An integrated system to remote monitor and control anaerobic wastewater treatment plants through the internet.

The TELEMAC project brings new methodologies from the Information and Science Technologies field to the world of water treatment. TELEMAC offers an advanced remote management system which adapts to most of the anaerobic wastewater treatment plants that do not benefit from a local expert in wastewater treatment. The TELEMAC system takes advantage of new sensors to better monitor the process dynamics and to run automatic controllers that stabilise the treatment plant, meet the depollution requirements and provide a biogas quality suitable for cogeneration. If the automatic system detects a failure which cannot be solved automatically or locally by a technician, then an expert from the TELEMAC Control Centre is contacted via the internet and manages the problem.     

A process-dependent real-time controller for sequencing batch reactor plants: results of full-scale operation.

This paper presents results of a research project, in which a process-dependent real-time control (RTC) strategy for a sequencing batch reactor plant was realised in full-scale. The cycle controller is based on NH4 analysers, NO3 probes, TSS probes and sludge level probes. With this new RTC strategy it was possible to increase the treatment capacity by 50%. By implementation of the new controller the TN, TP and NH4-N treatment efficiency could be improved significantly, too. The treatment efficiency concerning COD is comparable.     

Standby power system VRLA battery reserve life estimation scheme

This paper presents a valve-regulated lead acid (VRLA) battery reserve life estimation scheme. The scheme is adaptive in both type and frequency of involvement. The scheme is based on capacity trending with the support of a number of state-of-health (SOH) indicators. These SOH indicators include accumulated thermal stress, float voltage, and indicators acquired from the start-of-discharge (coup de fouet) region. An implementation test case is given, indicating that the scheme is capable of providing an accurate estimation of reserve life long before the end of life. Furthermore, the estimation accuracy improves as the end of battery life approaches.     

Modelling and simulation of KNbO3 ceramics dispersion

The dispersion of potassium niobate (KNbO₃) ceramics is analysed using the multiple-arc approach. This has revealed a high frequency arc that is unattainable by the Cole-Cole single arc analysis. The temperature dependence of the new arc is derived through the spread parameter of the relaxation distribution and interpreted in terms of the ferroelectric property of the KNbO₃ ceramics. It is shown that the overall dispersion behaviour of the ceramics is mainly due to the existence of two distinctly different polarisation mechanisms. The arc approach has also provided an effective tool for network simulation of dispersion whereby the ceramics are modelled by nine parallel R-C branches over the frequency range 10²-10⁵ Hz used     

Evaluation of image similarity by histogram intersection

Colour is the most widely used attribute in image retrieval and object recognition. A technique known as histogram intersection has been widely studied and is considered to be effective for color‐image indexing. The key issue of this algorithm is the selection of an appropriate color space and optimal quantization of the selected color space. The goal of this article is to measure the model performance in predicting human judgment in similarity measurement for various images, to explore the capability of the model with a wide set of color spaces, and to find the optimal quantization of the selected color spaces. Six color spaces and twelve quantization levels are involved in evaluating the performance of histogram intersection. The categorical judgment and rank order experiments were conducted to measure image similarity. The CIELAB color space was found to perform at least as good as or better than the other color spaces tested, and the ability to predict image similarity increased with the number of bins used in the histograms, for up to 512 bins (8 per channel). With more than 512 bins, further improvement was negligible for the image datasets used in this study. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 30, 265–274, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20122     

Factors affecting cloud point analysis of palm oleins

Some of the factors affecting cloud point determination of palm oleins are described. These are the type of container used, method of stirring, rate of stirring and bath temperature. The repeatability and reproducibility standard deviations of the method are determined from collaborative trials. Recommendations for the test are made to reduce the large variations among laboratories.     

Anaerobic biodecolorization of textile reactive anthraquinone and phthalocyanine dyebaths under hypersaline conditions.

The biological decolorization of two industrial, spent textile reactive dyebaths was investigated using a suspended-growth, halophilic mixed culture fed with glucose. Dyebath I contained mainly Reactive Blue 19 (RB19), an anthraquinone dye, whereas dyebath II contained mainly Reactive Blue 21 (RB21), a phthalocyanine dye. Batch assays under anaerobic conditions with the two neutralized dyebaths resulted in 87 and 37% extent of decolorization for dyebaths I and II, respectively. The rate of glucose utilization and the extent of acetate production were impacted in the presence of each dyebath as compared to the control culture. However, dyebath decolorization occurred despite moderate culture inhibition. Reuse of a biologically renovated RB19-containing dyebath in the dyeing process resulted in reproducible but not identical cotton fabric shades as compared to a standard dyeing (i.e., control) using fresh water. This difference is attributed to a variable degree of RB19 aggregation during the dyeing process and is not related to the efficiency of the biodecolorization process. Further improvement of the redyeing efficiency will lead to the development of an in-plant, closed-loop decolorization system resulting in significant water conservation and minimization of textile pollutants such as salt and dyes.