effect and restore biodiversity in cities. However, an additional consumption of fresh water and mineral nutrients is necessary to sustain larger green urban areas. This communication discusses the main technical features of a new system to manage urine recovery at the building level and its application in green roofs. The depletion of critical nutrients like phosphorus constitutes an emergency. In turn, their elimination through urine is one of the principal causes for their loss. Thus, urine recovery in buildings may offer numerous advantages, constituting a valuable fertilizer abundantly available in cities and reducing the load on wastewater treatment plants. Although several urine-diverting toilets have been developed for this purpose and some experiments using urine directly in agriculture have already been carried out in Europe, several challenges have emerged with this practice concerning collection, sanitization, storage and application of urine in buildings. To our best knowledge, current buildings are not designed to receive these systems and integrated solutions with ability to self-manage the whole process of urine recovery, including separation, maturation and storage phases, are not known. Additionally, if from a hygiene point of view human urine may be considered a relatively safe fertilizer, the risk of disease transmission needs to be carefully analysed. A reduction in microorganisms can be achieved by storing the urine in closed tanks. However, several factors may affect this process, which may result in a higher survival rate for some pathogens. In this work, urine effluent was collected under real conditions, stored in closed containers and kept in climatic chambers under variable conditions simulating cold, temperate and tropical climates. These samples were subjected to a first physicochemical and microbiological control, which was repeated over time. The results obtained so far suggest that maturation conditions were reached for all the three temperatures and that a storage period of less than three months is required to achieve a strong depletion of microorganisms. The authors are grateful for the Project WashOne (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-017461) funded by the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI) of Portugal 2020, with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER).

Keywords: sustainable green roofs and urban gardens, urban nutrient cycle, urine-based fertilizers, urine recovery in buildings

Procedia PDF Downloads 130

Authors: Ifeoma Patricia Osamor, Ayotunde Qudus Saka, Godwin Omoregbee, Hikmat Oreoluwalomo Omolaja

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Persistent fall in the value of Nigeria's currency compared to other foreign currencies, constant fluctuations in the exchange rate, and an increase in the price of goods and services necessitated the examination of the effects of exchange rate fluctuations on the economic performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria. An ex-post facto research design was adopted. Manufacturing gross domestic product (MGDP) was proxied for performance; Naira/Dollar exchange rate (NDE), Naira/Pounds exchange rate (NPE), Foreign exchange supply (FES) were used for exchange rate fluctuations; and inflation rate (INF) was a control variable. Data were collected from CBN Statistical Bulletin (2020) also World Development Indicators of the World Bank, while data collected were analysed using descriptive analysis, unit root, bounds cointegration test, and ARDL. Findings showed that changes in Naira/Dollar exchange rate (NDE) and Naira/Pound Sterling exchange rate negatively but significantly impact the economic performance of the manufacturing sector, while foreign exchange supply leads to an insignificant positive effect on the economic performance of the manufacturing. The study concludes that exchange rate fluctuations negatively impact the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria and, therefore, recommends that government should encourage export diversification through agriculture, agro-investment, and agro-allied industries that would boost export in order to improve the value of the Naira, thereby stabilizing the exchange rate.

Keywords: exchange rate, economic performance, gross domestic product, inflation rate, foreign exchange supply

Procedia PDF Downloads 159

Authors: N. Nalini, Lokesh B. Bhajantri

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In Distributed Sensor Networks, the sensor nodes are prone to failure due to energy depletion and some other reasons. In this regard, fault tolerance of network is essential in distributed sensor environment. Energy efficiency, network or topology control and fault-tolerance are the most important issues in the development of next-generation Distributed Sensor Networks (DSNs). This paper proposes a node fault detection and recovery using Genetic Algorithm (GA) in DSN when some of the sensor nodes are faulty. The main objective of this work is to provide fault tolerance mechanism which is energy efficient and responsive to network using GA, which is used to detect the faulty nodes in the network based on the energy depletion of node and link failure between nodes. The proposed fault detection model is used to detect faults at node level and network level faults (link failure and packet error). Finally, the performance parameters for the proposed scheme are evaluated.

Keywords: distributed sensor networks, genetic algorithm, fault detection and recovery, information technology

Procedia PDF Downloads 416

Authors: Negar Riazifar, Nigel G. Stocks

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This paper proposes strategies in level crossing (LC) sampling and reconstruction that provide high fidelity signal reconstruction for speech signals; these strategies circumvent the problem of exponentially increasing number of samples as the bit-depth is increased and hence are highly efficient. Specifically, the results indicate that the distribution of the intervals between samples is one of the key factors in the quality of signal reconstruction; including samples with short intervals do not improve the accuracy of the signal reconstruction, whilst samples with large intervals lead to numerical instability. The proposed sampling method, termed reduced conventional level crossing (RCLC) sampling, exploits redundancy between samples to improve the efficiency of the sampling without compromising performance. A reconstruction technique is also proposed that enhances the numerical stability through linear interpolation of samples separated by large intervals. Interpolation is demonstrated to improve the accuracy of the signal reconstruction in addition to the numerical stability. We further demonstrate that the RCLC and interpolation methods can give useful levels of signal recovery even if the average sampling rate is less than the Nyquist rate.

Keywords: level crossing sampling, numerical stability, speech processing, trigonometric polynomial

Procedia PDF Downloads 120

Authors: Mohammad Saleh Al-Aboody

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In the present study 442 fecal samples from cattle, buffaloes, and sheep for contamination with helminthes. Samples were examined from 171 cattle, 128 buffaloes, and 143 sheep. The testing, during the period from May 2014 to April 2015, showed that 81 out of 171cattle were positive for helminthes infection (47.3%), with the rate of infection higher in females (55%) than in males (40%). In buffaloes, 41 of 128 tested were positive, a 32% rate of infection. Again, the infection rate was higher in females (47%) than in males (22%). In sheep, the rate of infection was highest of all three species. The results showed that, the infection rate among cattle were 50.3 % and Trichostrongyle species were the predominant parasites among both cattle and buffaloes. The prevalence rate was much higher in females than males. Regarding seasonal dynamics the highest infection rates with helminthes reported was in spring season.

Keywords: helminthes, prevalence, ruminants, trichostrongyle

Procedia PDF Downloads 327