Prediction of Mass Transfer Coefficients in a Packed Bed using Tamarind Nut Shell Activated Carbon to Remove Phenol

Phenol is a refractive pollutant that is generated from almost all the types of industries. Removal of phenol can be achieved economically by using a cost effective technique like adsorption on to activated carbon. The present paper reports on the preparation and characterization of activated carbon from tamarind nutshell, an agricultural waste byproduct, and its use in a packed bed for the removal of phenol. The breakthrough curves for column sorption of phenol from aqueous solutions to TNSAC have been measured at various flow rates and different particle sizes at 28 °C. The results obtained showed that the sorption of phenol is dependent on both the flow rate and the particle size of the adsorbent, and that the breakpoint time and phenol removal yield decrease with increasing flow rate and particle size. The overall mass transfer coefficient is calculated from the experimental data and compared with the values obtained from the correlation. Experimental values are in excellent agreement with the predicted values from the correlation.     

Thermal and electrical energy management in a PEMFC stack – An analytical approach

An analytical method has been developed to differentiate the electrical and thermal resistance of the PEM fuel cell assembly in the fuel cell operating conditions. The usefulness of this method lies in the determination of the electrical resistance based on the polarization curve and the thermal resistance from the mass balance. This method also paves way for the evaluation of cogeneration from a PEMFC power plant. Based on this approach, the increase in current and resistance due to unit change in temperature at a particular current density has been evaluated. It was observed that the internal resistance of the cell is dependent on the electrode fabrication process, which also play a major role in the thermal management of the fuel cell stack.     

Water-soluble polymers. I. Synthesis of N-succinimido (N) thiocarbonyl acrylamide and its polymerization: Grafting of this monomer and acrylamide onto poly(vinyl alcohol)

A new monomer, N-succinimido (N) thiocarbonyl acrylamide is formed when succinic anhydride, thiourea, and acryloyl chloride are condensed in mole proportions at low temperatures. The monomer is polymerized and graft copolymerized onto poly(vinyl alcohol) using a potassium bromate-thiourea redox system. Acrylamide is also similarly grafted to poly(vinyl alcohol) using the same initiator system. Grafting efficiencies of the monomers are determined from the elemental analyses data of the graft copolymers. Thermal behavior of the polymers are derived from the DSC thermograms of the polymers. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Comprehensive microstructural characterization in modified 9Cr-1Mo ferritic steel by ultrasonic measurements

Modified 9Cr-1Mo ferritic steel (T91/P91) has been subjected to a series of heat treatments consisting of soaking for 5 minutes at the selected temperatures, starting from the α-phase region (1073 K) to the γ + δ-phase region (1623 K), followed by oil quenching. Hardness measurements, microstructural features, and grain-size measurements by the linear-intercept method have been used for correlating them with the ultrasonic parameters. Ultrasonic velocity and attenuation measurements, and spectral analysis of the first backwall echo have been used for characterization of the microstructures obtained by various heat treatments. As the soaking temperature increased above Ac ₁, the ultrasonic velocity decreased because of the increase in the volume fraction of martensite in the structure. There were sharp changes in the ultrasonic velocities corresponding to the two critical temperatures, Ac ₁ and Ac ₃. Ultrasonic longitudinal- and shear-wave velocities were found to be useful in identifying the Ac ₁ and Ac ₃ temperatures and for the determination of hardness in the intercritical region. However, ultrasonic attenuation and spectral analysis of the first backwall echo were found to be useful to characterize the variation in the prior-austenitic grain size and formation of δ ferrite above the Ac ₄ temperature. The scattering coefficients have been experimentally determined for various microstructures and compared with the theoretically calculated value of the scattering coefficients for iron reported in literature.     

Performance of Dualbeam MIMO for Millimeter Wave Indoor Communication Systems

Millimeter wave (MMW) communication provides high data rates for the personal area networks with the availability of 57–64 GHz unlicensed spectrum, in indoor environment. Multipath fading being pre-dominant in indoor, multi input multi output (MIMO) technology is considered to be the ideal choice compared with the existing systems. As spatial diversity in both transmit and receive enhances the diversity gain, the performance of the system is further enhanced by introducing transmit beamforming based antenna beam diversity. In classical \(2\times 2\) MIMO, a diversity gain of 4 is achieved, whereas in this work, space time block code matrix of code rate 1/2 and dualbeam \(2\times 2\) MIMO with diversity gain 8 is considered. Dualbeam is generated by antenna array with four elements per array with out of phase feed configuration. The weight vector of the beamforming network is out of phase as to reduce the interference between the beams. The dualbeam transmitter is designed with unknown channel state information. Training symbols are transmitted to train and track the channel statistics at the receiver. The proposed work is carried out for MMW indoor system. The indoor channel is modeled using Triple Saleh–Valenzuela (TSV) model that takes into account both time of arrival and the angle of arrival information of the rays. Channel estimation is done for classical MIMO and the above proposed model in both Rayleigh and TSV channel. The orthogonal beams facilitate linear processing in the receiver. Hence maximum ratio combiner with maximum likelihood decoder is used in the receiver to decode the transmitted data. Classical MIMO and dualbeam MIMO are evaluated with respect to bit error rate and channel models. An improved diversity order is achieved with dualbeam MIMO compared to classical MIMO, with a power gain of 1.6 dB. The dualbeam MIMO using TSV is found to perform better compared to dualbeam MIMO using Rayleigh in the low Energy per bit to Noise level \((\hbox {E}_{\mathrm{b}}/\hbox {N}_{0})\) with a power gain of 2 dB.     

Frontiers in NDE research nearing maturity for exploitation to ensure structural integrity of pressure retaining components

In this paper, research and developmental efforts that demonstrate high sensitivity detection and characterization of defects and assessment of microstructural degradation, residual stresses and fatigue damage in materials using different non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, have been discussed. Applications of eddy current techniques for quantitative defect characterization and for generalized applications, and remote field eddy current technique for inspection of steam generator and heat exchanger tubes have been discussed. Advanced ultrasonic methods such as time of flight diffraction, synthetic aperture focusing technique, phased array and signal processing for detection, characterization and imaging of defects have been discussed. Applications of ultrasonics and magnetic Barkhausen emission techniques for characterization of microstructures and residual stresses have been discussed. Applications of acoustic emission and infrared thermography techniques for weld quality evaluation of critical nuclear components as part of intelligent processing of materials (IPM) work have been discussed. Application of acoustic emission technique for integrity assessment of pressurized components has been discussed. Development of a software called assets and infrastructure management system (AIMS), for storing and retrieving information for various materials, components and systems, has also been highlighted. The techniques and applications discussed are result of systematic and innovative R&D efforts in the multidisciplinary areas of physics, materials, instrumentation, sensors and softwares for providing solutions to various challenging problems.     

Performance evaluation of supported ionic liquid membrane for removal of phenol

This work evaluates the performance of ionic liquid in supported liquid membrane (SLM) for the removal of phenol from wastewater. Ionic liquids are organic salts entirely composed of organic cations and either organic or inorganic anions. Due to the fact that the vapor pressure of ionic liquid is not detectable and they are sparingly soluble in most conventional solvents, they can be applied in SLM as the organic phase. In this work, 1-n-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium salts, [C_nMIM]⁺[X]⁻ have been investigated so as to determine an optimal supported ionic liquid membrane. The effect of operational parameters such as pH, stirring speed and the concentration of stripping agent has been studied, and an evaluation of different membrane supports were also carried out. With a minimal amount of the ionic liquid 1-Butyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogensulfate, 85% phenol removal could be achieved by using polytetrafluoroethylene hydrophobic membrane filter in the SLM.     

A 16×16 crosspoint switch for ternary encoded signals

A crosspoint-switching chip that can switch bipolar, alternate mark inversion encoded (AMI) signals directly, is described. AMI encoding is a form of ternary, return-to-zero (RZ) coding where a binary zero is represented by an absence of a pulse and ones are represented with an alternating sequence of positive and negative pulses. Bipolar signals are used widely in interoffice telecommunications such as the T1, T1C, T2, and T3 digital transmission systems. The switching chip has 16 input and 16 output channels. Control of the chip allows any input to be connected to any output or outputs, providing a nonblocking connection. The architecture allows for expansion of the crosspoint array by paralleling several chips. The chip, fabricated using a standard 3-μm CMOS technology, is capable of handling data rates up to 15 Mb/s per channel, has about 17000 transistors, and has an area of about 32.5 mm²     

Anomaly of arch of atlas--a rare cause of symptomatic canal stenosis in children

Symptomatic canal stenosis at the level of atlas (C1) without atlantoaxial dislocation is thought to be very rare in children. Though common, anomalies of the arch of atlas are generally incidental findings in X-rays. High cord compression due to a narrow canal from a bifid posterior arch, or an absent posterior arch, is a very rare condition. We report 5 children with high cord compression from stenosis of C1 arch.     

A Fast Hardware Approach for Approximate, Efficient Logarithm and Antilogarithm Computations

The realization of functions such as log() and antilog() in hardware is of considerable relevance, due to their importance in several computing applications. In this paper, we present an approach to compute log() and antilog() in hardware. Our approach is based on a table lookup, followed by an interpolation step. The interpolation step is implemented in combinational logic, in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), resulting in an area-efficient, fast design. The novelty of our approach lies in the fact that we perform interpolation efficiently, without the need to perform multiplication or division, and our method performs both the log() and antilog() operation using the same hardware architecture. We compare our work with existing methods, and show that our approach results in significantly lower memory resource utilization, for the same approximation errors. Also our method scales very well with an increase in the required accuracy, compared to existing techniques.