A modified shifting bottleneck heuristic for the reentrant job shop scheduling problem with makespan minimization

This paper proposes a modified shifting bottleneck heuristic (MSBH) for the reentrant job shop scheduling problem (RJSSP) with makespan minimization objective. Recently, the reentrant job shop has come into prominence as a new type of manufacturing shop. The principle characteristic of a reentrant job shop is that a job may visit certain machines more than once during the process flow, whereas in the classic job shop, each job visits a machine only once. The shifting bottleneck heuristic (SBH) is one of the most successful heuristic approaches for the classical job shop scheduling problem, which decomposes the problem into a number of single-machine subproblems. This paper adapts the SBH for the RJSSP and proposes a new sequencing heuristic for the single-machine maximum lateness subproblem considering the reentrant jobs in order to handle large-size RJSSPs. It also uses a subproblem criticality measure that further shortens the implementation time. The proposed MSBH is tested by using instances up to 20 machines and 100 jobs, and it is illustrated that good quality solutions can be obtained in reasonable computational times. A real-life application of the MSBH is also given as a case study to evaluate its performance.     

Hydrogen production potential of APEX fusion transmuter fueled minor actinide fluoride

Main aim of this study is to investigate hydrogen production potential of Advanced Power EXtraction (APEX) fusion reactor cooled with the molten-salt mixtures, as well as its neutronic performance to transmute minor actinides (MAs). In the original APEX reactor concept, fusion power (P_f) is quite high (4000 MW), and the FLiBe molten-salt flows as molten-salt wall. The FLiBe molten-salt is mixed with molten minor actinide tetra fluoride salt (MAF₄) to transmute minor actinides, and at the same time, to increase the energy multiplication. In addition to this mixture of FLiBe and MAF₄, FLiNaBe, LiF and Eutectic Lithium instead of FLiBe are mixed individually with MAF₄, and are used as the molten-salt coolant. Furthermore, two different compositions of MA nuclides are considered as follows: (i) The MA nuclides discharged from the pressured water reactor (PWR)-MOX spent fuel and (ii) The MA nuclides discharged from the PWR-UO₂ spent fuel. The neutronic analyses have been performed for these eight different molten-salt mixture cases and for both one and three-dimensional geometry models by using the XSDRNPM/SCALE4.4a neutron transport code and the MCNP4B code, respectively.     

A game theory‐inspired channel allocation policy for multi‐radio pervasive ad hoc communications

The impressive increase of innovative wireless communication technologies and applications represents nowadays a key approach to enable pervasive communications environments. In particular, the emerging paradigms of the Internet of Things and capillary networks offer effective ways to make devices connected. This has triggered the development of effective methodologies and procedures to allow an unlimited number of devices to exchange information mainly in an autonomous mode. However, it is a well‐known concept that wireless networks capacity usually decreases with the number of nodes. In particular, in order to improve the throughput scalability, a promising approach is that of resorting to the use of multiple radio interfaces at each node, in order to exploit spatial reuse of frequencies. Towards this end, game theory methodologies offer efficient approaches to solve the complex radio interfaces selection and allocation problems. This paper proposes a game theory‐inspired approach to efficiently select the number of radio interfaces to be used at each node site in order to lower the energy consumption and maximise the end‐to‐end throughput of any communication on which the node is involved in. The good behaviour of the proposed approach is validated by provided theoretical framework and numerical results derived by considering different data packets wireless forwarding schemes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of the mechanical,thermomechanical, thermal,and morphological properties of pumice and calcium carbonate‐filled poly(phenylene sulfide) composites

In this study, it was aimed to investigate the mechanical, thermal, thermomechanical, and morphological properties of pumice and calcium carbonate (CaCO₃)‐filled poly(phenylene sulfide) (PPS) composites and compare the effect of these filler materials on the properties of composites. Mechanical test results indicate that %1 pumice and CaCO₃ addition increased the tensile strength value of PPS. With the %1 loading level of pumice, tensile strain of composites remained unchanged, but for other loading levels of both fillers, tensile strain of composites decreased. Hardness of composites increased with the addition of pumice to PPS matrix for all loading levels of pumice. The lowest damping factor peak intensity was observed for %1 pumice included composites. Morphological analyses results revealed that pumice particles are clearly embedded in the PPS matrix and covered with matrix. On the other hand, there are a number of microvioids that can be observed in the tensile fracture surfaces of CaCO₃‐filled composites. POLYM. COMPOS., 37:3160–3166, 2016. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Electrochemical Biosensor Based on surfactant doped polypyrrole (PPy) matrix for lactose determination

Lactose biosensor based on surfactant doped polypyrrole (PPy) was developed. Galactose oxidase and β‐galactosidase was coimmobilized in PPy matrix during electropolymerization process with the presence of sodium dodecylbenzene sulphonic acid as surfactant. Bi‐enzyme entrapped PPy was characterized with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), cyclic voltammetry (CV), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The response of the enzyme electrode was measured by CV in the range of ?0.1 to 1.0 V versus Ag/AgCl which was due to the electrooxidation of enzymatically produced H₂O₂. The effect of lactose concentration was investigated. Response time of biosensor was found to be 8–10 s (the time required to obtain the maximum peak current) and upper limit of the linear working portions was found to be 1.22 mM lactose concentration with a detection limit of (2.6 × 10^?6 M). The apparent Michaelis–Menten constant was found to be 0.117 mM lactose. The effects of interferents (ascorbic acid and uric acid) were determined. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 40200.     

Removal of Acidic and Basic Dyes from Water using Crosslinked Polystyrene Based Quaternary Ethyl Piperazine Resin

In this study, a beaded polymer with quaternary amine functions was prepared in two steps, starting from poly (vinyl benzyl chloride-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) (PVBC) based beads, according to the synthetic protocol; modification of ethyl piperazine with PVBC (EP-PS), and quaternization of ethylpiperazine modified beads with chloroacetic acid (QEP-PS). The QEP-PS resin was used for the removal of reactive red 120 as an acidic dye and malachite green chloride as a basic dye. Dye extraction experiments were carried out simply by contacting wetted sorbent samples with aqueous dye solutions at room temperature. Capacities were determined by colorimetric analysis of the residual dye contents. The resin showed that reasonable high dye sorption capacity (0.34-0.41 g per gram of dry resin) was achieved. The adsorption conditions (initial dye concentration and pH) were varied to evaluate the mechanism of adsorption of both basic dyes and acidic dyes on the prepared resin. This material is also able to remove both the anionic dye and cationic dyes completely even from highly diluted aqueous dye solutions.     

Preparation and electrochemical behavior of dopamine-selective polymeric membrane

Summary o-toluidine was polymerized electrochemically using constant-potential electrolysis at a gold electrode surface. Electrochemical behavior of dopamine and ascorbic acid at the polymer electrode prepared in this manner was examined by cyclic and differential pulse voltammetry techniques. The influence of chemical and electrochemical variables on dopamine selectivity of the polymer electrode was systematically investigated and the optimal values for each parameter were determined. Experimental results showed that optimized polymeric membrane exhibited selectivity for dopamine while blocking ascorbic acid. Therefore, it is claimed that poly (o-toluidine) film can be used as a dopamine-selective polymeric membrane in the presence of ascorbic acid. Key Words: poly (o-toluidine); selective membrane; dopamine Received: 22 November 1999/Revised version: 25 January 2000/Accepted: 10 February 2000     

First unseeded hydrothermal synthesis of microporous vanadosilicate AM-6

Microporous vanadosilicate AM-6 has been hydrothermally synthesized for the first time in the absence of titanosilicate ETS-10 seeds. High purity (95–100% AM-6) products were crystallized under static conditions at 430–503 K using tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAOH) or tetramethylammonium bromide (TMABr) as a structure-directing agent in mixtures with molar compositions xNa₂O:1.3K₂O:ySiO₂:0.5V₂O₅:wTMA:zH₂O, where x = 4.5 or 5.6, y = 4.3–5.5, w = 2.0–3.0, and z = 206–214. The size (250 nm to 9 μm range), truncated square bipyramidal morphology (varied from square cuboid to thin (thickness <100–200 nm) tetragonal platy), and surface irregularities/faulting of AM-6 crystals (Si/V = 5.0 ± 0.5) can be controlled by varying the molar composition or initial pH of synthesis mixture, and crystallization temperature. Structure-directing agent can be removed from the pores with little or no adverse effects on crystallinity of AM-6 by treatment with gaseous ammonia at elevated temperatures. UV–vis and FTIR analyses suggest two (V⁴⁺, V⁵⁺) oxidation states of vanadium in the AM-6 framework.     

Heat pump drying of grape pomace: Performance and product quality analysis

Abstract

Grape is one of the most popular fruits and various types of grape have been cultivated by more than 100 countries around the World. The wine and juice industry produces large quantities of by-product, called grape pomace (GP) as an industrial waste and it consists of skins, seeds, and stems. Various processes such as separation, pressing, drying, and milling are applied to benefit from its health effects. In this study, the seeded black GP Kalecik karas? (Vitis vinifera) was dried in an assisted closed cycle heat pump dryer (HPD) designed for high-moisture products to investigate the drying behaviors of GP. The effects of drying air temperature on bioactive properties and the drying characteristics of GP, and performance of system have discussed. Experiments were carried out at two different temperatures (45 and 50°C) and air velocity of 1.0 m/s. It was seen that increasing temperature decreased the drying time, coefficient of performance of whole system (COP_ws), and specific energy consumption (SEC). The average values of COP_ws for temperatures 45°C and 50°C were calculated as 3.28 and 3.10, respectively. The drying efficiencies (DE) at drying air temperature of 45°C and 50°C ranged from 2 to 12% and from 2 to 15%, respectively. Additionally, result of analysis has indicated that using a HPD at lower temperatures increases performance of system despite of higher energy input. Bioactive properties of dried samples at drying air temperature of 45°C are better than 50°C. The results show that drying the GP at low temperature is more suitable for product quality. For this reason, heat pump may be preferred. It shows that this drying system with higher capacities in the future can be recommended as an alternative technique in terms of energy usage, drying time, and performance of system.