Biomass-fired cogeneration systems with CO2 capture and storage

In this study, we estimate and analyze the CO₂ mitigation costs of large-scale biomass-fired cogeneration technologies with CO₂ capture and storage. The CO₂ mitigation cost indicates the minimum economic incentive required (e.g. in the form of a carbon tax) to make the cost of a less carbon intensive system equal to the cost of a reference system. If carbon (as CO₂) is captured from biomass-fired energy systems, the systems could in principle be negative CO₂ emitting energy systems. CO₂ capture and storage from energy systems however, leads to reduced energy efficiency, higher investment costs, and increased costs of end products compared with energy systems in which CO₂ is vented. Here, we have analyzed biomass-fired cogeneration plants based on steam turbine technology (CHP-BST) and integrated gasification combined cycle technology (CHP-BIGCC). Three different scales were considered to analyze the scale effects. Logging residues was assumed as biomass feedstock. Two methods were used to estimate and compare the CO₂ mitigation cost. In the first method, the cogenerated power was credited based on avoided power production in stand-alone plants and in the second method the same reference output was produced from all systems. Biomass-fired CHP-BIGCC with CO₂ capture and storage was found very energy and emission efficient and cost competitive compared with other conversion systems.     

Human Activity Recognition Using Body Joint‐Angle Features and Hidden Markov Model

This paper presents a novel approach for human activity recognition (HAR) using the joint angles from a 3D model of a human body. Unlike conventional approaches in which the joint angles are computed from inverse kinematic analysis of the optical marker positions captured with multiple cameras, our approach utilizes the body joint angles estimated directly from time‐series activity images acquired with a single stereo camera by co‐registering a 3D body model to the stereo information. The estimated joint‐angle features are then mapped into codewords to generate discrete symbols for a hidden Markov model (HMM) of each activity. With these symbols, each activity is trained through the HMM, and later, all the trained HMMs are used for activity recognition. The performance of our joint‐angle–based HAR has been compared to that of a conventional binary and depth silhouette‐based HAR, producing significantly better results in the recognition rate, especially for the activities that are not discernible with the conventional approaches.     

Strain hardening behavior of lightweight hybrid polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber reinforced cement composites

Experimental results on the strain hardening and multiple cracking behaviors of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber reinforced cementitious composites under bending are reported in this paper. Different hybrid combinations of PVA fibers with different lengths and volume fractions are considered to reinforce the mortar matrix. Among different hybrid combinations, the composite containing 2% thicker PVA fibers of 12 mm length and 1% thinner PVA fibers of 6 mm length and the composite containing 2% thicker PVA fibers of 24 mm length and 1% thinner PVA fibers of 6 mm length showed the best performance in terms of highest ultimate load, largest CMOD (crack mouth opening displacement) at peak load and multiple cracking behavior. The effects of four types of light weight sands on the strain hardening and multiple cracking behavior of hybrid fiber composites are also evaluated in this study. It has been observed that the ultimate load and CMOD at peak load for all light weight hybrid fiber composites are almost the same irrespective of volume fractions of light weight sand. The composites containing finer light weight sands exhibited higher ultimate load than those containing coarser light weight sands. It is also observed that the hybrid fiber composite containing normal silica sand exhibited higher ultimate load than the composites with light weight sands.     

Rubber seed oil as a potential source for biodiesel production in Bangladesh

In the present paper, rubber seed oil (RSO) has been investigated as a potential source for biodiesel production in Bangladesh. Rubber seed oil has been extracted from the rubber seeds collected from the local garden. Different methods have been applied for the oil extraction, such as mechanical press with and without solvent and cold percolation. Maximum oil content of 49% has been found by mechanical press with periodic addition of solvent. The physico-chemical properties of the oil have been investigated. Effect of seed storage time on free fatty acid (FFA) content of the oil is studied an it is found that the FFA content increases from 2 wt.% (fresh seed) to 45 wt.% after 2 months of storage at room temperature. Biodiesel has been prepared using a three-step method comprises with saponification of oil, acidification of the soap and esterification of FFA. Overall yield of FFA from RSO is found to be around 86%. The final step is esterification that produces fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). The effect of methanol to oil ratio and catalyst content has been investigated for esterification reaction. ¹H NMR spectrum of the RSO and biodiesel samples are analyzed which confirms the conversion of RSO to biodiesel. The biodiesel properties have been investigated and are found to be comparable with diesel.     

Dry jet‐wet spinning of bagasse/N‐methylmorpholine‐N‐oxide hydrate solution and physical properties of lyocell fibres

Sugarcane bagasse, a cheap cellulosic waste material, was investigated as a raw material for producing lyocell fibers at a reduced cost. In this study, bagasse was dissolved in N‐methylmorpholine‐N‐oxide (NMMO) 0.9 hydrate, and fibers were prepared by the dry jet‐wet spinning method with coagulation in an aqueous NMMO solution. The effects of NMMO in 0 to 50% concentrations on the physical properties of fibers were investigated. The coagulating bath contained water/NMMO (10%) solution produced fiber with the highest drawability and highest physical properties. The cross‐section morphology of these fibers reveals fibrillation due to the high degree of crystallinity and high molecular orientation. In the higher NMMO concentrated baths (30 to 50%), the prepared fibers were hollow inside, which could be useful to make highly absorbent materials. The lyocell fibers prepared from bagasse have a tensile strength of 510 MPa, initial modulus of 30 GPa, and dynamic modulus of approximately 41 GPa. These properties are very comparable with those of commercial lyocell fibers. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011     

Nuclear Export Inhibitor KPT-8602 Synergizes with PARP Inhibitors in Escalating Apoptosis in Castration Resistant Cancer Cells

Aberrant nuclear protein transport, often observed in cancer, causes mislocalization-dependent inactivation of critical cellular proteins. Earlier we showed that overexpression of exportin 1 is linked to higher grade and Gleason score in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). We also showed that a selective inhibitor of nuclear export (SINE) selinexor and second generation eltanexor (KPT-8602) could suppress mCRPC growth, reduce androgen receptor (AR), and re-sensitize to androgen deprivation therapy. Here we evaluated the combination of KPT-8602 with PARP inhibitors (PARPi) olaparib, veliparib and rucaparib in 22rv1 mCRPC cells. KPT-8602 synergized with PARPi (CI < 1) at pharmacologically relevant concentrations. KPT-8602-PARPi showed superior induction of apoptosis compared to single agent treatment and caused up-regulation of pro-apoptotic genes BAX, TP53 and CASPASE 9. Mechanistically, KPT-8602-PARPi suppressed AR, ARv7, PSA and AR targets FOXA1 and UBE2C. Western blot analysis revealed significant down-regulation of AR, ARv7, UBE2C, SAM68, FOXA1 and upregulation of cleaved PARP and cleaved CASPASE 3. KPT-8602 with or without olaparib was shown to reduce homologous recombination-regulated DNA damage response targets including BRCA1, BRCA2, CHEK1, EXO1, BLM, RAD51, LIG1, XRCC3 and RMI2. Taken together, this study revealed the therapeutic potential of a novel combination of KPT-8602 and PARP inhibitors for the treatment of mCRPC.     

Non-destructive Visible/NIR Spectroscopy for Differentiation of Fresh and Frozen-thawed Fish

Nondestructive visible/near‐infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was evaluated to investigate whether fish has been frozen‐thawed. Fresh or frozen‐thawed red sea bream Pagrus major (n= 108) were scanned using a NIRSystems 6500 spectrophotometer equipped with a surface interactance fiber‐optic accessory then discriminated by soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) based on principal component analysis (PCA) scores. The major effect of freeze‐thawing treatment involves a gross change in total reflectance after freezing and thawing; this arises from changes in light scatter presumably arising from alterations in the physical structure of at least the surface layer of fish. Untreated original absorbance spectra achieved much better (100%) classification accuracy for the prediction samples while the same figures for multiplicative scatter correction (MSC) treated spectra are considerably worse, indicating that scattering is the major information that makes classification work. No incorrect type of classification at all and also there are no samples classified to both groups either. This faster technique has the potential to differentiate fresh and frozen‐thawed fish and could be applied for online or at‐line processing control.     

Magnetohydrodynamic boundary layer flow of nanofluid with variable chemical reaction in a radiative vertical plate

The nanotechnology-based nanofluid has extraordinary prospects in heat transfer engineering. Analysis of these applied nanofluids can yield the appropriate combinations of various useful physical parameters. In the present study, the incompressible boundary layer flow of a nanofluid in the presence of the variable chemical reaction, temperature-dependent viscosity, hydromagnetic force, and the radiation past an infinite vertical plate has been investigated. The governing nanofluid equations are simplified to ordinary differential equations, which are solved using the function bvp4c from MATLAB. The effects of the physical parameters including the similarity parameter, magnetic field, two dimensionless constant temperatures, Schmidt number, local Grashof number, radiation parameter, local chemical reaction parameter, kinematic diffusion parameter, and temperature-independent kinematic diffusion parameter on the velocity, temperature, concentration and the local Nusselt number are demonstrated. The results show that as the magnetic field parameter increases, the heat transfer decreases, and the increase of the radiation parameter yields the opposite effect. The kinematic diffusion and the chemical reaction parameters greatly stimulate the concentration of nanofluid and reduce the heat transfer.     

Improvement of Leather Surface by UV Curing

Leather surface has been modified with UV-cured film of urethane triacrylate in the presence of variable concentrations of mono-functional monomers such as N-vinyl pyrrolidone (NVP) and ethyl hexyl acrylate (EHA). Incorporation of small amounts of plasticizer into the formulation has substantially enhanced both tensile strength and elongation of the coated leather. Addition of a difunctional monomer such as tripropyl glycol diacrylate (TPGDA) to the system has increased the tensile property further.     

Pilot-Scale Verification and Analysis of Iron Release Flux Model

An original model by Mutoti in 2003 was developed mathematically, and empirically, to predict the increase in total iron concentration in distribution systems. This model, referred to as a flux model, relates the increase in iron concentration in a reach of unlined or galvanized iron pipe to the surface area of the pipe in contact with the water. A flux term, defined with a dimension of mass per area per time was used. The effects of water chemistry, pipe material and hydraulic conditions were incorporated into the flux term. This paper describes the verification of the flux model using independent pilot data obtained with variable water quality under worst case, laminar flow conditions. The original model accurately predicted iron release for this independent verification data, with an overall R2 of 0.80. For laminar flow conditions, the increase in iron concentration is proportional to the flux and the hydraulic residence time, and is inversely proportional to the pipe diameter.