Influence of operating conditions,Si/Al ratio and doping of zinc on Pt-Sn/ZSM-5 catalyst for propane dehydrogenation to propene

The direct catalytic dehydrogenation of propane to propene is an important route to enhance propene production. In the present experimentation the focus was to investigate the influence of incipient operating conditions, Si/Al ratio of zeolite support and effect of zinc doping on Pt-Sn/ZSM-5 catalyst performance. The catalysts were extensively investigated by reaction tests in a continuous plug-flow quartz micro-reactor. The experimental data shows that the manipulation of operating parameters significantly improves the reaction performance, while huge dynamicity is observed in product distribution. Reaction temperature, 600 °C is found to be most suitable, while increasing the weight hourly space velocity (WHSV), propene selectivity improves at the expense of lower conversion. The OPE was drawn to observe overall reaction network. It was found that the acidity of zeolitic support plays a more important role in achieving desired product selectivity than additional metallic content. Accordingly, the Si/Al ratio of the ZSM-5 zeolite the pro- pene selectivity was enhanced, leading to remarkable improvement in the total olefins selectivity which was remarkably improved owing to a suppression of secondary reactions. At Si/Al ratio 300, the selectivity of propene and total olefins becomes stable at 73% and 90% respectively. The doping of Zn on Pt-Sn/ZSM-5 improves only propene selectivity, but is severely affected by quick deactivation.     

Keller-Box shooting method and its application to nanofluid flow over convectively heated sheet with stability and convergence

Abstract

The main aim of the present contribution is to present a coupling of Keller-Box method using Jacobi and Gauss–Seidel iterative methods with shooting approach and also this method is implemented on nanofluid flow problem. Present method of Keller-Box shooting method can be considered as an explicit approach whereas the standard Keller-Box method is an implicit method. Previously constructed nanofluid flow models are extended with exothermic/endothermic chemical reactions and the flow is considered over stretching, rotating, porous disk which is convectively heated from its bottom with the hot liquid. Similarity transformations are utilized to reduce the set of nonlinear partial differential equations into nonlinear ordinary differential equations with an assumption. Presently modified Keller-Box shooting method using Jacobi and Gauss–Seidel iterative methods is applied to investigate MHD nanofluid flow problem subject to Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin’s boundary conditions. Von Neumann stability criterion is adopted to check the stability of the present method using Gauss–Seidel iterative method. The bounds for maximum errors are found for Jacobi and Gauss–Seidel iterative methods and convergence conditions are given for the case of Gauss–Seidel iterative method. The obtained results from presently developed modified Keller-Box shooting method are in good agreement with those obtained by Matlab built in solver “bvp4c” in case of wall temperature gradient and obtained results are in good agreement with those obtained by Runge–Kutta (4, 5) shooting method in case of skin friction coefficient.     

A Comparison of Metal-Foam Heat Exchangers to Compact Multilouver Designs for Air-Side Heat Transfer Applications

High-porosity metal foams, with novel thermal, mechanical, electrical, and acoustic properties, are being more widely used in various industrial applications. In this paper, open-cell aluminum foam is considered as a highly compact replacement for conventional louver fins in brazed aluminum heat exchangers. A model based on the ?-N_TU method is developed to compare the flat-tube, serpentine louver-fin heat exchanger to the flat-tube metal-foam heat exchanger. The two heat exchangers are subjected to identical thermal-hydraulic requirements, and volume, mass, and cost of the metal-foam and louver-fin designs are compared. The results show that the same performance is achieved using the metal-foam heat exchanger but a lighter and smaller heat exchanger is required. However, the cost of the metal-foam heat exchanger is currently much higher than that of the louver-fin heat exchanger, because of the high price of metal foams. If the price of metal foam falls to equal that of louver-fin stock (per unit mass), then the metal-foam heat exchanger will be less expensive, smaller, and lighter than the louver-fin heat exchanger, with identical thermal performance.     

Energy Efficient Handover for Heterogeneous Networks: A Non-Cooperative Game Theoretic Approach

Wireless Personal Communications - The small cell technology is considered as a key technology for 5G networks. The capacity expansion and coverage extension are both achieved through this...     

Element Transfer Investigations on Silica Based Submerged Arc Welding Fluxes

Silicon - By using laboratory developed agglomerated basic fluxes a study has been carried out to predict the element transfer across the series of bead on plate weld deposits in submerged arc...     

Drag reduction for flow past a square cylinder through corner chamfering

This study investigates the unsteady incompressible flow around a square cylinder with different chamfer ratios (CRs) using a commercial finite volume code, ANSYS Fluent. CR ranges from 0.0 (sharp square cylinder) to 0.5 (diamond cylinder) with variable increments. Detailed analysis of flow characteristics is conducted at Reynolds number (Re) = 2100. Additionally, simulation is extended to cover Re, i.e., Re = 100, 500, and 10000. The simulation results show that cylinder with CR = 0.1 outperforms all other cases by enabling a drag reduction of about 60 % at Re = 10⁴. Drag has an inverse relationship with the wake closure length. Time-averaged coefficient of pressure, streamlines, and vorticity contours are also discussed to better understand near-wake features and the physics of drag reduction.

     

All-organic PANI–DBSA/PVDF dielectric composites with unique electrical properties

Novel all-organic polymer high-dielectric permittivity composites of polyaniline (PANI)/poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) were prepared by solution method and their dielectric and electric properties were studied over the wide ranges of temperatures and frequencies. To improve the interface bonding between two polymers, dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid (DBSA), a bulky molecule containing a polar head and a long non-polar chain was used both as a surfactant and as dopant in polyaniline (PANI) synthesis. Synthesized conducting PANI–DBSA particles were dispersed in poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) matrix to form an all-organic composite with different PANI–DBSA concentrations. Near the percolation threshold, the dielectric permittivity of the composites at 100 Hz frequency and room temperature was as high as 170, while the dielectric loss tangent value was as low as 0.9. Like typical percolation system, composites experienced high dielectric permittivity at low filler concentrations. However, their dielectric loss tangent was low enough to match with non-percolative ceramic filler-based polymer composites. Maximum electrical conductivity at 24 wt% of PANI–DBSA was mere 10^?6 S/cm, a remarkably low value for percolative-type composites. Increase in the dielectric permittivity of the composites with increase in temperature from 25 to 115 °C for different PANI–DBSA concentrations was always in the same range of 50–60 %. However, the degree of increase in the electrical conductivity with the temperature was more prominent at low filler concentrations compared with high filler concentrations. Distinct electrical and their unique thermal dependence were attributed to an improved interface between the filler and the polymer matrix.     

Kinetic studies for Ni(II) biosorption from industrial wastewater by Cassia fistula (Golden Shower) biomass

The present study explores the ability of Cassia fistula waste biomass to remove Ni(II) from industrial effluents. C. fistula biomass was found very effective for Ni(II) removal from wastewater of Ghee Industry (GI), Nickel Chrome Plating Industry (Ni-Cr PI), Battery Manufacturing Industry (BMI), Tanner Industry: Lower Heat Unit (TILHU), Tannery Industry: Higher Heat Unit (TIHHU), Textile Industry: Dying Unit (TIDU) and Textile Industry: Finishing Unit (TIFU). The initial Ni(II) concentration in industrial effluents was found to be 34.89+/-0.01, 183.56+/-0.08, 21.19+/-0.01, 43.29+/-0.03, 47.26+/-0.02, 31.38+/-0.01 and 31.09+/-0.01mg/L in GI, Ni-Cr PI, BMI, TILHU, TIHHU, TIDU and TIFU, respectively. After biosorption the final Ni(II) concentration in industrial effluents was found to be 0.05+/-0.01, 17.26+/-0.08, 0.03+/-0.01, 0.05+/-0.01, 0.1+/-0.01, 0.07+/-0.01 and 0.06+/-0.01mg/L in GI, Ni-Cr PI, BMI, TILHU, TIHHU, TIDU and TIFU, respectively. The % sorption Ni(II) ability of C. fistula from seven industries included in present study tend to be in following order: TILHU (99.88)>GI (99.85) approximately BMI (99.85)>TIFU (99.80)>TIHHU (99.78)>TIDU (99.77)>Ni-Cr PI (90.59). Sorption kinetic experiments were performed in order to investigate proper sorption time for Ni(II) removal from wastewater. Batch metal ion uptake capacity experiments indicated that sorption equilibrium reached much faster in case of industrial wastewater samples (480min) in comparison to synthetic wastewater (1440min) using same biosorbent. The kinetic data were analyzed in term of pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order expressions. Pseudo-second-order model described well the sorption kinetics of Ni(II) onto C. fistula biomass from industrial effluents in comparison to pseudo-first-order kinetic model. Due to unique high Ni(II) sorption capacity of C. fistula waste biomass it can be concluded that it is an excellent biosorbent for Ni(II) uptake from industrial effluents.     

Simultaneous determination of thickness and refractive index based on time-of-flight measurements of terahertz pulse

We present a simple technique for simultaneous determination of thickness and refractive index of plane-parallel samples in the terahertz radiation domain. The technique uses time-of-flight measurements of the terahertz pulse. It has been employed on nine different polymers and semiconductor materials, which are transparent for terahertz frequencies. Our results of thickness measurement are in good agreement with micrometer reading. The accuracy in the determination of refractive index is on the order of two decimal points.     

Early Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy Using Machine Intelligence through Deep Transfer and Representational Learning

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a retinal disease that causes irreversible blindness. DR occurs due to the high blood sugar level of the patient, and it is clumsy to be detected at an early stage as no early symptoms appear at the initial level. To prevent blindness, early detection and regular treatment are needed. Automated detection based on machine intelligence may assist the ophthalmologist in examining the patients’ condition more accurately and efficiently. The purpose of this study is to produce an automated screening system for recognition and grading of diabetic retinopathy using machine learning through deep transfer and representational learning. The artificial intelligence technique used is transfer learning on the deep neural network, Inception-v4. Two configuration variants of transfer learning are applied on Inception-v4: Fine-tune mode and fixed feature extractor mode. Both configuration modes have achieved decent accuracy values, but the fine-tuning method outperforms the fixed feature extractor configuration mode. Fine-tune configuration mode has gained 96.6% accuracy in early detection of DR and 97.7% accuracy in grading the disease and has outperformed the state of the art methods in the relevant literature.