Soil-washing design methodology for a lead-contaminated sandy-soil

Soils located near high traffic roadways, particularly where renovations have taken place, typically exhibit elevated levels of trace metals in the upper soil horizon. Regulators are currently seeking an efficient method of site characterization and treatment system design which will lend itself to timely and environmentally efficacious clean-up. The soil investigated in this study was a silty sand collected near a bridge abutment for a major interstate highway. The soil had a total lead content of 1392 mg/kg. In addition, the soil contained a considerable fraction of organic carbon (approximately 6.3%). A sequential chemical extraction indicated that a fraction of contaminants were in labile soil phases and thus amenable to chemical extraction (soil-washing). A soil washing design methodology is presented based on surface chemistry and equilibrium stage operation. In this work, a double layer surface complexation model was used to describe equilibrium sorption behavior and a preliminary design of an ex-situ counter-current equilibrium stage extraction process is presented. Model calibration was conducted using sorption data obtained from a 1:40 solid to liquid ratio (s/l), adsorption edge. Model validation was accomplished with batch titration data and a 1:20 s/l, adsorption edge. The model accurately predicted leachable lead concentrations over a wide pH range. The required number of ideal equilibrium stages was highly sensitive to pH.     

Detection of frozen salt in pipes using gamma-ray spectrometry of potassium self-activity

Solar plants that use molten salts as heat transfer fluid need careful control to avoid the freezing of the salt in the pipes; if such a problem occurs, a diagnostic instrument to localize where is the frozen salt plug and to determine its length is useful. If the salt contains potassium (as is the case of the most common mixture used in solar plants, NaNO₃/KNO₃ 60/40% by weight), the gamma decay of the natural unstable isotope ⁴⁰K can be exploited to detect the frozen salt in a non-invasive way. Simulations and experimental results regarding the detectability of such plugs with different masses/lengths are presented.     

Experimental study on the restart of core-annular flow

We show the results of an experimental campaign to study the pressure drop during the restart of a core-annular flow from a stratified configuration. In normal core annular flow operations, due to fouling or pump failures, a core flow may not be sustained anymore and hence it stratifies. Since the pressure drops connected to the stratified flow regime are much larger than the ones of core annular, the flow suddenly stops. To restart it there are two possibilities: one is to try to provide a higher pressure gradient trying to restore the flow of water and oil, the other is to clean the pipe using water only: in both cases an attachment of a thin layer of oil on the pipe internal wall occurs and the pressure drop for water only or oil–water are higher than the previous ones with clean pipe wall. We focused our attention on the cleaning by water only and we provide experimental data on the evolution of the pressure drop as function of time in order to find when the pipe could be considered as perfectly cleaned or, at least, when the pressure drop are low enough to restart the oil flow. The experimental results are finally compared with a two-fluid model available in literature.     

Rawseeds ground truth collection systems for indoor self-localization and mapping

A trustable and accurate ground truth is a key requirement for benchmarking self-localization and mapping algorithms; on the other hand, collection of ground truth is a complex and daunting task, and its validation is a challenging issue. In this paper we propose two techniques for indoor ground truth collection, developed in the framework of the European project Rawseeds, which are mutually independent and also independent on the sensors onboard the robot. These techniques are based, respectively, on a network of fixed cameras, and on a network of fixed laser scanners. We show how these systems are implemented and deployed, and, most importantly, we evaluate their performance; moreover, we investigate the possible fusion of their outputs.     

A super-peer model for resource discovery services in large-scale Grids

As deployed Grids increase from tens to thousands of nodes, peer-to-peer (P2P) techniques and protocols can be used to implement scalable services and applications. The super-peer model is a novel approach that helps the convergence of P2P models and Grid environments and can be used to deploy a P2P information service in Grids. A super-peer serves a single physical organization in a Grid, and manages metadata associated to the resources provided by the nodes of that organization. Super-peers connect to each other to form a peer network at a higher level. This paper examines how the super-peer model can handle membership management and resource discovery services in a multi-organizational Grid. A simulation analysis evaluates the performance of a resource discovery protocol; simulation results can be used to tune protocol parameters in order to increase search efficiency.     

A graph-based approach for extracting terminological properties from information sources with heterogeneous formats

The problem of handling both the integration and the cooperation of a large number of information sources characterised by heterogeneous representation formats is a challenging issue. In this context, a central role can be played by the knowledge about the semantic relationships holding between concepts belonging to different information sources (intersource properties). In this paper, we propose a semiautomatic approach for extracting two kinds of intersource properties, namely synonymies and homonymies, from heterogeneous information sources. In order to carry out the extraction task, we introduce both a conceptual model, for representing involved sources, and a metrics, for measuring the strength of the semantic relationships holding among concepts represented within the same source.     

Compared Analysis of Metro Networks Supported by Graph Theory

This paper brings into focus the topological and geographical evaluation of metro networks through the definition of a methodological approach based on a set of indicators, a lot of which are defined in the sector literature. Once the methodology was stated, the results of an application on the metro networks of 13 big metropolitan areas were illustrated. Statistical comparative analyses are proposed to classify networks.     

A Technique for Extracting Sub-source Similarities from Information Sources Having Different Formats

In this paper we propose a semi-automatic technique for deriving the similarity degree between two portions of heterogeneous information sources (hereafter, sub-sources). The proposed technique consists in two phases: the first one selects the most promising pairs of sub-sources, whereas the second one computes the similarity degree relative to each promising pair. We show that the detection of sub-source similarities is a special case (and a very interesting one, for semi-structured information sources) of the more general problem of Scheme Match. In addition, we present a real example case to clarify the proposed technique, a set of experiments we have conducted to verify the quality of its results, a discussion about its computational complexity and its classification in the context of related literature. Finally, we discuss some possible applications which can benefit by derived similarities.