Search results for: subcritical water extraction.
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 3095

Search results for: subcritical water extraction.

2285 A Trainable Neural Network Ensemble for ECG Beat Classification

Authors: Atena Sajedin, Shokoufeh Zakernejad, Soheil Faridi, Mehrdad Javadi, Reza Ebrahimpour

Abstract:

This paper illustrates the use of a combined neural network model for classification of electrocardiogram (ECG) beats. We present a trainable neural network ensemble approach to develop customized electrocardiogram beat classifier in an effort to further improve the performance of ECG processing and to offer individualized health care. We process a three stage technique for detection of premature ventricular contraction (PVC) from normal beats and other heart diseases. This method includes a denoising, a feature extraction and a classification. At first we investigate the application of stationary wavelet transform (SWT) for noise reduction of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. Then feature extraction module extracts 10 ECG morphological features and one timing interval feature. Then a number of multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) neural networks with different topologies are designed. The performance of the different combination methods as well as the efficiency of the whole system is presented. Among them, Stacked Generalization as a proposed trainable combined neural network model possesses the highest recognition rate of around 95%. Therefore, this network proves to be a suitable candidate in ECG signal diagnosis systems. ECG samples attributing to the different ECG beat types were extracted from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database for the study.

Keywords: ECG beat Classification; Combining Classifiers;Premature Ventricular Contraction (PVC); Multi Layer Perceptrons;Wavelet Transform

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2284 Effects of Heavy Pumping and Artificial Groundwater Recharge Pond on the Aquifer System of Langat Basin, Malaysia

Authors: R. May, K. Jinno, I. Yusoff

Abstract:

The paper aims at evaluating the effects of heavy groundwater withdrawal and artificial groundwater recharge of an ex-mining pond to the aquifer system of the Langat Basin through the three-dimensional (3D) numerical modeling. Many mining sites have been left behind from the massive mining exploitations in Malaysia during the England colonization era and from the last few decades. These sites are able to accommodate more than a million cubic meters of water from precipitation, runoff, groundwater, and river. Most of the time, the mining sites are turned into ponds for recreational activities. In the current study, an artificial groundwater recharge from an ex-mining pond in the Langat Basin was proposed due to its capacity to store >50 million m3 of water. The location of the pond is near the Langat River and opposite a steel company where >4 million gallons of groundwater is withdrawn on a daily basis. The 3D numerical simulation was developed using the Groundwater Modeling System (GMS). The calibrated model (error about 0.7 m) was utilized to simulate two scenarios (1) Case 1: artificial recharge pond with no pumping and (2) Case 2: artificial pond with pumping. The results showed that in Case 1, the pond played a very important role in supplying additional water to the aquifer and river. About 90,916 m3/d of water from the pond, 1,173 m3/d from the Langat River, and 67,424 m3/d from the direct recharge of precipitation infiltrated into the aquifer system. In Case 2, due to the abstraction of groundwater from a company, it caused a steep depression around the wells, river, and pond. The result of the water budget showed an increase rate of inflow in the pond and river with 92,493m3/d and 3,881m3/d respectively. The outcome of the current study provides useful information of the aquifer behavior of the Langat Basin.

Keywords: Groundwater and surface water interaction, groundwater modeling, GMS, artificial recharge pond, ex-mining site.

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2283 River Flow Prediction Using Nonlinear Prediction Method

Authors: N. H. Adenan, M. S. M. Noorani

Abstract:

River flow prediction is an essential to ensure proper management of water resources can be optimally distribute water to consumers. This study presents an analysis and prediction by using nonlinear prediction method involving monthly river flow data in Tanjung Tualang from 1976 to 2006. Nonlinear prediction method involves the reconstruction of phase space and local linear approximation approach. The phase space reconstruction involves the reconstruction of one-dimensional (the observed 287 months of data) in a multidimensional phase space to reveal the dynamics of the system. Revenue of phase space reconstruction is used to predict the next 72 months. A comparison of prediction performance based on correlation coefficient (CC) and root mean square error (RMSE) have been employed to compare prediction performance for nonlinear prediction method, ARIMA and SVM. Prediction performance comparisons show the prediction results using nonlinear prediction method is better than ARIMA and SVM. Therefore, the result of this study could be used to develop an efficient water management system to optimize the allocation water resources.

Keywords: River flow, nonlinear prediction method, phase space, local linear approximation.

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2282 Face Recognition Using Double Dimension Reduction

Authors: M. A Anjum, M. Y. Javed, A. Basit

Abstract:

In this paper a new approach to face recognition is presented that achieves double dimension reduction making the system computationally efficient with better recognition results. In pattern recognition techniques, discriminative information of image increases with increase in resolution to a certain extent, consequently face recognition results improve with increase in face image resolution and levels off when arriving at a certain resolution level. In the proposed model of face recognition, first image decimation algorithm is applied on face image for dimension reduction to a certain resolution level which provides best recognition results. Due to better computational speed and feature extraction potential of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) it is applied on face image. A subset of coefficients of DCT from low to mid frequencies that represent the face adequately and provides best recognition results is retained. A trade of between decimation factor, number of DCT coefficients retained and recognition rate with minimum computation is obtained. Preprocessing of the image is carried out to increase its robustness against variations in poses and illumination level. This new model has been tested on different databases which include ORL database, Yale database and a color database. The proposed technique has performed much better compared to other techniques. The significance of the model is two fold: (1) dimension reduction up to an effective and suitable face image resolution (2) appropriate DCT coefficients are retained to achieve best recognition results with varying image poses, intensity and illumination level.

Keywords: Biometrics, DCT, Face Recognition, Feature extraction.

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2281 Modelling Phytoremediation Rates of Aquatic Macrophytes in Aquaculture Effluent

Authors: E. A. Kiridi, A. O. Ogunlela

Abstract:

Pollutants from aquacultural practices constitute environmental problems and phytoremediation could offer cheaper environmentally sustainable alternative since equipment using advanced treatment for fish tank effluent is expensive to import, install, operate and maintain, especially in developing countries. The main objective of this research was, therefore, to develop a mathematical model for phytoremediation by aquatic plants in aquaculture wastewater. Other objectives were to evaluate the retention times on phytoremediation rates using the model and to measure the nutrient level of the aquaculture effluent and phytoremediation rates of three aquatic macrophytes, namely; water hyacinth (Eichornia crassippes), water lettuce (Pistial stratoites) and morning glory (Ipomea asarifolia). A completely randomized experimental design was used in the study. Approximately 100 g of each macrophyte were introduced into the hydroponic units and phytoremediation indices monitored at 8 different intervals from the first to the 28th day. The water quality parameters measured were pH and electrical conductivity (EC). Others were concentration of ammonium–nitrogen (NH4+ -N), nitrite- nitrogen (NO2- -N), nitrate- nitrogen (NO3- -N), phosphate –phosphorus (PO43- -P), and biomass value. The biomass produced by water hyacinth was 438.2 g, 600.7 g, 688.2 g and 725.7 g at four 7–day intervals. The corresponding values for water lettuce were 361.2 g, 498.7 g, 561.2 g and 623.7 g and for morning glory were 417.0 g, 567.0 g, 642.0 g and 679.5g. Coefficient of determination was greater than 80% for EC, TDS, NO2- -N, NO3- -N and 70% for NH4+ -N using any of the macrophytes and the predicted values were within the 95% confidence interval of measured values. Therefore, the model is valuable in the design and operation of phytoremediation systems for aquaculture effluent.

Keywords: Phytoremediation, macrophytes, hydroponic unit, aquaculture effluent, mathematical model.

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2280 Optimization of a Bioremediation Strategy for an Urban Stream of Matanza-Riachuelo Basin

Authors: María D. Groppa, Andrea Trentini, Myriam Zawoznik, Roxana Bigi, Carlos Nadra, Patricia L. Marconi

Abstract:

In the present work, a remediation bioprocess based on the use of a local isolate of the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris immobilized in alginate beads is proposed. This process was shown to be effective for the reduction of several chemical and microbial contaminants present in Cildáñez stream, a water course that is part of the Matanza-Riachuelo Basin (Buenos Aires, Argentina). The bioprocess, involving the culture of the microalga in autotrophic conditions in a stirred-tank bioreactor supplied with a marine propeller for 6 days, allowed a significant reduction of Escherichia coli and total coliform numbers (over 95%), as well as of ammoniacal nitrogen (96%), nitrates (86%), nitrites (98%), and total phosphorus (53%) contents. Pb content was also significantly diminished after the bioprocess (95%). Standardized cytotoxicity tests using Allium cepa seeds and Cildáñez water pre- and post-remediation were also performed. Germination rate and mitotic index of onion seeds imbibed in Cildáñez water subjected to the bioprocess was similar to that observed in seeds imbibed in distilled water and significantly superior to that registered when untreated Cildáñez water was used for imbibition. Our results demonstrate the potential of this simple and cost-effective technology to remove urban-water contaminants, offering as an additional advantage the possibility of an easy biomass recovery, which may become a source of alternative energy.

Keywords: Bioreactor, bioremediation, Chlorella vulgaris, Matanza-Riachuelo basin, microalgae.

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2279 Development of Sustainable Farming Compartment with Treated Wastewater in Abu Dhabi

Authors: Jongwan Eun, Sam Helwany, Lakshyana K. C.

Abstract:

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is significantly dependent on desalinated water and groundwater resource, which is expensive and highly energy intensive. Despite the scarce water resource, stagnates only 54% of the recycled water was reused in 2012, and due to the lack of infrastructure to reuse the recycled water, the portion is expected to decrease with growing water usage. In this study, an “Oasis” complex comprised of Sustainable Farming Compartments (SFC) was proposed for reusing treated wastewater. The wastewater is used to decrease the ambient temperature of the SFC via an evaporative cooler. The SFC prototype was designed, built, and tested in an environmentally controlled laboratory and field site to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the SFC subjected to various climatic conditions in Abu Dhabi. Based on the experimental results, the temperature drop achieved in the SFC in the laboratory and field site were5 ̊C from 22 ̊C and 7- 15 ̊C (from 33-45 ̊C to average 28 ̊C at relative humidity < 50%), respectively. An energy simulation using TRNSYS was performed to extend and validate the results obtained from the experiment. The results from the energy simulation and experiments show statistically close agreement. The total power consumption of the SFC system was approximately three and a half times lower than that of an electrical air conditioner. Therefore, by using treated wastewater, the SFC has a promising prospect to solve Abu Dhabi’s ecological concern related to desertification and wind erosion.

Keywords: Ecological farming system, energy simulation, evaporative cooling system, treated wastewater, temperature, humidity.

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2278 Influence of Hydrolytic Degradation on Properties of Moisture Membranes Used in Fire-Protective Clothing

Authors: Rachid El Aidani, Phuong Nguyen-Tri, Toan Vu-Khanh

Abstract:

This study intends to show the influence of the hydrolytic degradation on the properties of the e-PTFE/NOMEX® membranes used in fire-protective clothing. The modification of water vapour permeability, morphology and chemical structure was examined by MOCON Permatran, electron microscopy scanning (SEM), and ATR-FTIR, respectively. A decrease in permeability to water vapour of the aged samples was observed following closure of transpiration pores. Analysis of fiber morphology indicates the appearance of defects at the fibers surface with the presence of micro cavities. ATR-FTIR analysis reveals the presence of a new absorption band attributed to carboxylic acid terminal groups generated during the amide bond hydrolysis.

Keywords: Hydrolytic ageing, moisture membrane; water vapor permeability, morphology.

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2277 Laser Data Based Automatic Generation of Lane-Level Road Map for Intelligent Vehicles

Authors: Zehai Yu, Hui Zhu, Linglong Lin, Huawei Liang, Biao Yu, Weixin Huang

Abstract:

With the development of intelligent vehicle systems, a high-precision road map is increasingly needed in many aspects. The automatic lane lines extraction and modeling are the most essential steps for the generation of a precise lane-level road map. In this paper, an automatic lane-level road map generation system is proposed. To extract the road markings on the ground, the multi-region Otsu thresholding method is applied, which calculates the intensity value of laser data that maximizes the variance between background and road markings. The extracted road marking points are then projected to the raster image and clustered using a two-stage clustering algorithm. Lane lines are subsequently recognized from these clusters by the shape features of their minimum bounding rectangle. To ensure the storage efficiency of the map, the lane lines are approximated to cubic polynomial curves using a Bayesian estimation approach. The proposed lane-level road map generation system has been tested on urban and expressway conditions in Hefei, China. The experimental results on the datasets show that our method can achieve excellent extraction and clustering effect, and the fitted lines can reach a high position accuracy with an error of less than 10 cm.

Keywords: Curve fitting, lane-level road map, line recognition, multi-thresholding, two-stage clustering.

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2276 Simulation of Sloshing-Shear Mixed Shallow Water Waves (II) Numerical Solutions

Authors: Weihao Chung, Iau-Teh Wang, Yu-Hsi Hu

Abstract:

This is the second part of the paper. It, aside from the core subroutine test reported previously, focuses on the simulation of turbulence governed by the full STF Navier-Stokes equations on a large scale. Law of the wall is found plausible in this study as a model of the boundary layer dynamics. Model validations proceed to include velocity profiles of a stationary turbulent Couette flow, pure sloshing flow simulations, and the identification of water-surface inclination due to fluid accelerations. Errors resulting from the irrotational and hydrostatic assumptions are explored when studying a wind-driven water circulation with no shakings. Illustrative examples show that this numerical strategy works for the simulation of sloshing-shear mixed flow in a 3-D rigid rectangular base tank.

Keywords: potential flow theory, sloshing flow, space-timefiltering, order of accuracy.

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2275 Seasonal Variation of the Impact of Mining Activities on Ga-Selati River in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Authors: Joshua N. Edokpayi, John O. Odiyo, Patience P. Shikwambana

Abstract:

Water is a very rare natural resource in South Africa. Ga-Selati River is used for both domestic and industrial purposes. This study was carried out in order to assess the quality of Ga-Selati River in a mining area of Limpopo Province-Phalaborwa. The pH, Electrical Conductivity (EC) and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) were determined using a Crinson multimeter while turbidity was measured using a Labcon Turbidimeter. The concentrations of Al, Ca, Cd, Cr, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na and Pb were analysed in triplicate using a Varian 520 flame atomic absorption spectrometer (AAS) supplied by PerkinElmer, after acid digestion with nitric acid in a fume cupboard. The average pH of the river from eight different sampling sites was 8.00 and 9.38 in wet and dry season respectively. Higher EC values were determined in the dry season (138.7 mS/m) than in the wet season (96.93 mS/m). Similarly, TDS values were higher in dry (929.29 mg/L) than in the wet season (640.72 mg/L) season. These values exceeded the recommended guideline of South Africa Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) for domestic water use (70 mS/m) and that of the World Health Organization (WHO) (600 mS/m), respectively. Turbidity varied between 1.78-5.20 and 0.95-2.37 NTU in both wet and dry seasons. Total hardness of 312.50 mg/L and 297.75 mg/L as the concentration of CaCO3 was computed for the river in both the wet and the dry seasons and the river water was categorised as very hard. Mean concentration of the metals studied in both the wet and the dry seasons are: Na (94.06 mg/L and 196.3 mg/L), K (11.79 mg/L and 13.62 mg/L), Ca (45.60 mg/L and 41.30 mg/L), Mg (48.41 mg/L and 44.71 mg/L), Al (0.31 mg/L and 0.38 mg/L), Cd (0.01 mg/L and 0.01 mg/L), Cr (0.02 mg/L and 0.09 mg/L), Pb (0.05 mg/L and 0.06 mg/L), Mn (0.31 mg/L and 0.11 mg/L) and Fe (0.76 mg/L and 0.69 mg/L). Results from this study reveal that most of the metals were present in concentrations higher than the recommended guidelines of DWAF and WHO for domestic use and the protection of aquatic life.

Keywords: Contamination, mining activities, surface water, trace metals.

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2274 An Intelligent Text Independent Speaker Identification Using VQ-GMM Model Based Multiple Classifier System

Authors: Cheima Ben Soltane, Ittansa Yonas Kelbesa

Abstract:

Speaker Identification (SI) is the task of establishing identity of an individual based on his/her voice characteristics. The SI task is typically achieved by two-stage signal processing: training and testing. The training process calculates speaker specific feature parameters from the speech and generates speaker models accordingly. In the testing phase, speech samples from unknown speakers are compared with the models and classified. Even though performance of speaker identification systems has improved due to recent advances in speech processing techniques, there is still need of improvement. In this paper, a Closed-Set Tex-Independent Speaker Identification System (CISI) based on a Multiple Classifier System (MCS) is proposed, using Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC) as feature extraction and suitable combination of vector quantization (VQ) and Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) together with Expectation Maximization algorithm (EM) for speaker modeling. The use of Voice Activity Detector (VAD) with a hybrid approach based on Short Time Energy (STE) and Statistical Modeling of Background Noise in the pre-processing step of the feature extraction yields a better and more robust automatic speaker identification system. Also investigation of Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) clustering algorithm for initialization of GMM, for estimating the underlying parameters, in the EM step improved the convergence rate and systems performance. It also uses relative index as confidence measures in case of contradiction in identification process by GMM and VQ as well. Simulation results carried out on voxforge.org speech database using MATLAB highlight the efficacy of the proposed method compared to earlier work.

Keywords: Feature Extraction, Speaker Modeling, Feature Matching, Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC), Gaussian mixture model (GMM), Vector Quantization (VQ), Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG), Expectation Maximization (EM), pre-processing, Voice Activity Detection (VAD), Short Time Energy (STE), Background Noise Statistical Modeling, Closed-Set Tex-Independent Speaker Identification System (CISI).

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2273 Effect of Domestic Treated Wastewater use on Three Varieties of Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) under Semi Arid Conditions

Authors: El Youssfi L., Choukr-Allah R., Zaafrani M., Mediouni T., Ba Samba M., Hirich A

Abstract:

The purpose of this work was to study the effect of the irrigation using waste water with various electric conductivities (T(0,92ds/m), EC3 (3ds/m) and EC6 (6ds/m) on three varieties of quinoa cultivated in a field south of Morocco. The follow up of the evolution of the chemical and agronomic parameters throughout the culture made it possible to determine the responses to the saline stress in arid conditions. Results showed that the salinity caused the depression of plant-s height, and reduced the fresh and dry weight in the different parts of the three varieties plants. The increase of the irrigation water EC didn-t affect the yield for the varieties. Thus, quinoa resisted to salinity and proved a behavior of a facultative halophyte crop. In fact, the cultivation of this using treated wastewater is feasible especially in arid areas for a sustainable use of water resources.

Keywords: Quinoa, salinity, semi-arid, treated wastewater.

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2272 Studies on Seasonal Variations of Physico- Chemical Parameters of Fish Farm at Govt. Nursery Unit, Muzaffargarh, Punjab, Pakistan

Authors: Muhammad Naeem, Abdus Salam, Muhammad Ashraf, Muhammad Imran, Mehtab Ahmad, Muhammad Jamshed Khan, Muhammad Mazhar Ayaz, Muzaffar Ali, Arshad Ali, Memoona Qayyum Abir Ishtiaq

Abstract:

The present study was designed to demonstrate the seasonal variations in physico-chemical parameters of fish farm at Govt. Nursery Unit, Muzaffargarh, Department of Fisheries Govt. of Punjab, Pakistan for a period of eight months from January to August 2008. Water samples were collected on fifteen days basis and have been analyzed for estimation of Air temperature, Water temperature, Light penetration, pH, Total dissolved oxygen, Clouds, Carbonates, Bicarbonates, Total carbonates, Total dissolved solids, Chlorides, Calcium and Hardness. Seasonal fluctuations were observed in all the physico-chemical parameters of fish farm. The overall physicochemical parameters of fish pond water remained within the tolerable range throughout the study period.

Keywords: Freshwater, Fish farm, Water quality, Seasonal variation, Chemical factor

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2271 Mechanical and Chemical Reliability Assessment of Silica Optical Fibres

Authors: Irina Severin, M. Caramihai, K. Chung, G. Tasca, T. Park

Abstract:

The current study has investigated the ageing phenomena of silica optical fibres in relation to water activity which might be accelerated when exposed to a supplementary energy, such as microwaves. A controlled stress by winding fibres onto accurate diameter mandrel was applied. Taking into account that normally a decrease in fibre strength is induced in time by chemical action of water, the effects of cumulative reagents such as: water, applied stress and supplementary energy (microwave) in some cases acted in the opposite manner. The microwave effect as a structural relaxation catalyst appears unexpected, even if the overall gain in fibre strength is not high, but the stress corrosion factor revealed significant increase in certain simulation conditions.

Keywords: optical fibres, mechanical testing, aging, microwave, structural relaxation.

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2270 An Unstructured Finite-volume Technique for Shallow-water Flows with Wetting and Drying Fronts

Authors: Rajendra K. Ray, Kim Dan Nguyen

Abstract:

An unstructured finite volume numerical model is presented here for simulating shallow-water flows with wetting and drying fronts. The model is based on the Green-s theorem in combination with Chorin-s projection method. A 2nd-order upwind scheme coupled with a Least Square technique is used to handle convection terms. An Wetting and drying treatment is used in the present model to ensures the total mass conservation. To test it-s capacity and reliability, the present model is used to solve the Parabolic Bowl problem. We compare our numerical solutions with the corresponding analytical and existing standard numerical results. Excellent agreements are found in all the cases.

Keywords: Finite volume method, Projection method, Shallow water, Unstructured grid, wetting/drying fronts.

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2269 A Robust Salient Region Extraction Based on Color and Texture Features

Authors: Mingxin Zhang, Zhaogan Lu, Junyi Shen

Abstract:

In current common research reports, salient regions are usually defined as those regions that could present the main meaningful or semantic contents. However, there are no uniform saliency metrics that could describe the saliency of implicit image regions. Most common metrics take those regions as salient regions, which have many abrupt changes or some unpredictable characteristics. But, this metric will fail to detect those salient useful regions with flat textures. In fact, according to human semantic perceptions, color and texture distinctions are the main characteristics that could distinct different regions. Thus, we present a novel saliency metric coupled with color and texture features, and its corresponding salient region extraction methods. In order to evaluate the corresponding saliency values of implicit regions in one image, three main colors and multi-resolution Gabor features are respectively used for color and texture features. For each region, its saliency value is actually to evaluate the total sum of its Euclidean distances for other regions in the color and texture spaces. A special synthesized image and several practical images with main salient regions are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed saliency metric and other several common metrics, i.e., scale saliency, wavelet transform modulus maxima point density, and important index based metrics. Experiment results verified that the proposed saliency metric could achieve more robust performance than those common saliency metrics.

Keywords: salient regions, color and texture features, image segmentation, saliency metric

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2268 Radon Concentration in the Water Samples of Hassan District, Karnataka, India

Authors: T. S. Shashikumar

Abstract:

Radon is a radioactive gas emitted from radium, a daughter product of uranium that occurs naturally in rocks and soil. Radon, together with its decay products, emits alpha particles that can damage lung tissue. The activity concentration of 222Ra has been analyzed in water samples collected from borewells and rivers in and around Hassan city, Karnataka State, India. The measurements were performed by Emanometry technique. The concentration of 222Rn in borewell waters varies from 18.49±1.89 to 397.26±12.3 Bql-1 with geometric mean 120.48±12.87 Bql-1 and in river waters it varies from 92.63±9.31 to 93.98±9.51 Bql-1 with geometric mean of 93.16±9.33 Bql-1. In the present study, the radon concentrations are higher in Adarshanagar and Viveka Nagar which are found to be 397.26±12.3 Bql-1 and 325.78±32.56 Bql-1. Most of the analysed samples show a 222Rn concentration more than 100 Bql-1 and this can be attributed to the geology of the area where the ground waters are located, which is predominantly of granitic characteristic. The average inhalation dose and ingestion dose in the borewell water are found to be 0.405 and 0.033 µSvy-1; and in river water it is found to be 0.234 and 0.019 µSvy-1, respectively. The average total effective dose rate in borewell waters and river waters are found to be 0.433 and 0.253 µSvy-1, which does not cause any health risk to the population of Hassan region.

Keywords: Borewell, effective dose, emanometry, 222Rn.

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2267 Effect of Green Water and Mixed Zooplankton on Growth and Survival in Neon Tetra, Paracheirodon innesi (Myers, 1936) during Larval and Early Fry Rearing

Authors: S. V. Sanaye, H. S. Dhaker, R. M. Tibile, V. D. Mhatre

Abstract:

Larval rearing and seed production of most of tetra fishes (Family: Characidae) is critical due to their small size larvae and limited numbers of spawning attempts. During the present study the effect of different live foods on growth and survival of neon tetra, Paracheirodon innesi larvae (length 3.1 ± 0.012mm, weight 0.048 ± 0.00015mg) and early fry (length = 6.44 ± 0.025mm, weight = 0.64 ± 0.003mg and 13 days old) was determined in two experiments. Experiment I was conducted for rearing the larvae by using mixed green water and Infusoria whereas, in Experiment II, early fry were fed with mixed zooplankton, decapsulated Artemia cyst and Artemia nauplii. The larvae fed on mixed green water showed significant (p<0.05) growth and survival when compared to those fed with infusoria. Similarly, the larvae fed with mixed zooplankton exhibited higher growth in terms of length gain (131.98%), weight gain (6658.78%), SGR (14.04%) and survival (95.23%) compared to the other treatments of decapsulated Artemia cyst and Artemia nauplii. The present study concluded that mixed green water and mixed zooplankton should be used as food for better growth and survival of the larvae and early fry of P. innesi, respectively.

Keywords: Growth, Mixed Green water, mixed zooplankton, Neon tetra, Paracheirodon innesi.

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2266 Mechanical and Hydric Properties of High- Performance Concrete Containing Natural Zeolites

Authors: E. Vejmelková, M. Ondráček, R. Černý

Abstract:

Mechanical and water transport properties of high performance concrete (HPC) containing natural zeolite as partial replacement of Portland cement are studied. Experimental results show that in the investigated mixes the use of natural zeolite leads to an increase of porosity, decrease of compressive strength and increase of moisture diffusivity and water vapor diffusion coefficient, as compared with the reference HPC. However, for the replacement level up to 20% of the mass of Portland cement the concretes still maintain their high performance character and exhibit acceptable water transport properties. Therefore, natural zeolite can be considered an environmental friendly binder with a potential to replace a part of Portland cement in concrete in building industry.

Keywords: Natural zeolites, high-performance concrete; hydric properties, mechanical properties

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2265 Influence of Watertable Depth on Soil Sodicity and Salinity

Authors: F.A. Chandio-A.G. Soomro, A.H. Memon, M.A.Talpur

Abstract:

In order to monitor the water table depth on soil profile salinity buildup, a field study was carried out during 2006-07. Wheat (Rabi) and Sorghum (Kharif) fodder were sown in with three treatments. The results showed that watertable depth lowered from 1.15m to 2.89 m depth at the end of experiment. With lower of watertable depth, pH, ECe and SAR decreased under crops both without and with gypsum and increased in fallowing. Soil moisture depletion was directly proportional to lowering of watertable. With the application of irrigation water (58cm) pH, ECe and SAR were reduced in cropped plots, reduction was higher in gypsum applied plots than non-gypsum plots. In case of fallowing, there was increase in pH, EC, while slight reduction occurred in SAR values. However, soil salinity showed an increasing upward trend under fallowing and its value in 0-30 cm soil layer was the highest amongst the treatments.

Keywords: Aquifer, Soil Salinity, Soil sodicity, Water table

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2264 Variability of Hydrological Modeling of the Blue Nile

Authors: Abeer Samy, Oliver C. Saavedra Valeriano, Abdelazim Negm

Abstract:

The Blue Nile Basin is the most important tributary of the Nile River. Egypt and Sudan are almost dependent on water originated from the Blue Nile. This multi-dependency creates conflicts among the three countries Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia making the management of these conflicts as an international issue. Good assessment of the water resources of the Blue Nile is an important to help in managing such conflicts. Hydrological models are good tool for such assessment. This paper presents a critical review of the nature and variability of the climate and hydrology of the Blue Nile Basin as a first step of using hydrological modeling to assess the water resources of the Blue Nile. Many several attempts are done to develop basin-scale hydrological modeling on the Blue Nile. Lumped and semi distributed models used averages of meteorological inputs and watershed characteristics in hydrological simulation, to analyze runoff for flood control and water resource management. Distributed models include the temporal and spatial variability of catchment conditions and meteorological inputs to allow better representation of the hydrological process. The main challenge of all used models was to assess the water resources of the basin is the shortage of the data needed for models calibration and validation. It is recommended to use distributed model for their higher accuracy to cope with the great variability and complexity of the Blue Nile basin and to collect sufficient data to have more sophisticated and accurate hydrological modeling.

Keywords: Blue Nile Basin, Climate Change, Hydrological Modeling, Watershed.

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2263 Development of 3D Coordinates and Damaged Point Detection System for Ducts using IMU

Authors: Ki-Tae Park, Young-Joon Yu, Chin-Hyung Lee, Woosang Lee

Abstract:

Recently, as the scale of construction projects has increases, more ground excavation for foundations is carried out than ever before. Consequently, damage to underground ducts (gas, water/sewage or oil pipelines, communication cables or power cable ducts) or superannuated pipelines frequently cause serious accidents resulting in damage to life and property. (In Korea, the total length of city water pipelines was approximately 2,000 km as of the end of 2009.) In addition, large amounts of damage caused by fractures, water and gas leakage caused by superannuation or damage to underground ducts in construction has been reported. Therefore, a system is required to precisely detect defects and deterioration in underground pipelines and the locations of such defects, for timely and accurate maintenance or replacement of the ducts. In this study, a system was developed which can locate underground structures (gas and water pipelines, power cable ducts, etc.) in 3D-coordinates and monitor the degree and position of defects using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensing technique. The system can prevent damage to underground ducts and superannuated pipelines during construction, and provide reliable data for maintenance. The utility of the IMU sensing technique used in aircraft and ships in civil applications was verified.

Keywords: IMU, Pipelines, 3D-Coordinate, monitor.

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2262 Experimental Study of Discharge with Sharp-Crested Weirs

Authors: E. Keramaris, V. Kanakoudis

Abstract:

In this study the water flow in an open channel over a sharp-crested weir is investigated experimentally. For this reason a series of laboratory experiments were performed in an open channel with a sharp-crested weir. The maximum head expected over the weir, the total upstream water height and the downstream water height of the impact in the constant bed of the open channel were measured. The discharge was measured using a tank put right after the open channel. In addition, the discharge and the upstream velocity were also calculated using already known equations. The main finding is that the relative error percentage for the majority of the experimental measurements is ± 4%, meaning that the calculation of the discharge with a sharp-crested weir gives very good results compared to the numerical results from known equations.

Keywords: Sharp-crested weir, weir height, flow measurement, open channel flow.

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2261 Evaluation of the Performance of ACTIFLO® Clarifier in the Treatment of Mining Wastewaters: Case Study of Costerfield Mining Operations, Victoria, Australia

Authors: Seyed Mohsen Samaei, Shirley Gato-Trinidad

Abstract:

A pre-treatment stage prior to reverse osmosis (RO) is very important to ensure the long-term performance of the RO membranes in any wastewater treatment using RO. This study aims to evaluate the application of the Actiflo® clarifier as part of a pre-treatment unit in mining operations. It involves performing analytical testing on RO feed water before and after installation of Actiflo® unit. Water samples prior to RO plant stage were obtained on different dates from Costerfield mining operations in Victoria, Australia. Tests were conducted in an independent laboratory to determine the concentration of various compounds in RO feed water before and after installation of Actiflo® unit during the entire evaluated period from December 2015 to June 2018. Water quality analysis shows that the quality of RO feed water has remarkably improved since installation of Actiflo® clarifier. Suspended solids (SS) and turbidity removal efficiencies has been improved by 91 and 85 percent respectively in pre-treatment system since the installation of Actiflo®. The Actiflo® clarifier proved to be a valuable part of pre-treatment system prior to RO. It has the potential to conveniently condition the mining wastewater prior to RO unit, and reduce the risk of RO physical failure and irreversible fouling. Consequently, reliable and durable operation of RO unit with minimum requirement for RO membrane replacement is expected with Actiflo® in use.

Keywords: Actiflo® clarifier, membrane, mining wastewater, reverse osmosis, wastewater treatment.

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2260 Monthly River Flow Prediction Using a Nonlinear Prediction Method

Authors: N. H. Adenan, M. S. M. Noorani

Abstract:

River flow prediction is an essential tool to ensure proper management of water resources and the optimal distribution of water to consumers. This study presents an analysis and prediction by using nonlinear prediction method with monthly river flow data for Tanjung Tualang from 1976 to 2006. Nonlinear prediction method involves the reconstruction of phase space and local linear approximation approach. The reconstruction of phase space involves the reconstruction of one-dimension (the observed 287 months of data) in a multidimensional phase space to reveal the dynamics of the system. The revenue of phase space reconstruction is used to predict the next 72 months. A comparison of prediction performance based on correlation coefficient (CC) and root mean square error (RMSE) was employed to compare prediction performance for the nonlinear prediction method, ARIMA and SVM. Prediction performance comparisons show that the prediction results using the nonlinear prediction method are better than ARIMA and SVM. Therefore, the results of this study could be used to develop an efficient water management system to optimize the allocation of water resources.

Keywords: River flow, nonlinear prediction method, phase space, local linear approximation.

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2259 Sustainability Analysis and Quality Assessment of Rainwater Harvested from Green Roofs: A Review

Authors: Mst. Nilufa Sultana, Shatirah Akib, Muhammad Aqeel Ashraf, Mohamed Roseli Zainal Abidin

Abstract:

Most people today are aware that global climate change is not just a scientific theory but also a fact with worldwide consequences. Global climate change is due to rapid urbanization, industrialization, high population growth and current vulnerability of the climatic condition. Water is becoming scarce as a result of global climate change. To mitigate the problem arising due to global climate change and its drought effect, harvesting rainwater from green roofs, an environmentally-friendly and versatile technology, is becoming one of the best assessment criteria and gaining attention in Malaysia. This paper addresses the sustainability of green roofs and examines the quality of water harvested from green roofs in comparison to rainwater. The factors that affect the quality of such water, taking into account, for example, roofing materials, climatic conditions, the frequency of rainfall frequency and the first flush. A green roof was installed on the Humid Tropic Centre (HTC) is a place of the study on monitoring program for urban Stormwater Management Manual for Malaysia (MSMA), Eco-Hydrological Project in Kuala Lumpur, and the rainwater was harvested and evaluated on the basis of four parameters i.e., conductivity, dissolved oxygen (DO), pH and temperature. These parameters were found to fall between Class I and Class III of the Interim National Water Quality Standards (INWQS) and the Water Quality Index (WQI). Some preliminary treatment such as disinfection and filtration could likely to improve the value of these parameters to class I. This review paper clearly indicates that there is a need for more research to address other microbiological and chemical quality parameters to ensure that the harvested water is suitable for use potable water for domestic purposes. The change in all physical, chemical and microbiological parameters with respect to storage time will be a major focus of future studies in this field.

Keywords: Green roofs, INWQS, MSMA-SME, Rainwater harvesting.

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2258 A Review of Genetic Algorithm Optimization: Operations and Applications to Water Pipeline Systems

Authors: I. Abuiziah, N. Shakarneh

Abstract:

Genetic Algorithm (GA) is a powerful technique for solving optimization problems. It follows the idea of survival of the fittest - Better and better solutions evolve from previous generations until a near optimal solution is obtained. GA uses the main three operations, the selection, crossover and mutation to produce new generations from the old ones. GA has been widely used to solve optimization problems in many applications such as traveling salesman problem, airport traffic control, information retrieval (IR), reactive power optimization, job shop scheduling, and hydraulics systems such as water pipeline systems. In water pipeline systems we need to achieve some goals optimally such as minimum cost of construction, minimum length of pipes and diameters, and the place of protection devices. GA shows high performance over the other optimization techniques, moreover, it is easy to implement and use. Also, it searches a limited number of solutions.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm, optimization, pipeline systems, selection, cross over.

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2257 Formation of Byproducts during Regeneration of Various Graphitic Adsorbents in a Batch Electrochemical Reactor

Authors: S. N. Hussain, H. M. A. Asghar, H. Sattar, N. W. Brown, E. P. L. Roberts

Abstract:

A water treatment technology employing the adsorption of dissolved organic contaminants from water and their electrochemical regeneration has been commercialized by Arvia Technology Ltd, UK. This technology focuses the adsorption of pollutants onto the surface of low surface area graphite based adsorbents followed by the anodic oxidation of adsorbed species in an electrochemical cell. However, some of the adsorbed species may lead to the formation of intermediate breakdown products due to incomplete oxidation. The information regarding the formation of breakdown products during electrochemical regeneration of these adsorbents is important for the effective application of this process to water treatment. In the present paper, the formation of the break down products during electrochemical regeneration of various graphite based adsorbents has been demonstrated.

Keywords: Arvia®, Adsorption, Electrochemical Regeneration, Breakdown products.

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2256 Investigation of the Effect of Impulse Voltage to Flashover by Using Water Jet

Authors: Harun Gülan, Muhsin Tunay Gencoglu, Mehmet Cebeci

Abstract:

The main function of the insulators used in high voltage (HV) transmission lines is to insulate the energized conductor from the pole and hence from the ground. However, when the insulators fail to perform this insulation function due to various effects, failures occur. The deterioration of the insulation results either from breakdown or surface flashover. The surface flashover is caused by the layer of pollution that forms conductivity on the surface of the insulator, such as salt, carbonaceous compounds, rain, moisture, fog, dew, industrial pollution and desert dust. The source of the majority of failures and interruptions in HV lines is surface flashover. This threatens the continuity of supply and causes significant economic losses. Pollution flashover in HV insulators is still a serious problem that has not been fully resolved. In this study, a water jet test system has been established in order to investigate the behavior of insulators under dirty conditions and to determine their flashover performance. Flashover behavior of the insulators is examined by applying impulse voltages in the test system. This study aims to investigate the insulator behaviour under high impulse voltages. For this purpose, a water jet test system was installed and experimental results were obtained over a real system and analyzed. By using the water jet test system instead of the actual insulator, the damage to the insulator as a result of the flashover that would occur under impulse voltage was prevented. The results of the test system performed an important role in determining the insulator behavior and provided predictability.

Keywords: Insulator, pollution flashover, high impulse voltage, water jet model.

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