Search results for: Particle removal efficiency

Authors: Ergin Kosa, Ali Göksenli

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Erosion and abrasion are wear mechanisms reducing the lifetime of machine elements like valves, pump and pipe systems. Both wear mechanisms are acting at the same time, causing a “Synergy” effect, which leads to a rapid damage of the surface. Different parameters are effective on erosive abrasive wear rate. In this study effect of particle impact angle on wear rate and wear mechanism of ductile and brittle materials was investigated. A new slurry pot was designed for experimental investigation. As abrasive particle, silica sand was used. Particle size was ranking between 200- 500 μm. All tests were carried out in a sand-water mixture of 20% concentration for four hours. Impact velocities of the particles were 4.76 m/s. As ductile material steel St 37 with Vickers Hardness Number (VHN) of 245 and quenched St 37 with 510 VHN was used as brittle material. After wear tests, morphology of the eroded surfaces were investigated for better understanding of the wear mechanisms acting at different impact angles by using Scanning Electron Microscope. The results indicated that wear rate of ductile material was higher than brittle material. Maximum wear rate was observed by ductile material at a particle impact angle of 300 and decreased further by an increase in attack angle. Maximum wear rate by brittle materials was by impact angle of 450 and decreased further up to 900. Ploughing was the dominant wear mechanism by ductile material. Microcracks on the surface were detected by ductile materials, which are nucleation centers for crater formation. Number of craters decreased and depth of craters increased by ductile materials by attack angle higher than 300. Deformation wear mechanism was observed by brittle materials. Number and depth of pits decreased by brittle materials by impact angles higher than 450. At the end it is concluded that wear rate could not be directly related to impact angle of particles due to the different reaction of ductile and brittle materials.

Keywords: Erosive wear, particle impact angle, silica sand, wear rate, ductile-brittle material.

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Authors: Yan Shuang Zhang, Taehan Lee, Byung Ho Jeong

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A DEA model can generally evaluate the performance using multiple inputs and outputs for the same period. However, it is hard to avoid the production lead time phenomenon some times, such as long-term project or marketing activity. A couple of models have been suggested to capture this time lag issue in the context of DEA. This paper develops a dual-MPO model to deal with time lag effect in evaluating efficiency. A numerical example is also given to show that the proposed model can be used to get efficiency and reference set of inefficient DMUs and to obtain projected target value of input attributes for inefficient DMUs to be efficient.

Keywords: DEA, efficiency, time lag, dual problem.

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Authors: Hassan E. A. Ibrahim, Mohamed F. Serag

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In this paper, Novel method, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, based technique is proposed to estimate and analyze the steady state performance of self-excited induction generator (SEIG). In this novel method the tedious job of deriving the complex coefficients of a polynomial equation and solving it, as in previous methods, is not required. By comparing the simulation results obtained by the proposed method with those obtained by the well known mathematical methods, a good agreement between these results is obtained. The comparison validates the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

Keywords: Evolution theory, MATLAB, optimization, PSO, SEIG.

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Authors: Sung-Chul Hwang, Di Ren, Sang-Moon Yoon, Jong-Chun Park, Abbas Khayyer, Hitoshi Gotoh

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This paper presents a fully Lagrangian coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) solver for simulations of fluid-structure interactions, which is based on the Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method to solve the governing equations corresponding to incompressible flows as well as elastic structures. The developed solver is verified by reproducing the high velocity impact loads of deformable thin wedges with three different materials such as mild steel, aluminium and tin during water entry. The present simulation results for aluminium are compared with analytical solution derived from the hydrodynamic Wagner model and linear Wan’s theory. And also, the impact pressure and strain on the water entry wedge with three different materials, such as mild steel, aluminium and tin, are simulated and the effects of hydro-elasticity are discussed.

Keywords: Fluid-structure interaction (FSI), Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method, Elastic structure, Incompressible fluid Wedge slamming impact.

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Authors: Oluyemi O. Awolusi, Abimbola M. Enitan, Sheena Kumari, Faizal Bux

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Nitrification is essential to biological processes designed to remove ammonia and/or total nitrogen. It removes excess nitrogenous compound in wastewater which could be very toxic to the aquatic fauna or cause serious imbalance of such aquatic ecosystem. Efficient nitrification is linked to an in-depth knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the nitrifying community structure within the wastewater treatment systems. In this study, molecular technique was employed for characterizing the microbial structure of activated sludge [ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB)] in a municipal wastewater treatment with intention of linking it to the plant efficiency. PCR based phylogenetic analysis was also carried out. The average operating and environmental parameters as well as specific nitrification rate of plant was investigated during the study. During the investigation the average temperature was 23±1.5oC. Other operational parameters such as mixed liquor suspended solids and chemical oxygen demand inversely correlated with ammonia removal. The dissolved oxygen level in the plant was constantly lower than the optimum (between 0.24 and 1.267 mg/l) during this study. The plant was treating wastewater with influent ammonia concentration of 31.69 and 24.47 mg/L. The influent flow rates (ML/Day) was 96.81 during period. The dominant nitrifiers include: Nitrosomonas spp. Nitrobacter spp. and Nitrospira spp. The AOB had correlation with nitrification efficiency and temperature. This study shows that the specific ammonia oxidizing rate and the specific nitrate formation rates can serve as good indicator of the plant overall nitrification performance.

Keywords: Ammonia monooxygenase α-subunit (amoA) gene, ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB), nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB), specific nitrification rate, PCR.

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Authors: Sam S. Hashemi

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The breakage of bonding between sand particles and their dislodgment from the borehole wall are among the main factors resulting in a borehole failure in poorly cemented granular formations. The grain debonding usually precedes the borehole failure and it can be considered as a sign that the onset of the borehole collapse is imminent. Detecting the bonding breakage point and introducing an appropriate failure criterion will play an important role in borehole stability analysis. To study the influence of different factors on the initiation of sand bonding breakage at the borehole wall, a series of laboratory tests was designed and conducted on poorly cemented sand samples. The total absorbed strain energy per volume of material up to the point of the observed particle debonding was computed. The results indicated that the particle bonding breakage point at the borehole wall was reached both before and after the peak strength of the thick-walled hollow cylinder specimens depending on the stress path and cement content. Three different cement contents and two borehole sizes were investigated to study the influence of the bonding strength and scale on the particle dislodgment. Test results showed that the stress path has a significant influence on the onset of the sand bonding breakage. It was shown that for various stress paths, there is a near linear relationship between the absorbed energy and the normal effective mean stress.

Keywords: Borehole stability, experimental studies, total strain energy, poorly cemented sands, particle bonding breakage.

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Authors: Anurag Sharma, Christian W. Omlin

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Self-organizing map (SOM) is a well known data reduction technique used in data mining. It can reveal structure in data sets through data visualization that is otherwise hard to detect from raw data alone. However, interpretation through visual inspection is prone to errors and can be very tedious. There are several techniques for the automatic detection of clusters of code vectors found by SOM, but they generally do not take into account the distribution of code vectors; this may lead to unsatisfactory clustering and poor definition of cluster boundaries, particularly where the density of data points is low. In this paper, we propose the use of an adaptive heuristic particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for finding cluster boundaries directly from the code vectors obtained from SOM. The application of our method to several standard data sets demonstrates its feasibility. PSO algorithm utilizes a so-called U-matrix of SOM to determine cluster boundaries; the results of this novel automatic method compare very favorably to boundary detection through traditional algorithms namely k-means and hierarchical based approach which are normally used to interpret the output of SOM.

Keywords: cluster boundaries, clustering, code vectors, data mining, particle swarm optimization, self-organizing maps, U-matrix.

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Authors: G. S. Eldiabani, W. H. G. Hale, C. P. Heron

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Forest areas are particularly susceptible to fires, which are often manmade. One of the most fire affected forest regions in the world is the Mediterranean. Libya, in the Mediterranean region, has soils that are considered to be arid except in a small area called Aljabal Alakhdar (Green mountain), which is the geographic area covered by this study. Like other forests in the Mediterranean it has suffered extreme degradation. This is mainly due to people removing fire wood, or sometimes converting forested areas to agricultural use, as well as fires which may alter several soil chemical and physical properties. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of fires on the physical properties of soil of Aljabal Alakhdar forest in the north-east of Libya. The physical properties of soil following fire in two geographic areas have been determined, with those subjected to the fire compared to those in adjacent unburned areas in one coastal and one mountain site. Physical properties studied were: soil particle size (soil texture), soil water content, soil porosity and soil particle density. For the first time in Libyan soils, the effect of burning on the magnetic susceptibility properties of soils was also tested. The results showed that the soils in both study sites, irrespective of burning or depth fell into the category of a silt loam texture, low water content, homogeneity of porosity of the soil profiles, relatively high soil particle density values and there is a much greater value of the soil magnetic susceptibility in the top layer from both sites except for the soil water content and magnetic susceptibility, fire has not had a clear effect on the soils’ physical properties.

Keywords: Aljabal Alakhdar, the coastal site, the mountain site, fire effect, soil particle size, soil water content, soil porosity, soil particle density, soil magnetic susceptibility.

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Authors: Seungyeong Choi, Namkyu Lee, Dong Il Shim, Young Mun Lee, Yong-Ki Park, Hyung Hee Cho

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Effect of the cross-sectional geometry on heat transfer and particle motion of circulating fluidized bed riser for CO₂ capture was investigated. Numerical simulation using Eulerian-eulerian method with kinetic theory of granular flow was adopted to analyze gas-solid flow consisting in circulating fluidized bed riser. Circular, square, and rectangular cross-sectional geometry cases of the same area were carried out. Rectangular cross-sectional geometries were analyzed having aspect ratios of 1: 2, 1: 4, 1: 8, and 1:16. The cross-sectional geometry significantly influenced the particle motion and heat transfer. The downward flow pattern of solid particles near the wall was changed. The gas-solid mixing degree of the riser with the rectangular cross section of the high aspect ratio was the lowest. There were differences in bed-to-wall heat transfer coefficient according to rectangular geometry with different aspect ratios.

Keywords: Bed geometry, computational fluid dynamics, circulating fluidized bed riser, heat transfer.

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Authors: Feng-Yi Huang, Yuan-Jye Tseng

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In the traditional concept of product life cycle management, the activities of design, manufacturing, and assembly are performed in a sequential way. The drawback is that the considerations in design may contradict the considerations in manufacturing and assembly. The different designs of components can lead to different assembly sequences. Therefore, in some cases, a good design may result in a high cost in the downstream assembly activities. In this research, an integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model is presented. Given a product requirement, there may be several design alternative cases to design the components for the same product. If a different design case is selected, the assembly sequence for constructing the product can be different. In this paper, first, the designed components are represented by using graph based models. The graph based models are transformed to assembly precedence constraints and assembly costs. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach is presented by encoding a particle using a position matrix defined by the design cases and the assembly sequences. The PSO algorithm simultaneously performs design evaluation and assembly sequence planning with an objective of minimizing the total assembly costs. As a result, the design cases and the assembly sequences can both be optimized. The main contribution lies in the new concept of integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model and the new PSO solution method. The test results show that the presented method is feasible and efficient for solving the integrated design evaluation and assembly planning problem. In this paper, an example product is tested and illustrated.

Keywords: assembly sequence planning, design evaluation, design for assembly, particle swarm optimization

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Authors: Chuen Tse Kuah, Kuan Yew Wong, Farzad Behrouzi

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This paper is aimed to give an illustration on the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a tool to assess Quality Management (QM) efficiency. A variant of DEA, slack based measure (SBM) is used for this purpose. From this study, it is found that DEA is suitable to measure QM efficiency and give improvement suggestions to the inefficient QM.

Keywords: Quality Management, Data Envelopment Analysis, Slack Based Measure, Efficiency Measurement.

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Authors: Cheng-Hong Yang, Yu-Huei Cheng, Hsueh-Wei Chang, Li-Yeh Chuang

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Before performing polymerase chain reactions (PCR), a feasible primer set is required. Many primer design methods have been proposed for design a feasible primer set. However, the majority of these methods require a relatively long time to obtain an optimal solution since large quantities of template DNA need to be analyzed. Furthermore, the designed primer sets usually do not provide a specific PCR product. In recent years, evolutionary computation has been applied to PCR primer design and yielded promising results. In this paper, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed to solve primer design problems associated with providing a specific product for PCR experiments. A test set of the gene CYP1A1, associated with a heightened lung cancer risk was analyzed and the comparison of accuracy and running time with the genetic algorithm (GA) and memetic algorithm (MA) was performed. A comparison of results indicated that the proposed PSO method for primer design finds optimal or near-optimal primer sets and effective PCR products in a relatively short time.

Keywords: polymerase chain reaction (PCR), primer design, evolutionary computation, particle swarm optimization (PSO).

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Authors: Yi He, Nutdechatorn Puangngernmak, Suramate Chalermwisutkul

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Microwave heating process has been developed about sixty years while measurement system has also progressed. Because of irradiation of high frequency of microwave, researchers have been utilized many costly technical instrument measuring parameters to evaluate the performance of microwave heating system. Therefore, this paper is intended to present an easier and feasible efficiency measurement method. It can help inspecting efficiency of microwave heating system with good accuracy, while the method can also give reference to optimizing procedure for microwave heating system for various load material

Keywords: measurement, microwave heating system, systemic power efficiency

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Authors: S. P. Singh

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This paper measures technical and scale efficiencies of 40 Indian sugar companies for the period from 2004-05 to 2013-14. The efficiencies are estimated through input-oriented DEA models using one output variable—value of output (VOP) and five input variables—capital cost (CA), employee cost (EMP), raw material (RW), energy & fuel (E&F) and other manufacturing expenses (OME). The sugar companies are classified into integrated and non-integrated categories to know which one achieves higher level of efficiency. Sources of inefficiency in the industry are identified through decomposing the overall technical efficiency (TE) into pure technical efficiency (PTE) and scale efficiency (SE). The paper also estimates input-reduction targets for relatively inefficient companies and suggests measures to improve their efficiency level. The findings reveal that the TE does not evince any trend rather it shows fluctuations across years, largely due to erratic and cyclical pattern of sugar production. Further, technical inefficiency in the industry seems to be driven more by the managerial inefficiency than the scale inefficiency, which implies that TE can be improved through better conversion of inputs into output.

Keywords: Sugar industry, companies, technical efficiency, data envelopment analysis, targets.

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Authors: Amirali Ebrahimi, T. A. G. Langrish

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The effect of various humidities on process yields and degrees of crystallinity for spray-dried powders from spray drying of lactose with humid air in a straight-through system have been studied. It has been suggested by Williams–Landel–Ferry kinetics (WLF) that a higher particle temperature and lower glass-transition temperature would increase the crystallization rate of the particles during the spray-drying process. Freshly humidified air produced by a Buchi-B290 spray dryer as a humidifier attached to the main spray dryer decreased the particle glass-transition temperature (Tg), while allowing the particle temperature (Tp) to reach higher values by using an insulated drying chamber. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and moisture sorption analysis were used to measure the degree of crystallinity for the spray-dried lactose powders. The results showed that higher Tp-Tg, as a result of applying humid air, improved the process yield from 21 ± 4 to 26 ± 2% and crystallinity of the particles by decreasing the latent heat of crystallization from 43 ± 1 to 30 ± 11 J/g and the sorption peak height from 7.3 ± 0.7% to 6 ± 0.7%.

Keywords: Lactose, crystallization, spray drying, humid air.

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Authors: P.Saravanan, Narayanan .C.K., P.V.S.S Prakash, Prabhakara Rao .G.V

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Video Mosaicing is the stitching of selected frames of a video by estimating the camera motion between the frames and thereby registering successive frames of the video to arrive at the mosaic. Different techniques have been proposed in the literature for video mosaicing. Despite of the large number of papers dealing with techniques to generate mosaic, only a few authors have investigated conditions under which these techniques generate good estimate of motion parameters. In this paper, these techniques are studied under different videos, and the reasons for failures are found. We propose algorithms with incorporation of outlier removal algorithms for better estimation of motion parameters.

Keywords: Motion parameters, Outlier removal algorithms, Registering , and Video Mosaicing.

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Authors: Sung Uk Park, Young Su Kang, Sangmo Kang, Yong Kweon Suh

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Mineral product, waste concrete (fine aggregates), waste in the optical field, industry, and construction employ separators to separate solids and classify them according to their size. Various sorting machines are used in the industrial field such as those operating under electrical properties, centrifugal force, wind power, vibration, and magnetic force. Study on separators has been carried out to contribute to the environmental industry. In this study, we perform CFD analysis for understanding the basic mechanism of the separation of waste concrete (fine aggregate) particles from air with a machine built with a rotor with blades. In CFD, we first performed two-dimensional particle tracking for various particle sizes for the model with 1 degree, 1.5 degree, and 2 degree angle between each blade to verify the boundary conditions and the method of rotating domain method to be used in 3D. Then we developed 3D numerical model with ANSYS CFX to calculate the air flow and track the particles. We judged the capability of particle separation for given size by counting the number of particles escaping from the domain toward the exit among 10 particles issued at the inlet. We confirm that particles experience stagnant behavior near the exit of the rotating blades where the centrifugal force acting on the particles is in balance with the air drag force. It was also found that the minimum particle size that can be separated by the machine with the rotor is determined by its capability to stay at the outlet of the rotor channels.

Keywords: Environmental industry, Separator, CFD, Fine aggregate.

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Authors: Chih-Cheng Kao, Hsin- Hua Chu

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This paper mainly proposes an efficient modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) method, to identify a slidercrank mechanism driven by a field-oriented PM synchronous motor. In system identification, we adopt the MPSO method to find parameters of the slider-crank mechanism. This new algorithm is added with “distance" term in the traditional PSO-s fitness function to avoid converging to a local optimum. It is found that the comparisons of numerical simulations and experimental results prove that the MPSO identification method for the slider-crank mechanism is feasible.

Keywords: Slider-crank mechanism, distance, systemidentification, modified particle swarm optimization.

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Authors: M. Arun, A. Kannan

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Textile industries cater to varied customer preferences and contribute substantially to the economy. However, these textile industries also produce a considerable amount of effluents. Prominent among these are the azo dyes which impart considerable color and toxicity even at low concentrations. Azo dyes are also used as coloring agents in food and pharmaceutical industry. Despite their applications, azo dyes are also notorious pollutants and carcinogens. Popular techniques like photo-degradation, biodegradation and the use of oxidizing agents are not applicable for all kinds of dyes, as most of them are stable to these techniques. Chemical coagulation produces a large amount of toxic sludge which is undesirable and is also ineffective towards a number of dyes. Most of the azo dyes are stable to UV-visible light irradiation and may even resist aerobic degradation. Adsorption has been the most preferred technique owing to its less cost, high capacity and process efficiency and the possibility of regenerating and recycling the adsorbent. Adsorption is also most preferred because it may produce high quality of the treated effluent and it is able to remove different kinds of dyes. However, the adsorption process is influenced by many variables whose inter-dependence makes it difficult to identify optimum conditions. The variables include stirring speed, temperature, initial concentration and adsorbent dosage. Further, the internal diffusional resistance inside the adsorbent particle leads to slow uptake of the solute within the adsorbent. Hence, it is necessary to identify optimum conditions that lead to high capacity and uptake rate of these pollutants. In this work, commercially available activated carbon was chosen as the adsorbent owing to its high surface area. A typical azo dye found in textile effluent waters, viz. the monoazo Acid Orange 10 dye (CAS: 1936-15-8) has been chosen as the representative pollutant. Adsorption studies were mainly focused at obtaining equilibrium and kinetic data for the batch adsorption process at different process conditions. Studies were conducted at different stirring speed, temperature, adsorbent dosage and initial dye concentration settings. The Full Factorial Design was the chosen statistical design framework for carrying out the experiments and identifying the important factors and their interactions. The optimum conditions identified from the experimental model were validated with actual experiments at the recommended settings. The equilibrium and kinetic data obtained were fitted to different models and the model parameters were estimated. This gives more details about the nature of adsorption taking place. Critical data required to design batch adsorption systems for removal of Acid Orange 10 dye and identification of factors that critically influence the separation efficiency are the key outcomes from this research.

Keywords: Acid Orange 10, Activated carbon, Optimum conditions, Statistical design.

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Authors: K. Akilandeswari, G. M. Nasira

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Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) measure brain signals activity, intentionally and unintentionally induced by users, and provides a communication channel without depending on the brain’s normal peripheral nerves and muscles output pathway. Feature Selection (FS) is a global optimization machine learning problem that reduces features, removes irrelevant and noisy data resulting in acceptable recognition accuracy. It is a vital step affecting pattern recognition system performance. This study presents a new Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) based feature selection algorithm. Multi-layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLPNN) classifier with backpropagation training algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm classify selected features.

Keywords: Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), Feature Selection (FS), Walsh–Hadamard Transform (WHT), Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO), Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm.

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Authors: A. M. Hasna

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Today global warming, climate change and energy supply are of greater concern as it is widely realized that the planet earth does not provide an infinite capacity for absorbing human industrialization in the 21st century. The aim of this paper is to analyze upstream and downstream electricity production in selected case studies: a coal power plant, a pump system and a microwave oven covering and consumption to explore the position of energy efficiency in engineering sustainability. Collectively, the analysis presents energy efficiency as a major pathway towards sustainability that requires an inclusive and a holistic supply chain response in the engineering design process.

Keywords: Sustainability, technology, efficiency, engineering, energy.

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Authors: Abdulsalam I. Rafida

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The main objective of this research was to investigate the biosorption capacity for biofilms of sulphate reducing bacteria (SRB) to remove heavy metals, such as Zn, Pb and Cd from rainwater using laboratory-scale reactors containing mixed support media. Evidence showed that biosorption had contributed to removal of heavy metals including Zn, Pb and Cd in presence of SRB and SRB were also found in the aqueous samples from reactors. However, the SRB and specific families (Desulfobacteriaceae and Desulfovibrionaceae) were found mainly in the biomass samples taken from all reactors at the end of the experiment. EDX-analysis of reactor solids at end of experiment showed that heavy metals Zn, Pb and Cd had also accumulated in these precipitates.

Keywords: Sulphate reducing bacteria (SRB), biosorption capacity.

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Authors: A. Safari, R. Jahani, H. A. Shayanfar, J. Olamaei

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This paper shows the results obtained in the analysis of the impact of distributed generation (DG) on distribution losses and presents a new algorithm to the optimal allocation of distributed generation resources in distribution networks. The optimization is based on a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization (HGAPSO) aiming to optimal DG allocation in distribution network. Through this algorithm a significant improvement in the optimization goal is achieved. With a numerical example the superiority of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated in comparison with the simple genetic algorithm.

Keywords: Distributed Generation, Distribution Networks, Genetic Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization.

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Authors: R. C. Ferreira, H. H. C. De Lima, A. A. Cândido, O. M. Couto Junior, P. A. Arroyo, K. Q De Carvalho, G. F. Gauze, M. A. S. D. Barros

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Removal of the widespread used drug paracetamol from water was investigated using activated carbon originated from dende coconut mesocarp and babassu coconut mesocarp. Kinetic and equilibrium data were obtained at different values of pH. Both activated carbons showed high efficiency when pH ≤ pHPZC as the carbonil group of paracetamol molecule are adsorbed due to positively charged carbon surface. Microporosity also played an important role in such process. Pseudo-second order model was better adjusted to the kinetic results. Equilibrium data may be represented by Langmuir equation.

Keywords: Adsorption, activated carbon, babassu, dende.

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Authors: Saima Ayaz, Zakir Hussain, Maqbool Hussain Sial

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The study identified the sources of production inefficiency of the farming sector in district Faisalabad in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique was utilized at farm level survey data of 300 farmers for the year 2009. The overall mean efficiency score was 0.78 indicating 22 percent inefficiency of the sample farmers. Computed efficiency scores were then regressed on farm specific variables using Tobit regression analysis. Farming experience, education, access to farming credit, herd size and number of cultivation practices showed constructive and significant effect on the farmer-s technical efficiency.

Keywords: Agricultural credit, DEA, Technical efficiency, Tobit analysis

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Authors: Himanshu Patel, R. T. Vashi

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Adsorption of Toluidine blue dye from aqueous solutions onto Neem Leaf Powder (NLP) has been investigated. The surface characterization of this natural material was examined by Particle size analysis, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). The effects of process parameters such as initial concentration, pH, temperature and contact duration on the adsorption capacities have been evaluated, in which pH has been found to be most effective parameter among all. The data were analyzed using the Langmuir and Freundlich for explaining the equilibrium characteristics of adsorption. And kinetic models like pseudo first- order, second-order model and Elovich equation were utilized to describe the kinetic data. The experimental data were well fitted with Langmuir adsorption isotherm model and pseudo second order kinetic model. The thermodynamic parameters, such as Free energy of adsorption (AG"), enthalpy change (AH') and entropy change (AS°) were also determined and evaluated.

Keywords: Adsorption, isotherm models, kinetic models, temperature, toluidine blue dye, surface chemistry.

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Authors: B. Abbad, A. Lounis, Tassalit Djilali

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The effects of equilibrium time, solution pH, and sorption temperature of cationic methylene blue (MB) adsorption on nanoporous metallosilicoaluminophosphate ZnAPSO-34 was studied using a batch equilibration method. UV–VIS spectroscopy was used to obtain the adsorption isotherms at 20° C. The optimum period for adsorption was 300 min. However, MB removal increased from 81,82 % to 94,81 %. The equilibrium adsorption data was analyzed by using Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models. Langmuir isotherm was found to be the better-fitting model and the process followed pseudo second–order kinetics. The results showed that ZnAPSO-34 could be employed as an effective material and could be an attractive alternative for the removal of dyes and colors from aqueous solutions.

Keywords: Adsorption, Dye, Metallosilicoaluminophosphate, Methylene Blue.

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Authors: Zhiguo Yang, Xiangan Yue, Minglu Shao, Yang Yue, Tianqi Yue

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In low permeability reservoirs, the reservoir pore throat is small and the micro heterogeneity is prominent. Conventional microsphere profile control agents generally have good injectability but poor plugging effect; however, profile control agents with good plugging effect generally have poor injectability, which makes it difficult for agent to realize deep profile control of reservoir. To solve this problem, styrene and acrylamide were used as monomers in the laboratory. Emulsion polymerization was used to prepare the Controllable Self-Aggregating Colloidal Particle (CSA), which was rich in amide group. The CSA microsphere dispersion solution with a particle diameter smaller than the pore throat diameter was injected into the reservoir to ensure that the profile control agent had good inject ability. After dispersing the CSA microsphere to the deep part of the reservoir, the CSA microspheres dispersed in static for a certain period of time will self-aggregate into large-sized particle clusters to achieve plugging of hypertonic channels. The CSA microsphere has the characteristics of low expansion and avoids shear fracture in the process of migration. It can be observed by transmission electron microscope that CSA microspheres still maintain regular and uniform spherical and core-shell heterogeneous structure after aging at 100 ºC for 35 days, and CSA microspheres have good thermal stability. The results of bottle test showed that with the increase of cation concentration, the aggregation time of CSA microspheres gradually shortened, and the influence of divalent cations was greater than that of monovalent ions. Physical simulation experiments show that CSA microspheres have good injectability, and the aggregated CSA particle clusters can produce effective plugging and migrate to the deep part of the reservoir for profile control.

Keywords: Heterogeneous reservoir, deep profile control, emulsion polymerization, colloidal particles, plugging characteristic.

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Authors: S. Esfandeh, M. Sedighizadeh

Abstract:

Weather systems use enormously complex combinations of numerical tools for study and forecasting. Unfortunately, due to phenomena in the world climate, such as the greenhouse effect, classical models may become insufficient mostly because they lack adaptation. Therefore, the weather forecast problem is matched for heuristic approaches, such as Evolutionary Algorithms. Experimentation with heuristic methods like Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm can lead to the development of new insights or promising models that can be fine tuned with more focused techniques. This paper describes a PSO approach for analysis and prediction of data and provides experimental results of the aforementioned method on realworld meteorological time series.

Keywords: Weather, Climate, PSO, Prediction, Meteorological

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Authors: Rizwan Nasir, Hilmi Mukhtar, Zakaria Man, Dzeti Farhah Mohshim

Abstract:

Carbon dioxide has been well associated with greenhouse effect, and due to its corrosive nature it is an undesirable compound. A variety of physical-chemical processes are available for the removal of carbon dioxide. Previous attempts in this field have established alkanolamine group has the capability to remove carbon dioxide. So, this study combined the polymeric membrane and alkanolamine solutions to fabricate the amine polymeric membrane (APM) to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂). This study entails the effect of three types of amines, monoethanolamine (MEA), diethanolamine (DEA), and methyldiethanolamine (MDEA). The effect of each alkanolamine group on the morphology and performance of polyether sulfone (PES) polymeric membranes was studied. Flat sheet membranes were fabricated by solvent evaporation method by adding polymer and different alkanolamine solutions in the N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) solvent. The final membranes were characterized by using Field Emission Electron Microscope (FESEM), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), and Thermo-Gravimetric Analysis (TGA). The membrane separation performance was studied. The PES-DEA and PES-MDEA membrane has good ability to remove carbon dioxide. 

Keywords: Amine Polymeric membrane, Alkanolamine solution, CO2 Removal, Characterization.

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