Elimination of organic matter present in wastewaters from the cork industry by membrane filtration

BACKGROUND: The first stage of the cork industrial process generates great volumes of wastewater with moderate to high organic pollutant content that must be purified using different procedures, such as filtration by membranes. RESULTS: The tangential filtration of these wastewaters was studied using two different laboratory equipments. In the first one, three ultrafiltration (UF) membranes were tested, with molecular weight cut‐off (MWCO) 100 kDa and 30 kDa, and two operating modes were used: total recycling of permeate and retentate streams, and in continuous mode, without recycling both streams. In the total recycling UF experiments, the influence of the operating variables on the permeate flux was first established. The effectiveness of the different membranes was determined by evaluating the rejection coefficients for several parameters that measure the global pollutant content of the effluent. The values found for these rejection coefficients were in the following order: ellagic acid and color > absorbance at 254 nm > tannic content > COD (chemical oxygen demand). In the continuous mode experiments, the fouling mechanism for each membrane was established by fitting the experimental data to various filtration fouling models given in the literature. The operating mode in the second equipment was batch concentration, and additional experiments were carried out with an UF membrane (2 kDa), and with a NF membrane (with MWCO in the range 150–300 Da). CONCLUSIONS: The three operating modes tested provided different rejection levels of organic matter; among them, the most effective procedure tested was batch concentration mode using a NF membrane. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry     

Accurate estimation of environment parameters from ultrasonic data

This paper describes a robust and accurate ultrasonic sensing system for a mobile robot. The system continuously updates a local map of the environment in which obstacles are represented by straight lines or points in a robot centered coordinate frame. The presented algorithms use a Kalman filter for the reduction of the noise in the ultrasonic data and use a systematical error correction (‘bundle correction’) to reduce the uncertainty in obstacle direction. Experiments are carried out in simulation and with a real mobile robot system. Results show that the accuracy with which line parameters can be estimated is in the order of 1 degree for the orientation and about 2 cm for the position. The effect of the bundle correction is significant and maximal when the robot approaches walls under a small angle.     

New chemical structural features of coal. The structure of coal products

The object of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the transalkylation reaction for determining chemical structural features of products derived from coal. For example, the method is applied to derivatized coals, coals modified by thermolysis, and materials physically or chemically separated from coals. Data are presented for the pyridine soluble and insoluble parts of two coals, an O-methylated coal, a Birch reduced coal, a solvent refined coal, and a coke. Similarities and differences in chemical make-up of these materials are discussed.     

Solar cookers for outdoors and indoors

The solar cooking process has been investigated to develop safe, simple, portable, and reliable solar cookers. The concept of insulated and vapor-tight pots has been introduced and applied to oven, point-focus and heat-pipe cookers. A new, flat-plate cooker with heat pipes has been developed. It requires no tracking and allows cooking to be done in the shade or indoors. Also, a novel-portable cooker, the Mina Oven, featuring a vapor-tight pot and an integral collector with reflector flaps, has been constructed and tested. A second portable cooker that has been developed is the Arafa Cooker, which comprises a parabolic dish focused at a glazed and insulated receiver. Experiments indicated that all cookers yielded satisfactory performance, with cooking times of 25–45 min per kg of food per m² of solar collection area while operating from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.     

Preparation,Properties and Applications of the Hybrid Organic/Inorganic Nanocomposite Based on Nanoporous Carbon Matrix

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - Nanoporous carbon matrix was prepared by the sol–gel process from pyrogallol-formaldehyde (PF) mixtures in water using picric...     

Compositional reasoning using intervals and time reversal

Interval Temporal Logic (ITL) is an established formalism for reasoning about time periods. We investigate some simple kinds of ITL formulas which have application to compositional reasoning and furthermore are closed under conjunction and the conventional temporal operator known both as “box” and “always”. Such closures help us modularly construct formulas from simple building blocks in a way which preserves useful compositional properties. The most important class considered here is called the 2-to-1 formulas. They offer an attractive framework for analysing sequential composition in ITL and provide the formal basis for most of the subsequent presentation. A key contribution of this work concerns a useful and apparently new and quite elementary mathematical theorem that 2-to-1 formulas are closed under “box”. We also use a natural form of time symmetry with 2-to-1 formulas. This extends known facts about such formulas by looking at them in reverse. An important example involves showing that 2-to-1 formulas are also closed under a variant of “box” for prefix subintervals rather than suffix ones. We then apply the compositional formulas obtained with time symmetry to analyse concurrent behaviour involving mutual exclusion in both Peterson’s algorithm and a new and more abstract one. At present, our study of mutual exclusion mainly serves as a kind of experimental “proof of concept” and research tool to develop and illustrate some of the logical framework’s promising features. We also discuss how time symmetry sometimes assists in reducing reasoning in ITL to conventional linear-time temporal logic.     

一种基于并联机构的航天器姿态模拟装置的设计开发

航天器发射升空前进行地面测试和试验是航天器研制过程中的重要环节。文中针对一种基于并联机构的姿态模拟装置的设计开发,从位置分析、速度分析和虚拟样机的建造和仿真分析等方面对3UPS-PU并联机构进行研究,完成姿态模拟装置的设计,为航天器装配、试验和测试设备的设计提供一种新的思路。     

Optimal imperfect preventive maintenance policy for equipment leased during successive periods

In this paper, we consider randomly failing equipment leased several times during their life cycle with a given warranty period. A mathematical model is developed to determine the optimal efficiency levels of preventive maintenance (PM) to be performed on the equipment between successive lease periods, maximising the expected total profit of the lessor over the equipment life cycle. The model considers the expected leasing revenue as well as the equipment acquisition cost and the average PM and repair costs. PM actions allow reducing the age of the equipment to a certain extent with a corresponding cost depending on the PM level adopted. The efficiency of the PM is determinant of the expected revenue during the next lease period. Given a set of K possible PM levels and the number of lease periods n over the equipment life cycle, K^{n?1 PM} strategies are possible. A genetic algorithm is proposed in order to obtain nearly optimal policies in situations where the number of possibilities K^n?1 is very high. Obtained numerical results are discussed. Small- and big-size instances of the problem are considered in the case of a service company in the oil and gas industry specialised in leasing specific equipment such as separators, to oil companies for production activities with a limited duration of several months like well testing or short production tests.