Planning of capacity,production and inventory decisions in a generic reverse supply chain under uncertain demand and returns

There is a growing interest for the design and operation of reverse supply chain systems due to the cost and the legislation issues. In this paper, we address the disassembly, refurbishing and production operations in a reverse supply chain setting for modular products such as computers and mobile phones considering the uncertainties in this system, which are the return amounts of the used products and demand for final products. We develop a large-scale mixed integer programming model in order to capture all characteristics of this system, and use two-stage stochastic optimisation and robust optimisation approaches to analyse the system behaviour. In the first stage, we focus on the strategic decisions about the capacities at disassembly and refurbishing sites considering different scenarios regarding the uncertainties in the system. In the second stage, we analyse the operational decisions such as production, inventory and disposal rates. We observe through our extensive numerical analysis that the randomness of demand and return values effect the performance of the system substantially and the uncertainty of the return amounts of used products is much more important than the uncertainty of demand in this system.     

Comparison of textile dyeing effluent adsorption on commercial activated carbon and activated carbon prepared from olive stone by ZnCl2 activation

Adsorption of Remazol Red B on activated carbon prepared from olive stone and commercial activated carbon from aqueous solutions was compared. Different activating agent (ZnCl₂) amounts and adsorbent particle size were studied to optimize adsorbent surface area. The adsorptive property of commercial activated carbon and activated carbon prepared from olive stone were investigated in terms of adsorbent dose, temperature, equilibrium time and pH. Then the obtained results were compared for all parameters, According to the results, the equilibrium time, optimum pH, adsorbent dosage were found 60 min, pH < 3–4 and 1.0 g/50 ml respectively. Lower adsorption capacity for RRB on activated carbon prepared from olive stone was found. The kinetic data for both adsorbents supports pseudo-second order model (r² > 0.99) and intra-particle model (r² > 0.95) but the first order kinetic model did not adequately fit to the experimental values (r² < 0.76). The equilibrium adsorption data were interpreted using Langmuir and Freundlich models. The adsorption of Remazol Red B was better represented by the Langmuir equation. In addition, the thermodynamic parameters, standard free energy (ΔG°), standard enthalpy (ΔH°), standard entropy (ΔS°) of the adsorption process were calculated for both adsorbents. To reveal the adsorptive characteristics of the produced active carbon, surface area measurements were carried out and structural analysis was performed using SEM-EDS.     

Sources and dechlorination of polychlorinated biphenyl congeners in the sediments of Fox River, Wisconsin

Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners were analyzed in eight deep, dated sediment cores collected from the immediate upstream and downstream of DePere dam in Fox River, Wisconsin. The average time span of the cores is about 100 yr, except for one core (FR-9) which is influenced by mixing or covers a short time period (2 yr). The total PCB concentrations have a range of 0.2-6.8 ppm for the upstream and 0.3-17.6 ppm for the downstream cores. The PCB data obtained from the sampling were analyzed as upstream and downstream data, using a factor analysis (FA) model with nonnegative constraints to identify PCB sources and congener patterns. The factor loadings obtained from the FA model were interpreted in terms of the presence of possible environmental degradation mechanisms. In addition, a recently developed model, which is used to identify and quantify possible pathways of anaerobic dechlorination of PCBs in the sediments, was validated on the basis of in situ data from the literature, and then applied to the congener patterns obtained from the FA model. The major PCB source to the Fox River sediments is identified as Aroclor 1242, for both the upstream and the downstream sediments. Loss of di- and trichlorobiphenyls (e.g., 2-4, 25-2) from the sediments suggests desorption from the sediments. On the other hand, observation of elevated amounts of certain congeners such as 24-3 and 25-3 indicates the presence of anaerobic dechlorination activity. The anaerobic dechlorination model demonstrates significant similarities between the Aroclor 1242 profile altered according to dechlorination processes Q (upstream) and H' (downstream) and the dominant congener patterns obtained from the FA model.     

The Effects of Electromagnetic Brake on Liquid Steel Flow in Thin Slab Caster

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with magneto hydro dynamics (MHD) is developed for a thin slab caster to investigate the effects of electromagnetic brake (EMBr) on liquid steel flow in continuous casting mold and to determine the EMBr practices which lead to optimal flow structure. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) tests in water model and meniscus flow measurements in real caster are performed to validate the predictions obtained with CFD models. The performance of different submerged entry nozzle designs, SEN 1 and SEN 2, are evaluated. The effects of nozzle submergence in relation to the applied magnetic field on mold flow structure are quantified. There are significant differences between flow structures obtained with SEN 1 and SEN 2, even though both designs have fundamental similarities and contain four ports. EMBr mainly reduces the meniscus velocities for SEN 2 as opposed to the foremost influence of EMBr for SEN 1 that is to significantly slow down the downward jet coming from the bottom ports. In addition, reducing the EMBr strength for shallow nozzle submergence and increasing the EMBr strength for deep nozzle submergence help to maintain similar meniscus activity for all conditions.     

All‐pass filters using DDCC‐ and MOSFET‐based electronic resistor

The main motivation in this paper is to draw attention to the tunability and input‐signal amplitude limitations when a nonlinear device is used as a resistor. For this purpose, two first‐order all‐pass filters are proposed using differential difference current conveyor (DDCC), a capacitor and a resistor without element‐matching restriction. These all‐pass filter circuits can be made electronically tunable with electronic resistors. Tunability and input‐signal amplitude limitations of the proposed circuits due to the operational restrictions of the electronic resistors are examined. PSPICE simulations confirm the validity and the practical utility of the proposed circuits. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preparation and application of glycidyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid monomer mixture‐grafted poly(ethylene terephthalate) fibers for removal of methylene blue from aqueous solution

A novel fibrous adsorbent that grafts glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) and methacrylic acid (MAA) monomer mixture onto poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fibers was used for removal of methylene blue (MB) in aqueous solutions by a batch equilibration technique. The operation parameters investigated included, pH of solution, removal time, graft yield, dye concentration, and reaction temperature. The adsorption rate of MB is much higher on the MAA/GMA‐grafted PET fibers than on the ungrafted PET fibers. MB was removed 99% the initial dye concentration at 10 mg L⁻¹ and 93% at 200 mg L⁻¹ by monomers mixture‐grafted PET fibers. Pseudofirst order and pseudosecond order kinetic equations were used to examine the experimental data of different graft yield. It was found that the pseudosecond order kinetic equation described the data of dye adsorption on fibrous adsorbent very well. The experimental isotherms data were analyzed using Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. The data was that Freundlich isotherm model fits the data very well for the dyes on the fibers adsorbent. The dye adsorbed was easily desorbed by treating with acetic acid/methanol mixture (50% V/V) at room temperature. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010     

Design of practical broadband matching networks with commensurate transmission lines

To design broadband matching networks for microwave communication systems, commercially available computer aided design (CAD) tools are always preferred. But these tools need proper matching network topology and element values. Therefore, in this paper, a practical method is proposed to generate distributed-element matching networks with good initial element values. Then, the gain performance of the designed matching network can be optimized employing these tools. The utilization of the proposed method is illustrated by means of the given example. It is shown that proposed method provides very good initials for CAD tools.     

A new high-performance CMOS fully differential second-generation current conveyor with application example of biquad filter realisation

In this article, a new complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) high-performance fully differential second-generation current conveyor (FDCCII) implementation is proposed. The presented FDCCII provides high-output impedance at terminals Z+ and Z?, good linearity and excellent output–input current gain accuracy. Also, the proposed FDCCII circuit operates at a supply voltage of ±1.3 V. The applications of the FDCCII to realise voltage-mode multifunction filters are given. Simulations are performed using TSMC CMOS 0.35-μm technology to verify theoretical results.     

Neural Network Based Receiver for Multiuser Detection in MC-CDMA Systems

In this paper, we present a multiuser detection technique based on artificial neural network (NN) for synchronous multicarrier code division multiple access systems over Rayleigh fading channels. To test the robustness of the proposed receiver, also the effect of power control problem is studied with a comparative manner. Bit error rate (BER) performance of the NN based receiver is compared with the single user bound and conventional receivers. Although the BER performance of the conventional receiver degrades as the number of the users and power level differences among the users increase, as a decision structure, neural network based receiver gives closer BER performance to the single user bound.