Cyclic Oxidation Behaviour of 1Cr–0.5Mo (T11) Boiler Tube Steel and Its Weldments in Air at 900 °C

Oxidation behaviour of weldments at elevated temperature has become an object of scientific investigation. Weldments were prepared using shielded metal arc welding and tungsten inert gas processes to weld together 1Cr–0.5Mo (T11) boiler tube steels. This paper reports the oxidation behaviour of welded and unwelded 1Cr–0.5Mo (T11) boiler tube steel specimens after exposure to air at 900 °C under cyclic condition. The thermogravimetric technique was used to establish kinetics of oxidation. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive analysis techniques were used to analyse the oxidation products. The unwelded steel showed a higher oxidation rate (in terms of weight gain) than that of welded steels.     

Phytate dephosphorylation by Lactobacillus pentosus CFR3

Studies on phytate‐degrading enzymes from lactobacilli are scarce, despite its potential in improving the nutritional quality of plant‐based foods. Therefore, the current investigation deals with the phytate‐degrading enzyme produced by a native Lactobacillus pentosus strain. Phytase activity was highest towards the end of the exponential phase. Activity increased in the presence of maltose (381.1%) compared with glucose. The presence of phytate in the media stimulated the enzyme production. The enzyme of interest was a 70 kDa protein with a pH and temperature optima of 5.0 and 55–60 °C, respectively. It retained 46% of activity after exposure to 70 °C for 20 min and also showed broad substrate specificity. It was completely inhibited by Hg²⁺, Fe²⁺ and PMSF while being activated by Co²⁺. This report is the first to show dephytinisation of autoclaved finger millet flour either by fermentation with L. pentosus or by treatment with the corresponding cell‐free extract.     

Extraction,multi-response analysis,and optimization of biologically active phenolic compounds from the pulp of Indian jamun fruit

An aqueous extraction technique was applied to optimize the extraction process variables of temperature (40°C–60°C), time (20–100 min), and the solid-to-liquid ratio (1:10–1:15) using a Box-Behnken experimental design and response surface methodology. Maximum extraction yields of total phenolics and flavonoids, and anti-oxidant activities were obtained from Indian jamun fruit. Effects of the extraction temperature and the solid-toliquid ratio were found to be significant (p<0.05) for all responses. Second order polynomial models were developed from experimental data to predict the effects of the independent variables on the responses. Optimum extraction conditions (temperature of 54°C, time of 50 min, and a solid-to-liquid ratio of 1:8.5) for the maximum extraction yield of total phenolics (1,332.36 mg GAE/100 g) and flavonoids (110.94 mg QE/100 g), and the anti-oxidant activity (233.55mg AAE/100 g) were achieved. Experimental values matched well with predicted values obtained under optimum conditions.     

Self-compliance RRAM characteristics using a novel W/TaO x /TiN structure

Self-compliance resistive random access memory (RRAM) characteristics using a W/TaO _x /TiN structure are reported for the first time. A high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) image shows an amorphous TaO _x layer with a thickness of 7 nm. A thin layer of TiO _x N _y with a thickness of 3 nm is formed at the TaO _x /TiN interface, owing to the oxygen accumulation nature of Ti. This memory device shows 100 consecutive switching cycles with excellent uniformity, 100 randomly picked device-to-device good uniformity, and program/erase endurance of >10³ cycles. It is observed that the 0.6-μm devices show better switching uniformity as compared to the 4-μm devices, which is due to the thinner tungsten (W) electrode as well as higher series resistance. The oxygen-rich TaO _x layer at the W/TaO _x interface also plays an important role in getting self-compliance resistive switching phenomena and non-linear current-voltage (I-V) curve at low resistance state (LRS). Switching mechanism is attributed to the formation and rupture of oxygen vacancy conducting path in the TaO _x switching material. The memory device also exhibits long read endurance of >10⁶ cycles. It is found that after 400,000 cycles, the high resistance state (HRS) is decreased, which may be due to some defects creation (or oxygen moves away) by frequent stress on the switching material. Good data retention of >10⁴ s is also obtained.     

Novel adhesion promotion of aluminium for aerospace environments

This study focuses on analysing the durability of adhesive bonds formed in samples of Aluminium 6063, Titanium Nitride deposited Al 6063 and Anodized Al 6063 using epoxy adhesive Weicon A. Two types of studies are performed, first, samples of Aluminium 6063, Titanium Nitride deposited Al 6063 and Anodized Al 6063, are bonded by an epoxy adhesive Weicon A. Second, the samples are bonded by the adhesive with reinforcement of Ca₂SiO₄ nanoparticles in different proportions. The samples are examined using the scanning electron microscopy to study the morphology of the coating. A lap shear test is performed to determine the strength of the adhesive after the specimens were subjected to harsh chemical environments. A thermogravimetric analysis is performed on the adhesive to understand the effect of nanoparticles in the thermal stability in the Weicon A. It is understood from the tests that the titanium nitride coated Al 6063 samples bonded with Weicon A exhibited greater bond strength and also retained the strength when exposed to harsh environments. The inclusion of calcium silicate nano-particles showcased a considerable reduction in the bond strength. The thermal stability of Weicon A seems to be unaffected by the inclusion of calcium silicate nanoparticles.     

Nano‐dimensional self assembly of regioregular poly (3‐hexylthiophene) in toluene: Structural,optical, and morphological properties

This article presents the optimization and systematic analysis of the growth kinetics of fiber formation of the regio‐regular poly (3‐hexylthiophene), rr‐P3HT. In addition to it a comparative study of as‐prepared fiber with fresh, quenched (at ?7°C) and commercial rr‐P3HT formed in toluene solvent. The rr‐P3HT (M_w ≈ 5340; polydispersity ≈ 1.22) is synthesized using a well known Grignard metathesis reaction and characterized by ¹HNMR and FTIR techniques. The films obtained by the ageing of rr‐P3HT solution for 20 days contain nanostructured fiber with 6–10 nm thickness. However, it acquires a nanostructured globular shape when same concentration of solution is sudden quenched at ?7°C. A saturation point for the growth of nano fiber is observed under UV–visible study and it is found that 10 days are sufficient for fiber growth. The concentration dependent free exciton band width of fiber growth is studied by Frank–Condon principle and correlated with AFM morphological studies. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 40931.     

Role of Superficially Applied SnO2 Inhibitor in Controlling High Temperature Corrosion of Some Fe-, Co- and Ni-Base Superalloys

Inhibitors and fuel additives have been used with varying success to combat high temperature corrosion of metals and alloys. In this work, the role of a superficially applied SnO₂ coating to combat high temperature corrosion of some superalloys viz Superfer 800H (Alloy A), Superco 605 (Alloy B) and Superni 75 (Alloy C) has been investigated. Accelerated corrosion testing of the coated as well as bare superalloys was done in a molten salt environment (Na₂SO₄–60 %V₂O_5?) at 900 °C for 50 cycles. Each cycle consisted of 1 h heating in a silicon carbide tube furnace followed by 20 min cooling in ambient air. Weight change measurements after each cycle were taken by an electronic balance having an accuracy of 0.01 mg. XRD, SEM and EPMA analyses of the exposed specimens were carried out to characterize the oxide scales. The bare superalloys showed more overall weight gains, in general, in comparison with their SnO₂ coated counterparts. The corrosion rate for the bare Co-base alloy was found to be highest, whereas that for the Fe-base Superfer 800H a lowest. The percentage decrease in the weight gain in alloys A, B and C with superficially applied SnO₂ was found to be 17.2, 66 and 50 % respectively after 30 cycles. The effectiveness of the SnO₂ was perhaps due to its non-reactive nature with the corroding species and high melting point (1630 °C).     

Sparse coding of i-vector/JFA latent vector over ensemble dictionaries for language identification systems

Computing sparse representation (SR) over an exemplar dictionary is time consuming and computationally expensive for large dictionary size. This also requires huge memory requirement for saving the dictionary. In order to reduce the latency and to achieve some diversity, ensemble of exemplar dictionary based language identification (LID) system is explored. The full diversity can be obtained if each of the exemplar dictionary contains only one feature vector from each of the language class. To achieve full diversity, a large number of multiple dictionaries are required; thus needs to compute SR for a particular test utterance as many times. The other solution to reduce the latency is to use a learned dictionary. The dictionary may contain unequal number of dictionary atoms and it is not guaranteed that each language class information is present. It totally depends upon the number of data and its variations. Motivated by this, language specific dictionary is learned, and then concatenated to form a single learned dictionary. Furthermore, to overcome the problem of ensemble exemplar dictionary based LID system, we investigated the ensemble of learned-exemplar dictionary based LID system. The proposed approach achieves the same diversity and latency as that of ensemble exemplar dictionary with reduced number of learned dictionaries. The proposed techniques are applied on two spoken utterance representations: the i-vector and the JFA latent vector. The experiments are performed on 2007 NIST LRE, 2009 NIST LRE and AP17-OLR datasets in closed set condition.