Failure Analysis and Remedy Procedure for Cracking of Fuel Nozzles in a Gas Turbine

A common failure in a certain type of gas turbine, observed during the first periodic inspection, is radial cracks in the tip plate of gas fuel nozzles. Here, each gas turbine has 18 nozzles. In all nozzles and in all similar units, these cracks of lengths ranging from 1 mm to a maximum of 14.5 mm are observed. As prescribed by the manufacturer, the defective part must be removed and replaced by welding and machining of a new one. But this problem is repeated and observed in the next periodic visits, and in all units. Depending on the number of nozzles in each gas turbine unit and the number of units in total, these repairs are very expensive and time-consuming. In this paper, the failure is analyzed and the causes of the cracks in the nozzles are investigated. Studies show that the main causes of nozzle failure are residual stresses caused by welding and thermal stresses caused by the start-up and shutdown processes. According to results, a solution has been proposed to release these residual and thermal stresses. After the implementation of this method in 1998, no more failure has been reported by the repair team, which proves the effectiveness of this solution. Since this paper has been prepared based on technical reports from the years between 1996 and 1998, the cited references of this paper are these technical reports.     

Oscillatory power number,power density model,and effect of restriction size for a moving-baffle oscillatory baffled column using CFD modelling

Although single-hole oscillatory columns have been studied since the 1990s, to this day there is an absence of appropriate dimensionless groups to express the hydrodynamic conditions and power requirement for the moving-baffle oscillatory baffled column (OBC). This paper uses computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software coupled with moving overset meshing to aid in the derivation of the first dimensionless oscillatory power number for OBCs. In terms of the moving-baffle OBC, this work marks the first time a power density equation has been derived specifically to account for this column's unique hydrodynamic profile. Equations for period-averaged Reynolds number and period-averaged Strouhal numbers were developed to better estimate the fluid intensity within these moving-baffle columns. This work serves as an example of how complex and challenging flow regimes, such as periodically oscillating flow, can be simplified and analyzed to produce appropriate design equations.     

A latency-aware task scheduling algorithm for allocating virtual machines in a cost-effective and time-sensitive fog-cloud architecture

The Journal of Supercomputing - Recently, with the expansion of communications and generated data, the need for processing this high volume of data in minimum time and maximum speed has increased....     

Simulation analysis of producing xylitol from hemicelluloses of pre-hydrolysis liquor

The pre-hydrolysis liquor (PHL) of the kraft-based dissolving pulp production process is currently sent to the recovery boiler and incinerated. However, PHL contains about 5–8% lignocelluloses that can be utilized in the production of value-added chemicals. In this study, a process for producing xylitol from hemicelluloses in PHL is developed. This process involves several acidification, neutralization, adsorption (along with reactivation) and evaporation stages. The mass balance indicates that 533 kg/h xylitol (with 99% purity), 187 kg/h lignin, 806 kg/h basic ferric acetate, and 1600 kg/h gypsum can be produced from 41,670 kg/h PHL. The energy balance shows that the evaporators are the largest consumers of energy, while the reactivation kiln, acidification, neutralization, and precipitation processes generate some heat. Overall, 41% conversion of xylose to xylitol is achieved.     

Cationic lignin polymers as flocculants for municipal wastewater

In this research, two lignin-[2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]trimethylammonium chloride (METAC) polymers were generated and assessed for their efficiency in treating municipally produced wastewater. The removals of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and turbidity were 47.5% and 71.2%, respectively, for the singular flocculation system at the dosage of 40–70 mg/L. For the dual coagulation/flocculation system, the polymer with a higher charge density (AM2) achieved higher COD and turbidity removals than the polymer with a lower charge density (AM1). To achieve the same organic removal from the wastewater, the alum use could be reduced from 150 mg/L in the single alum use to 35 mg/L in the dual system when used along with 65 mg/L of AM2. In both systems, lignin-METAC polymers exhibited better performance than the flocculant used at a local wastewater treatment plant. Lignin-METAC polymers could be used as bio-based flocculants for the replacement of petroleum-based flocculants and inorganic coagulants.     

Production of activated carbon coated polystyrene resins under hydrothermal conditions and their use for gold cyanide adsorption

Polystyrene beads were coated with activated carbon under hydrothermal conditions above the glass transition temperature of polystyrene. By precisely controlling the temperature between 140 and 145 °C under vigorous mixing conditions in the presence of an excess of activated carbon, the surface of polystyrene beads were made sufficiently tacky so that finely sized activated carbon particles adhered to their surfaces, producing polystyrene/activated carbon, PS-AC, beads. The usefulness of these beads, as an alternative to pure activated carbon particles, for adsorption of gold cyanide ions under industrial conditions, was also demonstrated experimentally.     

Multi-criteria expertness based cooperative Q-learning

One of the most influential points in cooperative learning is the type of exchanging information. If the content of exchanging information among agents is rich, cooperation gives rise to better results. To extract proper knowledge of agents during the cooperation process, some expertness measures that assign expertness levels to the other agents are used. In this paper, a new method named Multi-Criteria Expertness based cooperative Q-learning (MCE) is proposed that utilizes all of the expertness measures and attempts to enrich the exchanging information more efficiently. In MCE, all expertness measures are considered simultaneously and collective knowledge is equal to the combination of learned knowledge by each of expertness measures. The experimental results confirm outstanding performance of the proposed method on a sample maze world and a hunter-prey problem.     

Preparation of polypropylene‐based nanocomposites using nanosized MCM‐41 as support and in situ polymerization

MCM‐41 nanoparticles were used for preparing nanocomposites through the in situ polymerization of propylene. The performance of the catalytic system and the final properties of the materials obtained are highly dependent on the methodology used for impregnation of the catalyst onto the support particles, and therefore an optimization study for the impregnation methodology of the catalyst (Me₂Si(Ind)₂ZrCl₂) was carried out. Two different methodologies were used; the results in terms of catalytic activity and polymer molecular masses indicated that the most promising one involved the pre‐activation of the catalyst with the cocatalyst, methylaluminoxane, followed by impregnation onto the MCM‐41 nanoparticles. Thus, an optimized route for the preparation of polypropylene nanocomposites achieving significant improvements in catalyst activity was developed. The nanocomposite materials were characterized by GPC, TGA and DSC. The dispersion state and the size of the nanoparticles incorporated in the polypropylene matrix were investigated by transmission electron microcopy. Additionally, this methodology allows simultaneous control of the desired amount of support and the concentration of catalyst to be used in the in situ polymerization. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry     

Flexible Prime‐Field Genus 2 Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography Processor with Low Power Consumption and Uniform Power Draw

This paper presents an energy‐efficient (low power) prime‐field hyperelliptic curve cryptography (HECC) processor with uniform power draw. The HECC processor performs divisor scalar multiplication on the Jacobian of genus 2 hyperelliptic curves defined over prime fields for arbitrary field and curve parameters. It supports the most frequent case of divisor doubling and addition. The optimized implementation, which is synthesized in a 0.13 μm standard CMOS technology, performs an 81‐bit divisor multiplication in 503 ms consuming only 6.55 μJ of energy (average power consumption is 12.76 μW). In addition, we present a technique to make the power consumption of the HECC processor more uniform and lower the peaks of its power consumption.     

Modified chitosan as a polymeric nanoreactor for fabrication of pure ZnO nano particles

ZnO nanoparticles have been prepared successfully by hydrogel decomposition method (HDM). Synthesized ZnO nanoparticles were characterized by X‐ray diffraction (XRD), fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and transition electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Narrow distribution of sizes with a 20–30 nm diameter and regular distribution of ZnO nanoparticles are attributed to the application of poly(acrylic acid‐co‐acrylamide) grafted chitosan hydrogel as coating agent. The results show that the polymer thermal decomposition technique is a perfect method for the synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010