Alcoholic extraction of vegetable oils. I. Solubilities of cottonseed,peanut, sesame,and soybean oils in aqueous ethanol

Summary Solubilities of cottonseed, peanut, sesame, and soybean oils in aqueous alcoholic solutions at various temperatures were determined directly. Solubility curves for the four oils in aqueous alcoholic solutions are presented. The critical solution temperaturesversus alcoholic concentrations data have been plotted and are in complete agreement with the previously published data of Japanese workers in each case. It is observed that the critical solution temperature increases with the moisture content of the alcohol, and in each case the relationship is linear. The pressure in the system also varies directly with the temperature, the maximum being approximately 20 p.s.i.g.     

Rapid calculation procedure to determine the pressurizing period for stored cryogenic fluids

The pressure of the stored fluid in cryogenic vessels increases if no boil-off gas is vented over long periods of time. From a thermodynamic point of view, an isochoric change of state takes place and the heat flux into the vessel rises the internal energy of the fluid. For the representation of the isochoric change of state, we constructed (Δu/v) versus x₁ diagram with 1 × 10⁵ Pa reference as a basis for LNG, LPG and R13a. The objective of the present work is to present thermodynamic design charts to facilitate a rapid calculation procedure to determine the pressurizing period of a transport vessel containing LNG or LPG or R134a cryogenic fluids. It is expected that the methodology presented in the paper could serve as a tool in determining the pressure rise due to boil-off phenomena. Specific examples are given for computing the pressurizing period using the charts provided.     

Physical,Thermal and Sorption Profile of Starch Obtained from Tacca leontopetaloides

The purpose of this study was to elucidate functional properties of starch granules obtained from tubers of Tacca leontopetaloides and compare them to a commercially available maize starch. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), particle size analysis, X‐ray powder diffraction (XRPD), gravimetric moisture sorption, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were used to characterize the samples. Tacca starch exhibited a monomodal distribution of irregularly shaped granules with a mean particle size of 2.64 µm. The spherulites of both samples indicated an A‐type pattern, with the degree of crystallinity estimated to be 35% for tacca starch and 38% for maize starch. The moisture sorption profile of both samples was analyzed according to the Guggenheim, Anderson and de Boer (GAB) equation. GAB analysis estimated the monolayer coverage for tacca and maize starch to be 0.0928 g/g and 0.0856 g/g, respectively. The gelatinization parameters of tacca starch were found to be 65.57 – 68.56 – 73.10°C while that of maize starch were 67.30 – 70.97 – 76.25°C. The results of DSC studies indicate that the associative forces that stabilize the granule structure in tacca starch are weaker than those in maize starch. The results obtained in this study establish the fundamental characteristics of tacca starch and suggest that further exploration of its potential for use in a variety of fields is warranted.     

Circulating hormones and estrous stage predict cellular and stromal remodeling in murine uterus

The understanding of how estrogen and progesterone (P(4)) drive uterine remodeling in rodents has largely been based on studies involving administration of exogenous hormones, using steroid receptor-deficient mice, or relying on vaginal smears. In all these cases, the actual serum levels of 17beta-estradiol (E(2)) and P(4) are not directly measured, and the relationship between physiological levels of female sex hormones and uterine remodeling in cycling mice has not been fully explored. Here, we measured the circulating levels of E(2) and P(4) in cycling mice and performed correlation analysis between hormone levels and epithelial and stromal uterine parameters, irrespective of the estrous stage. In parallel, these parameters were analyzed in relation to the more conventional method of vaginal smear classification of estrous stage. We found that circulating P(4) inversely correlated with uterine width, luminal epithelial proliferation, stromal apoptosis, and degradation of luminal epithelial basement membrane collagen type-IV. Circulating E(2) positively correlated with uterine width, stromal cell proliferation, and collagen type-I content, while it negatively correlated with glandular epithelial proliferation, loss of collagen type-IV surrounding glandular epithelium, and apoptosis in luminal, glandular, and stromal compartments. Our findings indicate that measuring P(4) or E(2) levels can predict many concurrent cellular and stromal events in the mouse uterus, suggesting that in naturally cycling mice cellular responses to hormone changes are not delayed, but occur very rapidly.     

Design,fabrication, and testing of a pulper for Kendu (Diospyros melanoxylon Roxb.)

Kendu (Diospyros melanoxylon Roxb.) is a minor forest produce commercially grown in India for its leaves for traditional cigarette‐making. Though the fruit has high nutritive value, it is not used for diet purpose. This may be due to the difficulty in extracting the pulp. To address this issue, a brush type pulping machine was developed for Kendu. The pulper consists of the feed hopper, feed rollers, barrel housing, stainless steel cylinder, and a shaft with two nylon brushes. The feed rollers are provided with conical spikes to compress and shear the hardcover of the fruit. The pulper has an overall dimension of 1.2 m × 0.75 m × 0.40 m and a throughput of 50 kg/hr. The housing field area of the machine is 1.130 m². The overall extraction efficiency of the pulper is 78.36% at an optimized speed and feed rate of 260 rpm and 2.5 kg/min, respectively.

Practical applications

A small‐scale pulper has been designed and fabricated for Kendu fruit, an underutilized minor forest produce. As such, there is no machine to extract pulp from Kendu. Manual removal of hardcover and seeds and separation of the pulp are labor intensive and time consuming. This problem limits the potential use of the fruit. The designed machine will serve as a milling cum pulping machine and would address the issue of underutilization of the fruit. The highly nutritious pulp thus extracted by the pulper can be further processed to various value‐added products. This would certainly increase the commercial use of the fruit and boost income generation to support the livelihood of the people. The designed pulper can also be used for other fruits of similar structure.     

Platon: a university local area network

Platon is a local area network set up in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Ottawa, operating at 1 Mbit/s and interconnecting departmental computers, terminals, peripherals, various instruments and the university mainframe. The primary objective of Platon is to facilitate network evolution and provide resource sharing by supporting various application protocols such as database access and file transfer. In addition, Platon is intended to serve as a research vehicle for distributed systems studies. To this end, a packet-voice system and a packet-radio gateway are concurrently being developed. Platon has adopted the bus architecture, using a coaxial cable with CSMA/CD as its access protocol. Retransmissions of collided packets are scheduled using a linear incremental backoff (LIB) algorithm.     

Effect of 100 KeV Ar+ ion beam irradiation on ZnO thin films – Influence of morphology vis-a-vis electrode/electrolyte interface and its impact on photoelectrochemical water splitting

The present study attempts quantitative determination of changes in the morphological surface features viz. fractal dimension, lower and upper cut off length scale through Power Spectral Density analysis prior to and after irradiation of 100 KeV Ar⁺ ion beam at incidence angles of 0°, 40° and 60° on ZnO thin films. All the unirradiated and irradiated samples are subjected to photoelectrochemical characterization and a correlation between photoelectrochemical performance and morphological parameters is established. Sample irradiated at 40° angle at the fluence of 5 × 10¹⁶ ions/cm² is found to possess maximum fractal dimension of 2.72, lower and upper cut off length scale of 3.16 nm and 63.00 nm respectively. This sample exhibits maximum photocurrent density of 3.19 mA/cm² and applied bias photon-to-current efficiency of 1.12% at 1.23 V/RHE. Hydrogen gas collected for duration of 1 h for the same sample was ~4.83 mLcm^?2.     

GFEM analysis of MHD nanofluid flow toward a power‐law stretching sheet in the presence of thermodiffusive effect along with regression investigation

In the current study, we use Galerkin finite‐element simulation to analyze the concept of triple diffusive flow with magnetic field effect toward a power law stretching sheet. The fluid comprises dissolved solutal particles and nanoparticles in the base fluid. The three important mechanisms that are responsible for rise in phenomenon of convective transportation are diffusophoresis, thermophoresis along with Brownian motion have been considered. Recently, the proposed nanoparticles' mass flux and heat flux boundary conditions have been imposed. Nanoparticle mass transportation, solutal mass transportation with heat transportation for prominent physical parameters, such as stretching parameter, magnetic influence parameter, thermophoresis parameter, and Brownian motion parameter are calculated. To further verify and understand the strength of the relationship between heat transportation rate and controlling parameters, the multiple regression process is used. The finite difference approach was adopted to numerically solve the nonlinear governing equations and the linked boundary conditions. In the present study, we used MATLAB software for finding the final outcomes and relating the concluding results for $?{{\theta }_{\delta }}^{\prime }\left(0\right)$ with extant outcomes in the literature as a limiting case in the absence of the magnetic intensity parameter and an excellent agreement was noted. It was observed that the magnetic field has a positive effect on heat and mass transfer. This study also helps in understanding and thus controlling the velocity of the flow along with solutal depositions, which has a significant engineering application in the process of extrusion. The findings of the present study help to control the rate of heat and mass transfer, aiding manufacturing companies in obtaining the desired quality of product.