Revamp study of crude distillation unit heat exchanger network: Energy integration potential of delayed coking unit free hot streams

This work addresses the revamp study of the crude distillation unit (CDU) heat exchanger network (HEN) of a typical refinery with and without the consideration of the free hot streams available in the delayed coking unit (DCU). Based on pinch design method, two sub-cases of revamp study have been considered namely (a) installation of new heat exchangers for the entire network and (b) reutilization of existing heat exchangers. Based on the study, it has been evaluated that the revamp design of existing CDU HEN without considering the DCU free hot streams allows the enhancement of heat integration by 4.73% with respect to that available for the base case. On the other hand, the heat integration potential of DCU free hot streams is evaluated to enhance energy integration by 15.66% (with respect to the base case) with a simultaneous reduction of furnace duty by 37.1% and cooling water duties by 89.8%. Of various cases considered, the most attractive option corresponds to the partial revamp of CDU HEN along with DCU free hot streams that involve the reutilization of existing heat exchangers. The profitability analysis of this option concludes that the revamp design needs an additional investment of 2.68 M$ to enhance annual profit by 1.58 M$ with a payback period of 1.9 years. Thereby, the heat integration potential of DCU free hot streams is inferred to be significant and marks an important choice amongst different key revamp parameters associated to heat exchanger networks.     

A study on the mechanical properties of cryorolled Al–Mg–Si alloy

The mechanical properties of a precipitation hardenable Al–Mg–Si alloy subjected to cryorolling and ageing treatments are reported in this present work. The severe strain induced during cryorolling of Al–Mg–Si alloys in the solid solutionised state produces ultrafine microstructures with improved mechanical properties such as strength and hardness. The improved strength and hardness of cryorolled alloys are due to the grain size effect and higher dislocation density. The ageing treatment of cryorolled Al–Mg–Si alloys has improved its strength and ductility significantly due to the precipitation hardening and grain coarsening mechanisms, respectively. The reduction in dimple size of cryorolled Al–Mg–Si alloy upon failure confirms the grain refinement and strain hardening mechanism operating in the severely deformed samples.     

A 4 bit highly energy and area efficient SC SAR ADC based on a combinational technique with reduced reset energy

A combinational method, based on hybrid and junction splitting techniques, is used to realize a 4 bit high energy efficient SC SAR ADC. The hybrid switching scheme is very energy efficient in which the first three comparison cycles do not consume any energy. In junction split technique, the total value of capacitors does not remain constant. Rather capacitors are appended as bits are being determined successively. The present method combines the features of these two methods to realize an even more energy efficient SC SAR ADC. Reset energy, in some cases, can seriously impact the overall efficiency of a SC SAR ADC. A study has been made about the normal reset energy and two step reset energy for the different cases. A table has been drawn to show the overall energy efficiency for normal conversion, conversion with single step reset and lastly conversion with two step reset for all the architectures.

     

CMOS inter-chip interconnection circuit using high-Tc superconducting tunnel junctions and interconnections

The analysis of a possible low-voltage CMOS interconnection circuit utilizing high-T_c superconducting tunnel junctions (TJs) and interconnections for very-high-speed interchip communication at low temperatures (4-77 K) is presented. The circuit uses tunnel junctions as diodes to clip voltage swings between well-controlled levels defined by the energy gaps of the high-T _c materials. The circuit dissipates five to eight times less power than conventional designs, produces very small current transients, and has good immunity to noise from input voltage fluctuations, crosstalk, and simultaneous switching of drivers     

Recent Progress in Super Hydrophobic/Hydrophilic Self-Cleaning Surfaces for Various Industrial Applications: A Review

The growing interest in self-clean coatings owes to their low maintenance cost, high durability, and immense potential applications. Such coatings, for instance, may offer useful resistance against fouling, icing, smear, corrosion and possesses oil-water separation capability. Hence, the design and development of self-cleaning materials is an area of significant interest to researchers worldwide. This exploration prospectus critically reviews and highlights various types of self-cleaning surfaces, their applications, working mechanisms, and fabrication techniques used globally. The comprehensive literature study suggests that an extensive study of surface behavior towards water and oil may jointly determine its self-cleaning nature.     

Performance of Smart Antenna Under Different Fading Conditions

Optimizing the current distribution of an evenly spaced antenna array has shown to be an efficient approach for reducing side lobe levels. In this article, the Tchebyscheff distribution-based antenna array synthesis approach is combined with an adaptive signal processing algorithm for beamforming and side lobe level reduction in smart antennas in various fading situations. The performance of smart antennas in uniformly spaced linear, planar, circular, and semi-circular arrays are evaluated. The presence of Rayleigh and Rician channels is examined in the network. The least mean square (LMS) and normalised least mean square (NLMS) algorithms are applied as adaptive algorithms. In fading environments, the NLMS algorithm with Tchebyscheff distribution outperforms than the LMS algorithm with Tchebyscheff distribution, with a side lobe level decrease of 11.23 dB. The lowest side lobe achieved with the NLMS algorithm with Tchebyscheff distribution is???45.59 dB for uniform planar array.

     

Design and Implementation of Routing Algorithm to Enhance Network Lifetime in WBAN

Today’s era is the era of smart and remote applications exploiting advancement in sensors, cloud, Internet of things etc. Major application is in healthcare monitoring and support using wireless body area network (WBAN) in which sensor nodes sense vital physiological parameters and send to server through sink i.e. smart phone nowadays for seamless monitoring. The most significant issue in such applications is energy efficiency which leads to enhanced network life time that ensures uninterrupted seamless services. From source to sink data transmission may occur considering three different scenarios: source to sink single hop direct data transmission irrespective of in-between node distance, source to sink multi hop data transmission in which transmission range of source node is fixed at a threshold to find next forwarder node and transmission range of source node is incremented by affixed value until data gets transmitted to sink. In this work WBAN having different network configurations based on fixed or random positions of nodes have been simulated. Different scenarios with fixed and varying number of nodes are framed and simulated using MATLAB 2020a for performance evaluation of proposed algorithm in terms of energy consumption, network lifetime, path loss etc. due to data transmission from source to sink. Experimental results show that incremental approach is better than direct one in terms of energy consumption, path loss and network lifetime. While selecting transmission range of a source node, it is considered to keep Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) lower to reduce impact on human tissue.

     

CMOS analogue amplifier circuits optimisation using hybrid backtracking search algorithm with differential evolution

This paper proposes a novel hybrid optimisation algorithm which combines the recently proposed evolutionary algorithm Backtracking Search Algorithm (BSA) with another widely accepted evolutionary algorithm, namely, Differential Evolution (DE). The proposed algorithm called BSA-DE is employed for the optimal designs of two commonly used analogue circuits, namely Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) differential amplifier circuit with current mirror load and CMOS two-stage operational amplifier (op-amp) circuit. BSA has a simple structure that is effective, fast and capable of solving multimodal problems. DE is a stochastic, population-based heuristic approach, having the capability to solve global optimisation problems. In this paper, the transistors’ sizes are optimised using the proposed BSA-DE to minimise the areas occupied by the circuits and to improve the performances of the circuits. The simulation results justify the superiority of BSA-DE in global convergence properties and fine tuning ability, and prove it to be a promising candidate for the optimal design of the analogue CMOS amplifier circuits. The simulation results obtained for both the amplifier circuits prove the effectiveness of the proposed BSA-DE-based approach over DE, harmony search (HS), artificial bee colony (ABC) and PSO in terms of convergence speed, design specifications and design parameters of the optimal design of the analogue CMOS amplifier circuits. It is shown that BSA-DE-based design technique for each amplifier circuit yields the least MOS transistor area, and each designed circuit is shown to have the best performance parameters such as gain, power dissipation, etc., as compared with those of other recently reported literature.     

A novel method for binarization of scene text images and its application in text identification

Pattern Analysis and Applications - The aim of this article is twofold. First, we propose an effective methodology for binarization of scene images. For our present study, we use the publicly...