Recycling studies of marble processing waste: Composites based on commercial epoxy resin

Marble waste was obtained from marble processing plant wastewater with precipitation using different coagulants, such as sepiolite, zeolite, and pumice in dosages of 0.5–8 g/500 mL and mixed in 20 wt % with commercial epoxy resin. The effects of marble, coagulant type and dosage on the physicomechanical and thermal properties were investigated. The incorporation of marble processing waste particles increases the 10% decomposition temperature of pure epoxy by 5–50°C. Surface hardness, tensile strength, percentage elongation, and stress at maximum load of the composites were higher than those of pure resin, too. The composites reinforced with marble processing waste-pumice showed about 10% increase in elastic modulus, whereas the composite reinforced with marble processing waste-sepiolite or zeolite showed about 76.67–143.33% increase in elastic modulus over the pure epoxy matrix. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used for characterization of surface and cross sections of the composites to verify the results. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012     

Mechanical and Antibacterial Properties of Injection Molded Polypropylene/TiO2 Nano-Composites:Effects of Surface Modification

Polypropylene (PP)/titanium dioxide (TiO2) nano-composites were prepared by melt compounding with a twin screw extruder. Nanoparticles were modified prior to melt mixing with maleic anhydride grafted styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS-g-MA) and silane. The composites were injection molded and mechanical tests were applied to obtain tensile strength, elastic modulus and impact strength. Antibacterial efficiency test was applied on the injection molded composite plaques by viable cell counting technique. The results showed that the composites including SEBS-g-MA and silane coated TiO2 gave better mechanical properties than the composites without SEBS-g-MA. Antibacterial efficiency of the composites varied according to the dispersion and the concentration of the particles and it was observed that composites at low content of TiO2 showed higher antibacterial property due to the better photocatalytic activity of the particles during UV exposure.     

Overview of Amorphous and Nanocrystalline Magnetocaloric Materials Operating Near Room Temperature

The observation of a giant magnetocaloric effect in Gd₅Ge_1.9Si₂Fe_0.1 has stimulated the magnetocaloric research in the last two decades. However, the high price of Gd and its proclivity to corrosion of these compounds have prevented their commercial use. To reduce raw materials cost, transition metal-based alloys are investigated to replace rare earth-based materials. Environmental considerations, substitution for scarce and strategic elements, and cost considerations all speak to potential contributions of these new materials to sustainability. Fe-based soft amorphous alloys are believed to be promising magnetic refrigerants. Efforts in improving the refrigeration capacity (RC) of refrigerants mainly rely on broadening the magnetic entropy change. One promising technique is to couple two phases of magnetic materials with desirable properties. Second is the investigation of nanoparticle synthesis routes, with ball milling being the most widely used one. The motivation for the nanoparticles synthesis is rooted in their inherent tendency to have distributed exchange coupling, which will broaden the magnetic entropy curve. As proven with the cost analysis, the focus is believed to shift from improving the RC of refrigerants toward finding the most economically advantageous magnetic refrigerant with the highest performance.     

Private predictions on hidden Markov models

Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are widely used in practice to make predictions. They are becoming increasingly popular models as part of prediction systems in finance, marketing, bio-informatics, speech recognition, signal processing, and so on. However, traditional HMMs do not allow people and model owners to generate predictions without disclosing their private information to each other. To address the increasing needs for privacy, this work identifies and studies the private prediction problem; it is demonstrated with the following scenario: Bob has a private HMM, while Alice has a private input; and she wants to use Bob’s model to make a prediction based on her input. However, Alice does not want to disclose her private input to Bob, while Bob wants to prevent Alice from deriving information about his model. How can Alice and Bob perform HMMs-based predictions without violating their privacy? We propose privacy-preserving protocols to produce predictions on HMMs without greatly exposing Bob’s and Alice’s privacy. We then analyze our schemes in terms of accuracy, privacy, and performance. Since they are conflicting goals, due to privacy concerns, it is expected that accuracy or performance might degrade. However, our schemes make it possible for Bob and Alice to produce the same predictions efficiently while preserving their privacy.     

Ion-Specific Interaction of Alumina Surfaces

There has been a long-standing question about the effect of the type of ionic species on the surface forces that is not considered in the classical Derjaguin–Landau–Vervey–Overbeek theory. Originating from the work of Hofmeister, the ion-specific interaction between particles has been known for a long time. Depending on the pH and oxide type, a direct or a reverse Hofmeister effect has been observed in colloidal suspensions at high salt concentrations. The origin of this effect is not well understood but is qualitatively taken into account in colloid science. From macroscopic behavior, it is predicted that alumina particles in LiCl solution attract each other more strongly than in CsCl solutions. If such an effect does exist, then force curves obtained using the colloid probe technique may detect the difference. Using chloride salts of the two end members of the Hofmeister series, namely Li⁺ and Cs⁺, stronger attraction in the LiCl electrolyte solution compared with the CsCl one was measured for the first time at the microlevel between alumina surfaces at pH=11.     

Modeling high-temperature stress-strain behavior of cast aluminum alloys

A modified two-state-variable unified constitutive model is presented to model the high-temperature stress-strain behavior of a 319 cast aluminum alloy with a T7 heat treatment. A systematic method is outlined, with which one can determine the material parameters used in the experimentally based model. The microstructural processes affecting the material behavior were identified using transmission electron microscopy and were consequently correlated to the model parameters. The stress-strain behavior was found to be dominated by the decomposition of the metastable θ′ precipitates within the dendrites and the subsequent coarsening of the θ phase, which was manifested through remarkable softening with cycling and time. The model was found to accurately simulate experimental stress-strain behavior such as strain-rate sensitivity, cyclic softening, aging effects, transient material behavior, and stress relaxation, in addition to capturing the main deformation mechanisms and microstructural changes as a function of temperature and inelastic strain rate.     

Fully Automated Three-Dimensional Column-Switching SPE–FIA–HPLC System for the Characterization of Lipids by a Single Injection: Part I. Instrumental Design and Chemometric Approach to Assess the Effect of Experimental Settings on the Response of ELSD

This article presents the first application of fully automated three‐dimensional (3D) column‐switching SPE–FIA–HPLC system for the characterization of lipids by a single injection. The whole system was designed and set up by modifying Agilent 1200 Series HPLC system in our laboratory. By using this system, a complete separation profile of the oil samples was achieved in a very short time period by using single injections. This approach was applied on vegetable oils which contains a large number of relatively high‐class lipid components, such as TG, FFA, sterols, tocopherols, DG, ester and MG. In this part of the study, we focused on the optimization of evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) by using an experimental design and RSM. Three experimental parameters were chosen as an independent variables which are the flow rate of mobile phase, nebulization temperature and evaporation temperature. A multivariate five level experimental design was used to establish a quadratic model as a functional relationship between the response values and independent variables. The optimal values of parameters were found to be a flow rate of 1.25 mL min^?1, nebulization temperature of 80 °C, and evaporation temperature of 40 °C. Regression analysis with an R² values indicated as a satisfactory correlation between the experimental and predicted values. ANOVA test results were also illustrate that the models can be successfully used to predict the optimum parameters of ELSD. Thus, the proposed system is suitable for a large number of applications including research and development of new quality control and characterization methods for vegetable oils.     

Investigation of maximum lifetime and minimum delay trade‐off in underwater sensor networks

Underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) are subjected to harsh characteristics of underwater acoustic channel such as severe path losses, noise, and high propagation delays. Among these constraints, propagation delay (more generally, end‐to‐end delay) is the most dominating limitation especially for time‐critical UASN applications. Although the minimization of end‐to‐end delay can be achieved by using the minimum hop routing, this solution cannot lead prolonged lifetimes since nodes consume excessive energy for transmission over long links. On the other hand, the maximization of network lifetime is possible by using energy efficient paths, which consist of relatively short links but high number of hops. However, this solution results in long end‐to‐end delays. Hence, there is a trade‐off between maximizing the network lifetime and minimizing the end‐to‐end delay in UASNs. In this work, we develop a novel multi‐objective–optimization (MOO) model that jointly maximizes the network lifetime while minimizing the end‐to‐end delay. We systematically analyze the effects of limiting the end‐to‐end delay on UASN lifetime. Our results reveal that the minimum end‐to‐end delay routing solution results in at most 72.93% reduction in maximum network lifetimes obtained without any restrictions on the end‐to‐end delay. Nevertheless, relaxing the minimum end‐to‐end delay constraint at least by 30.91% yields negligible reductions in maximum network lifetimes.     

Characterization and dual functionalization of polystyrene with propionic anhydride and cyanate derivatives

First, Friedel–Crafts reactions were used for the acylation process. For this, polystyrene (PS) was reacted with propionic anhydride in the presence of Lewis acid catalyst. The amount of acyl group linked PS as a result of acylation has been identified as volumetric. Second, the bromination and lithiation reactions of acylated PS containing carbonyl groups were realized. Also, the lithiated PS containing acyl groups has been modified a second time with various isocyanates and isothiocyanate derivatives in the presence of n?BuLi catalyst. Some important reaction parameters were assigned in order to optimize the process. The structure all of the products were characterized by Fourier transform infrared, ¹H NMR (Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), and thermogravimetric methods. In addition, reaction yields were determined according to the result of elemental analysis. Dual functionalization yields were realized between 62.2% and 69.9%. For kinetic analysis, the TG/DTG (Thermal Gravimetric Analysis/Differantial Thermal Analysis) data obtained at three different heating rates were processed by Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose method. The results demonstrated that the acylation reaction, bromination and lithiation reactions, and dual functionalization reactions with cyanate derivatives can be carried out to obtain a significantly functionalized polymer. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 1351‐1362, 2013