Evaluating knowledge management failure factors using intuitionistic fuzzy FMEA approach

The twenty-first century organizations are characterized by an emphasis on knowledge and information. Today’s organizations also require the acquisition, management, and exploitation of knowledge and information in order to improve their own performance. In the current economy, the foundations of organizational competitiveness have turned former tangible and intangible resources into knowledge and the focus of information systems has also changed from information management to knowledge management. Besides, the most important step in the implementation of knowledge management is to examine the significant factors in this regard and to identify the causes of failure. Therefore, the present study evaluated knowledge management failure factors in an intuitionistic fuzzy environment as a case study in Khuzestan Oil and Gas Company. For this purpose, a series of failure factors affecting knowledge management in organizations were identified based on a review of the related literature and similar studies. Then, 16 failure factors in the implementation of knowledge management in the given organization were determined on the basis of interviews with company experts. According to the specified factors as well as the integration of multiple criteria decision-making techniques in an intuitionistic fuzzy environment, knowledge management failure factors in Khuzestan Oil and Gas Company were investigated. The results indicated that lack of management commitment and leadership was the most important factor affecting the failure of knowledge management in the given company.     

A comparative study of the carbon dioxide and nitrogen minimum miscibility pressure determinations for an Iranian light oil sample

Miscible gas injection is an approved profitable process that could significantly enhance oil recovery from different types of reservoirs while the major factor affecting its efficiency would be the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) value. A recent experimental technique, known as vanishing interfacial tension (VIT), can estimate the MMP for gas–oil mixtures by measuring interfacial tension values and extrapolating them to zero at a sequence of pressures. Compositional simulation models are also useful in MMP determination by tuning an equation of state to compute the realistic phase behavior of reservoir fluid. In this paper, the capability and quality of MMP prediction via different methods such as laboratory slim tube tests, VIT technique, compositional simulation, and various empirical correlations were examined using a light oil sample taken from an Iranian carbonate reservoir, employing two pure gases of CO₂ and N₂ as the injectants. The accuracy and validation of the mentioned methods were then confirmed successfully by obtaining negligible overall absolute deviation percentages (AD%) compared with the conducted slim tube tests results.     

Effect of gas diffusion electrode pre-treatment by ultrasonic bath cleaning technique on proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance

Ultrasonic bath cleaning technique was successfully applied for the pre-treatment of the gas diffusion electrode (GDE) before membrane-electrode assembly (MEA). The results show that ultrasonic bath pre-treatment significantly improves MEA performance in all current density regions, especially at the high current density region. This technique also reduces the time of the MEA conditioning, at least 30%. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) results demonstrate that pre-treatment of GDEs by ultrasonic bath technique leads to a decrease in the cell impedance especially in the ohmic resistance, which is very well due to the GDE cleaning process.     

Robust controllability and observability degrees of polynomially uncertain systems

This paper deals with the class of polynomially uncertain continuous-time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems whose uncertainties belong to a semi-algebraic set. The objective is to determine the minimum of the smallest singular value of the controllability or observability Gramian over the uncertainty region. This provides a quantitative measure for the robust controllability or observability degree of the system. To this end, it is shown that the problem can be recast as a sum-of-squares (SOS) problem. In the special case when the uncertainty region is polytopic, the corresponding SOS formulation can be simplified significantly. One can apply the proposed method to any large-scale interconnected system in order to identify those inputs and outputs that are more effective in controlling the system, in a robust manner. This enables the designer to simplify the control structure by ignoring those inputs and outputs whose contribution to the overall control operation is relatively weak. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the results.     

Transactive energy management for optimal scheduling of interconnected microgrids with hydrogen energy storage

In recent years, renewable energy sources (RESs) have attracted substantial attention due to carbon-free and cost-effective advantages that have made them one of the main sources of energy generation in the modern structure of the power grid. This paper proposes the stochastic day-ahead scheduling model for optimal energy management of renewable-based microgrids. In this paper, each microgrid is equipped with 100% RESs including the PV system and wind turbine for full pollutant-free energy generation while the hydrogen energy storage (HES) system is used for alleviating the intermittences of the RESs aiming to dynamically balance the energy during a day. To model the fluctuations such as day-ahead market price in the microgrids, the autoregressive integrated moving average and fast forward selection methods are exerted for scenario production and reduction, respectively. Transactive energy as a sustainable and reliable technique is considered for controlling and coordinating energy sharing among the microgrids and the energy network for dynamic energy balancing in the deregulated environment. For energy management in the demand-side, the price and load response schemes are presented, aiming to revise the consumers' patterns in energy consumption in line with balancing energy and minimizing the microgrids’ energy cost. The effectiveness of the suggested model is validated using the modified IEEE 24-bus case study. The realistic modeling of the system based on the proposed model has led to an 8.51% increment in energy cost.