Experimental study of chemical treatment of coal fly ash to reduce the mobility of priority trace elements

Coal fired electric power plants produce large volumes of fly ash and other coal combustion by-products (CCBs) every year. Although almost 50% of the fly ash produced in the US is recycled for beneficial use, most of the ash material is disposed in dry landfills and ash lagoon impoundments. Fly ash may contain hazardous leachable trace elements such as As, B, Cr, Mo, Ni, Se, Sr and V which have a negative impact on the environment due to potential leaching by acid rain and groundwater with time. Many of the older CCB disposal facilities are unlined and unmonitored and as a result the EPA is currently developing national standards for monitoring CCB disposal sites. The cost to the US electric power industry could exceed one billion dollars if existing and closed CCB disposal facilities come under regulation. Thus simple, low-cost and effective in situ chemical treatment techniques are needed to stabilize hazardous leachable trace elements in the coal combustion by-product (CCB) materials. This paper reports the results of experiments designed to chemically treat fly ash with ferrous sulfate solutions to immobilize hazardous leachable trace elements after disposal.The current study is focused on three acidic and one alkaline fly ash samples collected from electric power plants located in the southeastern United States that were treated with two ferrous sulfate treatment solutions. The first treatment solution contained ferrous sulfate (FS) to give 322 mg/L of dissolved iron, while the second treatment solution contained the same concentration of ferrous sulfate along with excess calcium carbonate (FS + CC) to buffer the pH. Fly ash treatment experiments were carried out at solid:liquid (S:L) ratios of 1:3 and 1:30. The effectiveness of the treatment methods was evaluated by sequentially leaching the treated and the untreated fly ash samples using a synthetic acid rain (SAR) solution (US EPA Method 1312B SPLP fluid) as the leachate. The best overall treatment result was shown by the unbuffered ferrous sulfate solution at the 1:30 S:L ratio, which substantially reduced the mobility of the oxyanion trace elements. The overall mobility reduction achieved for As was 23-72%, B mobility was reduced by 43-80%, Cr by 45-77%, Mo by 21-90%, Se by 41-85% and V by 41-53% The unbuffered ferrous sulfate treatment was not effective for immobilization of the cationic trace elements Ni and Sr.     

Modeling of heat transfer in rotational molding

Rotational molding is a process for manufacturing hollow or open‐sided plastic products using a rotating mold subjected to heating and then cooling. The process is attractive for the production of stress‐free objects at a competitive cost. In this article, a modified model for heat transfer in rotational molding is proposed, which assumes that the heat transfer at the mold‐powder interface is because of convection, whereas the powder particles are heated up by conduction. Heat transfer through the mold–air contact is also included. A source‐based formulation is used for modeling the layer‐by‐layer nonisothermal deposition of plastic. The reduced heat transfer due to warpage is calculated by using a modified heat transfer coefficient. Good overall agreement is found between the cycle times as predicted by the model and the experimental data. The model is then used for calculating the cycle time for particulate composites, based on their effective properties. A reduction in the cycle time is observed in the case of reinforced composites. This is attributed to the increase in thermal conductivity of the particulate composites and the reduced mass fraction of the polymer. Numerical calculations of the cycle time for the glass‐bead reinforced composites are found to be in good agreement with the experimental results. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2008. © 2008 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Effects of suction/blowing on steady boundary layer stagnation-point flow and heat transfer towards a shrinking sheet with thermal radiation

In this paper, the effects of suction/blowing and thermal radiation on steady boundary layer stagnation-point flow and heat transfer over a porous shrinking sheet are investigated. The existence of dual solutions, unique solution and non-existence of solution for self-similar equations of the flow and heat transfer are analyzed numerically. It is noted that the range of velocity ratio parameter where the solution exists increases/decreases with increasing suction/blowing. With increasing suction, temperature at the wall is found to increase (decrease) for the first (second) solution. Due to increasing Prandtl number and thermal radiation parameter the thermal boundary layer thickness becomes thinner.     

Performance comparison of natural refrigerants based cascade systems for ultra-low-temperature applications

Theoretical analyses and optimisation are carried out with ethane, ethylene and nitrous oxide as the low-temperature (LT) fluids in a cascade system for ultra-low-temperature refrigeration applications to examine the effects of design and operating parameters. Finally, performance improvement has been investigated employing an internal heat exchanger. Optimal intermediate temperature (IT) correlations have been developed. Ethane is superior in terms of coefficient of performance (COP), whereas nitrous oxide is superior in terms of volumetric cooling capacity as an LT fluid. With increase in compressor efficiency, COP increases; however, with little influence on the optimum IT. Using an internal heat exchanger in the LT circuit, the cooling COP can be increased for ethane and ethylene; however, there is marginal decrease in COP for N ₂O. Ammonia is not suitable as a HT fluid for some operating conditions where the optimum IT is lower than the normal boiling point and propylene may be a suitable substitute with a penalty on COP.     

Steady boundary layer slip flow and heat transfer over a flat porous plate embedded in a porous media

A mathematical model is presented for analyzing the boundary layer forced convective flow and heat transfer of an incompressible fluid past a porous plate embedded in a Darcy porous medium. Velocity and thermal slips are considered instead of no-slip conditions at the boundary. The similarity solutions for the problem are obtained and the reduced nonlinear ordinary differential equations are solved numerically. In case of porous plate, fluid velocity increases whereas non-dimensional temperature decreases for increasing values of suction parameter but it increases with increasing blowing parameter. Our analysis reveals that the increase of velocity slip parameter reduces the momentum boundary layer thickness and also enhances the heat transfer from the plate. On the other hand, heat transfer decreases with thermal slip parameter.     

Mixed convection from an isolated spherical particle

A numerical study on mixed convection around a hot spherical particle moving vertically downwards in a still fluid medium has been made. The flow field is considered to be axisymmetric for the range of Reynolds number (based on the diameter and the settling velocity of the particle) considered. A third-order accurate upwind scheme is employed to compute the flow field and the temperature distribution. The form of the wake and the thermal field is analyzed for several values of Grashof number and the Reynolds number. The influence of buoyancy on drag and the rate of heat transfer are studied. At moderate Reynolds number, recirculating eddy develops in the downstream of the sphere. With the rise of surface temperature this eddy collapses and the fluid adjacent to the heated surface develops into a buoyant plume above the sphere. The increase in surface temperature of the sphere delays the flow separation. Our results show that the drag force and the rate of heat transfer strongly depend on Grashof number for the moderate values of Reynolds number. The conjugate heat transfer from the moving sphere is also addressed in the present paper. We have compared our computed solution with several empirical and asymptotic expressions available in the literature and found them in good agreement.     

A differential staining technique for vertebrate histology.

A staining method is described for studying micro-anatomy of different vertebrate tissues in the light microscope. A staining sequence of celestin blue--erythrosin--orange G--fast green with mordanting in phosphomolybdic acid yields a satisfactory differentiation and fine colour contrast in various tissues. The efficacy of the method was tested on different avian and mammalian tissues.     

High-speed target tracking by fuzzy hostility-induced segmentation of optical flow field

A time efficient technique for real-time tracking of high-speed objects in a video sequence is presented in this article. The technique is primarily based on the segmentation of the optical flow field computed between the successive image frames of a video sequence, followed by the tracking of a detected point of interest (POI) within the segmented flow field. In the initial phase of the technique, the optical flow field between the first two successive image frames acquired from a video sequence, is computed. A fuzzy hostility index indicative of the degree of coherence of the moving objects in the image frames, is used to segment the optical flow field. This yields different coherent regions of interest (ROIs) in the segmented flow field. A POI is then detected in the different ROIs obtained. Tracking of the moving object is then carried out by computing the flow fields between predefined ROIs in the neighborhood of the detected POI in the subsequent image frames.Since the selected ROIs are smaller than the image frames, a fair amount of reduction in the time required for the computation of the optical flow field is achieved, thereby facilitating real-time operation. An application of the proposed technique is demonstrated on three video sequences of high-speed flying fighter aircrafts.     

Collector junction modeling of planar transistors

This work obtains a correlation between the physical structure and capacitance characteristics of collector junctions of planar bipolar epitaxial transistors. It uses an exponential model to represent the impurity distribution and makes available by non-destructive techniques base impurity profile constant, background concentration and collector junction depth from terminal measurements. The methods take care of such aspects of device geometry which are particular to small area high frequency transistors. Procedures are proposed for systematic evaluation of stray and sidewall capacitances. The latter can be used to monitor junction depth. Of interest for quick estimation of parameters is a method that utilises derivatives of the C(V) plot and does not require evaluation of strays.     

Radiation-induced copolymerization of trioxane with tetrahydrofuran

Radiation-initiated copolymerization of solid trioxane (TOX) with tetrahydrofuran (THF) was investigated. The effects of radiation dose, THF concentration, and post-polymerization temperature and duration on copolymer yield and THF incorporation were studied. These results are compared with the results of TOX homopolymerization under identical conditions. Copolymer yield was lower than that of homopolymer. Only a fraction of charged THF entered into the polymer chain. THF content and radiation dose also altered the MW of the copolymer but it showed better thermal stability. The initial reaction rates of the copolymerization were determined and from these the activation energy was found to be 36.2 kcal mol^?1.