Atmospheric corrosion of reference metals in Antarctic sites

This paper presents the results obtained at three Antarctic test sites participating in the “Ibero-American Map of Atmospheric Corrosiveness” (MICAT), a project on atmospheric corrosion carried out during the period 1988–1994 at some 70 sites distributed across 12 countries of the Latin-American region, Spain and Portugal. The three Antarctic sites are located near the coastline.The singular climatic characteristics of Antarctic regions are related with the purity of the air, the absence of rainfall and the formation of ice on the metallic surface during an important part of the exposure time. However, electrochemical activity is possible below ice layers. This situation affects the structure and morphology of corrosion product films and the resulting corrosion rates of metallic surfaces.     

An integrated system to remote monitor and control anaerobic wastewater treatment plants through the internet.

The TELEMAC project brings new methodologies from the Information and Science Technologies field to the world of water treatment. TELEMAC offers an advanced remote management system which adapts to most of the anaerobic wastewater treatment plants that do not benefit from a local expert in wastewater treatment. The TELEMAC system takes advantage of new sensors to better monitor the process dynamics and to run automatic controllers that stabilise the treatment plant, meet the depollution requirements and provide a biogas quality suitable for cogeneration. If the automatic system detects a failure which cannot be solved automatically or locally by a technician, then an expert from the TELEMAC Control Centre is contacted via the internet and manages the problem.     

Separation of propranolol enantiomers through membranes based on chiral derivatized polysulfone

The characterization of new synthesized chiral polymeric membranes, based in polysulfone polymer is here reported. Polysulfone was derivatized to chiral polysulfone, by bonding covalently the chiral carrier, N-dodecyl-4(R)-hydroxy-l-proline, to the polymer matrix. Two different chiral polysulfones, referred to as CPS_A and CPS_B, have been synthesized and used in the preparation of chiral polymeric membranes. However, as a consequence of the limited CPS_B solubility, only CPS_A resulted adequate to obtain useful membranes. Therefore, various chiral polysulfone membranes containing different amounts of CPS_A in unmodified polysulfone (PS) were prepared and properly characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and by enantioselective transport experiments of racemic propranolol. Dialysis transport experiments allowed us to determine the influence of the carrier content in the membrane on the transport rate and on enantiomer separation. Membranes containing a CPS_A/PS ratio of 1:3 showed an alpha value of 1.1 at 96 h of performance. Modelling of the propranolol transport rate is also performed.     

Fluorescence and IR characterization of epoxy cured with aliphatic amines

Cure reactions of the stoichiometric mixtures of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) and two very low molecular weight aliphatic polyether diamines (PED) were studied by using fluorescence and mid- and near-IR spectroscopic techniques. As the cure proceeded, the primary amine groups in PED are converted to the secondary and the tertiary amines. Near-IR spectral analysis was used to calculate the concentration of the three amine groups as a function of cure time. The decrease in the fluorescence intensity of DGEBA at about 307 nm was observed due to more effective quenching of the tertiary amine groups in PED, in comparison to the primary and the secondary amine groups. A large decrease in fluorescence intensity at 75 and 95 °C cure was observed. The amount of all the amine species was estimated from NIR spectra to shed light on the cure kinetics of PPO (polypropylene oxide) in comparison with PEO (polyethylene oxide) epoxy, as well as to explain their fluorescence behavior.The fluorescence intensity changes were correlated to the extent of epoxy reaction obtained by mid- and near-IR spectroscopy.     

Mechanical improvement of concrete by irradiated polypropylene fibers

Fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) contains fibers physically mixed with gravel, sand, cement, and water. So far, adequate mechanical performance of FRC has been obtained at high cost and using complex technologies; important here is the geometry and surface characteristics of the polymers. We have modified polymeric‐fiber surfaces by using gamma radiation. Irradiated polypropylene (PP) fibers were submitted to 0, 5, 10, 50, and 100 kGy of gamma irradiation dosages. First, tensile strength of PP fibers was evaluated, and then fibers blended at 0, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0% in volume with Portland cement, gravel, sand, and water. The highest values of compressive strength were obtained with irradiated‐fibers at 10 kGy and 1.5% in volume of fiber. The result is 101 MPa, as compared to 35 MPa for simple concrete without fibers. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 45:1426–1431, 2005. © 2005 Society of Plastics Engineers     

3D Hair sketching for real-time dynamic & key frame animations

Physically based simulation of human hair is a well studied and well known problem. But the “pure” physically based representation of hair (and other animation elements) is not the only concern of the animators, who want to “control” the creation and animation phases of the content. This paper describes a sketch-based tool, with which a user can both create hair models with different styling parameters and produce animations of these created hair models using physically and key frame-based techniques. The model creation and animation production tasks are all performed with direct manipulation techniques in real-time.     

Peracetic acid pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse for enzymatic hydrolysis: a continued work

Previous work has shown that the enzymatic hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse could be greatly enhanced by peracetic acid (PAA) pretreatment. There are several factors affecting the enzymatic digestibility of the biomass, including lignin and hemicelluloses content, cellulose crystallinity, acetyl group content, accessible surface area and so on. The objective of this work is to analyze the mechanism of the enhancement of enzymatic digestibility caused by PAA pretreatment. Delignification resulted in an increase of the surface area and reduction of the irreversible absorption of cellulase, which helped to increase the enzymatic digestibility. The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrum showed that the absorption peaks of aromatic skeletal vibrations were weakened or disappeared after PAA pretreatment. However, the infrared crystallization index (N.O'KI) was increased. X‐ray diffraction (XRD) analysis indicated that the crystallinity of PAA‐treated samples was increased owing to the partial removal of amorphous lignin and hemicelluloses and probable physical change of cellulose. The effect of acetyl group content on enzymatic digestibility is negligible compared with the degree of delignification and crystallinity. The results indicate that enhancement of enzymatic digestibility of sugarcane bagasse by PAA pretreatment is achieved mainly by delignification and an increase in the surface area and exposure of cellulose fibers. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

A time series bootstrap procedure for interpolation intervals

A sieve bootstrap procedure for constructing interpolation intervals for a general class of linear processes is proposed. This sieve bootstrap provides consistent estimators of the conditional distribution of the missing values, given the observed data. A Monte Carlo experiment is used to show the finite sample properties of the sieve bootstrap and finally, the performance of the proposed method is illustrated with a real data example.