Suppression of fuel and air stream diluted methane–air partially premixed flames in normal and microgravity

The effects of fuel and air stream dilution (ASD) with carbon dioxide on the suppression of normal and microgravity laminar methane–air partially premixed coflow jet flames were experimentally and numerically investigated. Experiments were conducted both in our normal-gravity laboratory and at the NASA Glenn Research Center 2.2 s drop tower. Measurements included flame topology and liftoff heights of diluted flames, critical diluent mole fractions for flame blowout, and the radiant heat loss from flames. The flames were also simulated using an axisymmetric unsteady numerical code that utilizes detailed chemistry and transport models. In addition, counterflow flame simulation results were used to examine similitude between the counterflow and coflow flame suppression, and further characterize the effectiveness of fuel stream versus ASD on flame extinction. A smaller relative fuel stream dilution (FSD) extinguishes partially premixed flames (PPFs) with increasing premixing as compared to dilution of the air stream. Conversely, smaller ASD is required to extinguish PPFs as they become less premixed and approach nonpremixed (NP) behavior. Fuel stream diluted PPFs and air stream diluted NP flames extinguish primarily through a reactant dilution effect while fuel stream diluted NP flames and air stream diluted PPF are extinguished primarily by a thermal cooling effect. Normal gravity flames lift off and blow out with a smaller diluent mole fraction than microgravity flames. The difference between the fuel and ASD effectiveness increases as the gravitational acceleration is reduced. Radiation heat losses are observed to increase with increasing diluent mole fraction and decreasing gravity.     

Heat Transfer Phenomena of Assemblages of Smooth Slip Spheres in Newtonian Fluids

Combined effects of slip velocity and volume fraction of slip spheres on the heat transfer characteristics of multiple slip spheres are numerically investigated within the framework of a free surface cell model combined with a linear slip velocity along the surface of the slip spheres. The governing conservation equations of the mass, momentum, and energy are solved by a segregated approach using a simplified marker and cell algorithm implemented on a staggered grid arrangement in spherical coordinates. The convection and diffusion terms of conservation equations are discretized using quadratic upstream interpolation for convective kinematics and second‐order central differencing schemes, respectively. Prior to obtaining new results, this numerical solver is validated by comparison of present results with the existing literature values. Further new results are obtained for a range of conditions as; Reynolds number, Re: 0.1–200; Prandtl number, Pr: 1–100; volume fraction of slip spheres, Φ: 0.1–0.5 and slip parameter, λ: 0.01–100. The effects of these dimensionless parameters on isotherm contours and local and average Nusselt numbers are thoroughly delineated. Finally, a new empirical correlation for the average Nusselt number of multiple smooth slip spheres is proposed on the basis of present numerical results.     

Mesophilic fermentative hydrogen production from sago starch-processing wastewater using enriched mixed cultures

Biohydrogen (bioH₂) production from starch-containing wastewater is an energy intensive process as it involves thermophilic temperatures for hydrolysis prior to dark fermentation. Here we report a low energy consumption bioH₂ production process with sago starch powder and wastewater at 30 °C using enriched anaerobic mixed cultures. The effect of various inoculum pretreatment methods like heat (80 °C, 2 h), acid (pH 4, 2.5 N HCl, 24 h) and chemical (0.2 g L⁻¹ bromoethanesulphonic acid, 24 h) on bioH₂ production from starch powder (1% w/v) showed highest yield (323.4 mL g⁻¹ starch) in heat-treatment and peak production rate (144.5 mL L⁻¹ h⁻¹) in acid-treatment. Acetate (1.07 g L⁻¹) and butyrate (1.21 g L⁻¹) were major soluble metabolites of heat-treatment. Heat-treated inoculum was used to develop mixed cultures on sago starch (1% w/v) in minimal medium with 0.1% peptone-yeast extract (PY) at initial pH 7 and 30 °C. The effect of sago starch concentration, pH, inoculum size and nutrients (PY and Fe ions) on batch bioH₂ production showed 0.5% substrate, pH 7, 10% inoculum size and 0.1% PY as the best H₂ yielding conditions. Peak H₂ yield and production rate were 412.6 mL g⁻¹ starch and 78.6 mL L⁻¹ h⁻¹, respectively at the optimal conditions. Batch experiment results using sago-processing wastewater under similar conditions showed bioH₂ yield of 126.5 mL g⁻¹ COD and 456 mL g⁻¹ starch. The net energy was calculated to be +2.97 kJ g⁻¹ COD and +0.57 kJ g⁻¹ COD for sago starch powder and wastewater, respectively. Finally, the estimated net energy value of +2.85 × 10¹³ kJ from worldwide sago-processing wastewater production indicates that this wastewater can serve as a promising feedstock for bioH₂ production with low energy input.     

An improved damage diagnostic technique based on Singular Spectrum Analysis and time series models

An approach to enhance the sensitivity of the damage index using the prediction errors of autoregressive – autoregressive exogenous models by augmenting Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) to detect and locate minor damage is presented. Numerical simulation studies are carried out by considering a simply supported beam with single and multiple cracks. An experimental study on a reinforced cement concrete beam has been carried out to validate the technique using different levels of damage. The studies emphasise that the SSA improves the sensitivity of the damage index for detection and also localisation, handling environmental/operational variability and measurement noise.     

Keyword-based private searching on cloud data along with keyword association and dissociation using cuckoo filter

International Journal of Information Security - Outsourcing of data is a very common scenario in the present-day world and quite often we need to outsource confidential data whose privacy is of...     

Effect of Starting As-cast Structure on the Microstructure–Texture Evolution During Subsequent Processing and Finally Ridging Behavior of Ferritic Stainless Steel

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - Effect of the initial as-cast structure on the microstructure–texture evolution during thermomechanical processing of 409L grade ferritic...     

Forced convective heat transfer between assemblages of spherical particles and power‐law non‐Newtonian liquids with velocity slip at the interface

Heat transfer from spheres can be influenced by a varying degree of slip at the fluid‐particle interface along with the rheology of the surrounding continuous liquid and adjacent spheres. Thus in this study, the effects of dimensionless velocity slip parameter (λ) along with power‐law fluid rheology and other pertinent kinematic flow and heat transfer parameters on isotherm contours, local and average Nusselt numbers of assemblages of spherical slip particles are presented. This is done by adopting a segregated approach where dimensionless momentum and energy equations are solved by SMAC algorithm formulated in spherical coordinates within the finite difference formulation. Before obtaining new results, grid independence studies for either extreme values of power‐law consistency index of non‐Newtonian fluids are carried out. Finally, the major contribution of this study is the development of a correlative equation for the average Nusselt number of assemblages of spherical slip particles in power‐law fluids based on the present results (5880 data points) as a function of pertinent dimensionless parameters.