On the suitability of agricultural by-products for the manufacture of granular activated carbon

An investigation of several agricultural by-products revealed that their suitability for activated carbon production is not determined by general material-specific features (elemental composition) but by type-specific features. A coarse-cellular structure (as in wood), which is indicated by porosities of the raw materials higher than 35% is disadvantageous. A specific change in the properties of cokes (porosity, density, hardness) is possible by varying the conditions of pyrolysis. By rapid heating in the pyrolysis step, for instance, macroporous residues are produced. Temperature and burnoff have the greatest influence on the quality of the activated carbon during the activation step. Of the investigated materials, coconut shells yield granular activated carbon of the highest quality. The following order of suitability of raw materials for activated carbon production was established: coconut shells> peach stones> plum stones> hazelnut shells> walnut shells> cherry stones.     

Putting it all together – Formal verification of the VAMP

In the verified architecture microprocessor (VAMP) project we have designed, functionally verified, and synthesized a processor with full DLX instruction set, delayed branch, Tomasulo scheduler, maskable nested precise interrupts, pipelined fully IEEE compatible dual precision floating point unit with variable latency, and separate instruction and data caches. The verification has been carried out in the theorem proving system PVS. The processor has been implemented on a Xilinx FPGA. A shorter version of this article with the title “Instantiating uninterpreted functional units and memory system: functional verification of the VAMP” appeared in [8]. The work reported here was done while all the authors were with Saarland University.     

Phosphorus Inputs to Lake Simcoe from 1990 to 2003: Declines in Tributary Loads and Observations on Lake Water Quality

Total phosphorus (TP) inputs to Lake Simcoe have led to hypolimnetic dissolved oxygen (DO) depletion and loss of cold water fish habitat. Since 1990, efforts have been made to reduce the total TP input to the lake below a defined target of 75 t/year, which was predicted to lead to reductions in spring TP concentration and improvements in end-of-summer hypolimnetic DO concentrations. The total TP load to the lake during the most recent period of record (1998/99-2003/04) ranged from 53 to 76 t/yr and averaged 67 t/yr, compared to an average of 114 t/yr estimated between 1990/91 and 1997/98 (range 85-157 t/yr). Reductions in TP loads from the catchment via tributary discharge (∼26 t) accounted for the majority of the decrease in total load between the two time periods. Total P concentrations decreased significantly in four out of six long-term monitored tributaries; however, concentrations in all six tributaries remain above the level recommended to avoid nuisance plant growth (30 μg/L). Although TP loads to the lake are currently below the target 75 t/yr, excessive growths of filamentous algae and macrophytes continue to be a problem in the nearshore zone. End-of-summer minimum hypolimnetic DO concentrations (average 4.3 mg/L, 1998/99-2003/04) remain substantially below the level (7 mg/L) that is considered protective of lake trout. Efforts to reduce TP loads to the lake therefore need to continue.     

Programming tool-use actions.

When humans plan to execute a tool-use action, they can only specify the bodily movement parameters by taking into account the external target or goal of the tool-use action and the target-movement mapping implemented by the tool. In this study, the authors used the movement precuing method to investigate how people prepare for actions made with tools. More specifically, they asked whether people would be able to specify the spatial target and the target-movement mapping of the tool-use action independently of each other, and to what degree they would be able to prepare these components in advance. In 3 experiments, they precued either the target or the target-movement mapping of tool-use actions involving either a compatible or an incompatible target-movement mapping. Results indicate that participants benefit from partial advance information about the target-movement mapping, whereas no significant effects were found for precuing the spatial target of the action. These results occurred regardless of whether the target-movement mapping was compatible or incompatible and provide evidence for the notion that the target-movement mapping of a tool-use action is part of its cognitive representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

阿维斯塔波莱瑞特厂炉卷轧机新技术

阿维斯塔波莱瑞特厂正在进行一个现代化改造项目，以提高炉卷轧机的生产能力，达到年产100万吨。但是，由于在阿维斯塔波莱瑞特厂炉卷轧机上的现有技术已达到极限，只有通过对轧机及自动化系统进行现代化的改造才有可能提高和增强轧机的利用率和易维护性。     

A Simon Effect With Stationary Moving Stimuli.

To clarify whether motion information per se has a separable influence on action control, the authors investigated whether irrelevant direction of motion of stimuli whose overall position was constant over time would affect manual left-right responses (i.e., reveal a motion-based Simon effect). In Experiments 1 and 2, significant Simon effects were obtained for sine-wave gratings moving in a stationary Gaussian window. In Experiment 3, a direction-based Simon effect with random-dot patterns was replicated, except that the perceived direction of motion was based on the displacement of single elements. Experiments 4 and 5 studied motion-based Simon effects to point-light figures that walked in place--displays requiring high-level analysis of global shape and local motion. Motion-based Simon effects occurred when the displays could be interpreted as an upright human walker, showing that a high-level representation of motion direction mediated the effects. Thus, the present study establishes links between high-level motion perception and action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Numerical simulation model for exhaust gas transportation of dust in the BOF

During the BOF process for the production of crude steel, the specific amount of dust emitted is of the order of 2 % of the steel weight at turn down. The process gas conveys the dust through the boiler system into the primary and secondary dust catchers. The transportation of dust particles is influenced by blowing parameters; physical properties of process gas and of dust phases; and, type and layout of the converter and the filter system. In this work, a numerical simulation model is developed that simulates the pneumatic conveyance and sedimentation of primarily coarse dust particles in the BOF gas cleaning system. Comparison is then made of predicted coarse dust characteristics with values for dust sampled from an existing plant in order to verify the plausibility of the developed model.     

Heat transfer mechanisms in gas fluidized beds. Part 3: Heat transfer in circulating fluidized beds

Part 1 of this contribution reported on the effects of system properties on heat transfer between heating or cooling surfaces and bubbling fluidized beds. This investigation produced four correlations which define the respective maximum heat transfer. Part 2 of this study suggests that the heat transfer between exchanger surfaces and bubbling fluidized beds depends on superficial gas velocity, expressed as dimensionless excess gas velocity. The present paper shows that heat transfer coefficients in circulating fluidized beds can be predicted by evaluation of a state diagram, which combines three dimensionless groups: Nusselt number, Archimedes number and a dimensionless pressure gradient. A comparison of coal combustion experiments with own cold model measurements indicates that the radiative component of heat transfer coefficients is only evident at very low dimensionless pressure gradients.