Cationic Hydrolytically Degradable Flocculants with Enhanced Water Recovery for Oil Sands Tailings Remediation

Micellar radical polymerization of a short‐chain polyester macromonomer, polycaprolactone choline iodide ester methacrylate (PCL_nChMA), is used to produce a new cationic flocculant that becomes more hydrophobic in response to hydrolytic degradation. The cationic tips of the comb‐like poly(PCL₃ChMA) accelerate the settling rate of oil sands tailings, while partial hydrolysis of the polyester grafts reveals the hydrophobic segments that reduce capillary suction time by 30%. This technology combines the material properties of polyesters with the productivity of radical polymerization to make dual functional flocculants with characteristics that can be easily tuned to control flocculation performance, such as polymeric cation density, hydrophobic content, and polymer architecture.

     

An artificial neural network based heuristic for flow shop scheduling problems

The objective of this paper is to find a sequence of jobs in the flow shop to minimize makespan. A feed forward back propagation neural network is used to solve the problem. The network is trained with the optimal sequences of completely enumerated five, six and seven jobs, ten machine problem and this trained network is then used to solve the problem with greater number of jobs. The sequence obtained using artificial neural network (ANN) is given as the initial sequence to a heuristic proposed by Suliman and also to genetic algorithm (GA) as one of the sequences of the population for further improvement. The approaches are referred as ANN-Suliman heuristic and ANN-GA heuristic respectively. Makespan of the sequences obtained by these heuristics are compared with the makespan of the sequences obtained using the heuristic proposed by Nawaz, Enscore and Ham (NEH) and Suliman Heuristic initialized with Campbell Dudek and Smith (CDS) heuristic called as CDS-Suliman approach. It is found that the ANN-GA and ANN-Suliman heuristic approaches perform better than NEH and CDS-Suliman heuristics for the problems considered.     

Residence Time Distribution (RTD) of Particulate Foods in a Continuous Flow Pilot-Scale Ohmic Heater

ABSTRACT:  The residence time distribution (RTD) of a model particulate–fluid mixture (potato in starch solution) in the ohmic heater in a continuous sterilization process was measured using a radio frequency identification (RFID) methodology. The effect of solid concentration and the rotational speed of the agitators on the RTD were studied. The velocity of the fastest particle was 1.62 times the mean product velocity. In general, particle velocity was found to be greater than the product bulk average velocity. Mean particle residence time (MPRT) increased with an increase in the rotational speed of the agitators ( P  < 0.05), and no particular trend was observed between the MPRT and the solid concentration. The distribution curves  E  (θ) were skewed to the right suggesting slow moving zones in the system.     

Reanalyzing the basic bandgap reference voltage circuit considering thermal dependence of bandgap energy

The basic bandgap reference voltage generator, BGR, is thoroughly analyzed and relations are reconstructed considering dependency of bandgap energy, E_g, to absolute temperature. The previous works all consider E_g as a constant, independent of temperature variations. However, E_g varies around 25 meV when the temperature is increased from 2 to 92 °C. In this paper the dependence of E_g to absolute temperature, based on HSPICE mosfet models in HSPICE MOSFET Models Manual (Version X-2005.09, 2005), is approximated by a third-order polynomial using Lagrangian interpolating method within the temperature range of 2–92 °C. Accurate analysis on the simplified polynomial reveals that the TC of V_BE must be corrected to ?1.72 mV/°K at 27 °C which has been formerly reported about ?1.5 mV/°K in Razavi (Design of analog CMOS integrated circuits, 2001) and Colombo et al. (Impact of noise on trim circuits for bandgap voltage references, 2007), ?2 mV/°K in Gray et al. (Analysis and design of analog integrated circuits, 2001), Leung and Mok (A sub-1-V 15-ppm/°C CMOS bandgap voltage reference without requiring low threshold voltage device, 2002), Banba et al. (A CMOS bandgap reference circuit with sub-1-V operation, 1999), and ?2.2 mV/°K in Jones and Martin (Analog integrated circuit design, 1997), Tham and Nagaraj (A low supply voltage high PSRR voltage reference in CMOS process, 1995). Another important conclusion is that the typical weighting coefficient of TC+ and TC? terms is modified to about 19.84 at 27 °C temperature from otherwise 16.76, when E_g is considered constant, and also 17.2, in widely read literatures, (Razavi in Design of analog CMOS integrated circuits, 2001). Neglecting the temperature dependence of E_g might introduce a relative error of about 20.5 % in TC of V_BE. Also, resistance and transistor size ratios, which denote the weighting coefficient of TC+ term, might be encountered to utmost 20.3 % error when the temperature dependence of E_g is ignored.     

Emissivity of Electronic Materials,Coatings, and Structures

This study presents an overview of commonly used electronic materials and nanocoatings, as well as the evolution and significance of emissivity of commonly used electronic materials and nanocoatings. In addition, some key issues are addressed, such as accurate temperature measurements during materials processing and control as well as thermal management in high-power electronic device applications. Case studies of the optical properties of bulk materials, multilayered structures, and electronic devices, mainly bolometers, are discussed and analyzed for optimization.     

Adaptive visual tracking using the prioritized Q-learning algorithm: MDP-based parameter learning approach

This paper introduces an adaptive visual tracking method that combines the adaptive appearance model and the optimization capability of the Markov decision process. Most tracking algorithms are limited due to variations in object appearance from changes in illumination, viewing angle, object scale, and object shape. This paper is motivated by the fact that tracking performance degradation is caused not only by changes in object appearance but also by the inflexible controls of tracker parameters. To the best of our knowledge, optimization of tracker parameters has not been thoroughly investigated, even though it critically influences tracking performance. The challenge is to equip an adaptive tracking algorithm with an optimization capability for a more flexible and robust appearance model. In this paper, the Markov decision process, which has been applied successfully in many dynamic systems, is employed to optimize an adaptive appearance model-based tracking algorithm. The adaptive visual tracking is formulated as a Markov decision process based dynamic parameter optimization problem with uncertain and incomplete information. The high computation requirements of the Markov decision process formulation are solved by the proposed prioritized Q-learning approach. We carried out extensive experiments using realistic video sets, and achieved very encouraging and competitive results.     

Flame retardancy and char microstructure of nylon‐6/layered silicate nanocomposites

We investigated the effect of organically modified clay alone and in combination with zinc borate on the thermal/flammability behavior of nylon‐6 nanocomposites. Differential thermogravimetric analysis indicated that the peak decomposition temperature was not affected by the addition of clay, but the rate of weight loss decreased with increase in clay concentration. Nanocomposite films of approximately 0.5 mm thickness with 2.5 and 5 wt % clay burned for almost the same duration as neat nylon‐6 but with reduced dripping in horizontal flame test. The 10 wt % clay nanocomposite sample burned without any dripping and the flame spread rate was reduced by 25–30%. Zinc borate/clay containing nanocomposite developed into a very good intumescent system in cone calorimeter test, swelling about 10–13 mm height prior to ignition forming a cellular char structure. This was found to be an effective composition in reducing the heat release and mass loss rate of nylon‐6 by about 65% and at par with 10 wt % clay nanocomposite. Flame retardant behavior could be attributed to distinct char morphologies observed through scanning electron microscopy. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy of the 10 wt % clay nanocomposite char showed the presence of amides, indicating possible residual polymer within the shielded char. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 104: 1540–1550, 2007