Determination of diffusion coefficients of water in cellulose acetate membranes

The determination of the diffusion coefficient for water in various porosity cellulose acetate membranes by a gravimetric method, using a humidified carrier gas, is described. It was found to be impossible to obtain meaningful results for very porous membranes, although dense membranes gave limiting values of diffusion coefficient at high carrier gas velocities. This phenomenon is explained in terms of the dissipation of the heat of sorption by the forced convection provided by the carrier gas. The variation of diffusion coefficient with concentration of water in dense cellulose acetate is explained in terms of clustering of water molecules in the polymer at high concentration.     

CFD simulation of large-scale bubble plumes: Comparisons against experiments

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been carried out to simulate a turbulent, bubble plume in a liquid pool. A two-fluid enhanced k-? model has been used, with the extra source terms introduced to account for the interaction between the bubbles and the liquid and transient calculations have been performed to study the plume growth, the acceleration of the liquid due to viscous drag, and the approach to steady-state conditions. In order to obtain correct spreading of the plume observed experimentally, it was observed that interfacial forces like lift and turbulent dispersion plays important role. The sensitivity analysis for drag coefficient and two different turbulent dispersion forces is presented. The development of the flow variables has been compared with the experimental data. From the CFD predictions obtained in the present work, it can be concluded that a two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric assumption in this case is justified, with 2D model predictions in good agreement with the experimental data and those of a three-dimensional (3D) model, except for the shear stresses and turbulent kinetic energy. In general, quantitative comparison with the experimental data has revealed that, by applying proper models of inter-phase momentum transfer, and performing simulations based on the two-fluid model, satisfactory predictions of mean flow quantities can be obtained for this application away from the injector.     

A vibrational study of the activation sequence of C–H and C–C bonds of isobutene and 1-butene on Mo(110) and (4 × 4)-C/Mo(110) surfaces

The thermal decomposition pathways of isobutene and 1-butene on both Mo(110) and 4 × 4-C/Mo(110) surfaces have been studied using high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS) in order to highlight the substantially different activities of these two surfaces towards the cleavage of C–H and C–C bonds. On clean Mo(110), the CH₂ group of isobutene decomposes upon heating to 150 K, producing either a /-bonded isobutenylidene [(CH₃)₂CCH] species or a 1,1-di-/-bonded isobutenyl [(CH₃)₂CC] species. Upon further heating, extensive C–H bond scission occurs to form hydrocarbon fragments which do not contain CH₃ or CH₂ groups, but appear to have largely intact carbon skeletons. By contrast, isobutene is molecularly adsorbed on the carbide-modified surface at 150 K. Further heating produces isobutylidyne [(CH₃)₂HCC] by 300 K, which subsequently decomposes via C–C bond scission to generate surface methyl groups. The different activation sequence of the C–H and C–C bonds of isobutene on clean and carbide-modified Mo(110) surfaces is also qualitatively confirmed by comparative studies of 1-butene on the two surfaces.     

Visual learning and classification of human epithelial type 2 cell images through spontaneous activity patterns

Identifying the presence of anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) in human epithelial type 2 (HEp-2) cells via the indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) protocol is commonly used to diagnose various connective tissue diseases in clinical pathology tests. As it is a labour and time intensive diagnostic process, several computer aided diagnostic (CAD) systems have been proposed. However, the existing CAD systems suffer from numerous shortcomings due to the selection of features, which is commonly based on expert experience. Such a choice of features may not work well when the CAD systems are retasked to another dataset. To address this, in our previous work, we proposed a novel approach that learns a set of filters from HEp-2 cell images. It is inspired by the receptive fields in the mammalian's vision system, since the receptive fields can be thought as a set of filters for similar shapes. We obtain robust filters for HEp-2 cell classification by employing the independent component analysis (ICA) framework. Although, this approach may be held back due to one particular problem; ICA learning requires a sufficiently large volume of training data which is not always available. In this paper, we demonstrate a biologically inspired solution to address this issue via the use of spontaneous activity patterns (SAP). The spontaneous activity patterns, which are related to the spontaneous neural activities initialised by the chemical release in the brain, are found as the typical stimuli for the visual cell development of newborn animals. In the classification system for HEp-2 cells, we propose to model SAP as a set of small image patches containing randomly positioned Gaussian spots. The SAP image patches are generated and mixed with the training images in order to learn filters via the ICA framework. The obtained filters are adopted to extract the set of responses from a HEp-2 cell image. We then employ regions from this set of responses and stack them into “cubic regions”, and apply a classification based on the correlation information of the features. We show that applying the additional SAP leads to a better classification performance on HEp-2 cell images compared to using only the existing patterns for training ICA filters. The improvement on classification is particularly significant when there are not enough specimen images available in the training set, as SAP adds more variations to the existing data that makes the learned ICA model more robust. We show that the proposed approach consistently outperforms three recently proposed CAD systems on two publicly available datasets: ICPR HEp-2 contest and SNPHEp-2.     

Crack Growth in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Materials: From Discrete to Continuum Damage Modeling

This paper addresses the damage and fracture issues of glass and ceramic materials used in solid oxide fuel cells. Analyses of an internal crack and of an interface crack between dissimilar materials were conducted using a modified boundary layer modeling approach. In this approach, fracture is allowed to occur in a small process window situated at an initial crack tip. Elastic displacement crack-tip fields are prescribed as remote boundary conditions. Crack propagation was first modeled discretely. Next, a continuum damage mechanics (CDM) model for brittle materials was developed to capture damage and crack growth in the process window. In particular, the damage model was applied to a glass-ceramic material that had been developed in-house for sealing purposes. Discrete and continuum damage solutions were then compared. Finally, the CDM model was used to determine the crack propagation direction as a function of a mode mixity measure.     

Towards an Environmentally Acceptable Heterogeneous Catalytic Method of Producing Adipic Acid by the Oxidation of Hydrocarbons in Air

A survey is given of the catalytic methods potentially available for the production of adipic acid by the oxidation of readily available hydrocarbon precursors under environmentally benign conditions. Encouraging results are reported using H₂O₂ as oxidant and microporous FeAlPO-5 as catalyst at moderate temperatures.     

Dehydrocyclization of 1-hexene to benzene on Cu3Pt(111)

The disproportionation ofn-butane (and of isobutane) was catalyzed by sulfated zirconium oxide containing 1.5 wt% Fe, 0.5 wt% Mn, and 4.0 wt% sulfate at 2.0 atm and temperatures in the range of 30–60C. The reaction accompanies isomerization, which under some conditions is as much as one or two orders of magnitude faster than disproportionation. The conversion to each of the products increased with time on stream in a flow reactor, and then declined. The time on stream for maximum conversion was the same for each product. The results suggest that the disproportionation and isomerization reactions proceed through a common C₈ intermediate. Rates of the disproportionation reaction were determined at the time on stream corresponding to the maximum conversion at each temperature; for example, the rate of conversion ofn-butane into isopentane at 60C with ann-butane partial pressure of 0.58 atm was about 1×10^–7 mol/(g of catalyst s).     

Low‐velocity impact of nanocomposite and polymer plates

Nanocomposites are more widely studied today because of higher stiffness, decreased permeability, thermal stability, and many other properties superior to those of regular polymers. However, manufacturers are concerned about implementing nanocomposites because of their lower impact properties with respect to the base polymer. This study focused on low‐velocity impact tests of a thermoplastic olefin by itself and with 5 wt % nanoclay. The impact tests were conducted at ?40, 23.9, and 65.6°C until the polymer and nanocomposite plates experienced complete striker penetration. The force–time and force–deflection responses obtained from the impact testing provided a means of comparing the impact performances of the two materials. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 96: 2309–2315, 2005     

Blends of ethylene–methyl acrylate–acrylic acid terpolymers with ethylene–acrylic acid copolymers: Mechanical and thermomechanical properties

The effect of methyl acrylate content in ethylene–methyl acrylate–acrylic acid (E–MA–AA) terpolymers and acrylic acid content in ethylene–acrylic acid (E–AA) copolymers was investigated in blends of these two materials. The E–MA–AA terpolymer with 8 mol % methyl acrylate was not miscible with any E–AA material no matter what the AA content, whereas the terpolymer with only about 2 mol % methyl acrylate was miscible, at least to some extent, with the E–AA copolymer at high acrylic acid contents. Evidence supporting this conclusion derived from gloss, differential scanning calorimetry testing, and dynamic mechanical measurements. For the E–AA polymer material with the highest acid content, there was a synergistic effect for some properties at low added amounts of E–MA–AA copolymer; the tensile strength and hardness were 10% higher than values for the E–AA copolymer, even though the E–AA copolymer was much stiffer. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 2216–2222, 2004     

Identification of straight-chain fatty acids in coal extracts and their geochemical relation with straight-chain alkanes

Mono-carboxylic, straight-chain fatty acids are present in extracts of lignite and subbituminous coal (0.4–1.0 wt%, daf basis), but not in those of a bituminous coal. They are removed with nearly equal ease by both solvent and supercritical gas (SCG) extraction. Octacosanoic acid is the major constituent, and values of the carbon preference index (even over odd) lie between 2 and 6. Solvent extraction of the coals also removes small quantities (< 0.08 wt%) of straight-chain alkanes which are closely related in composition to the straight-chain fatty acids and are probably derived from them during maturation. However, previous SCG extraction of the coals yielded much larger quantities of straight-chain alkanes (0.3–0.7 wt%). Pyrolysis experiments with a lignite fatty acid fraction and with tetracosanoic acid show that these acids largely survive SCG extraction and, therefore, are not the main source of the relatively large quantity of straight-chain alkanes in these extracts.