Phenomena of reverse momentum pulse and fluid leak after poison injection in the shut down system of PHWR

The primary function of the shut down system in a nuclear reactor is to terminate any reactivity transient occurring in the core during its entire design life. Normally there is more than one system, which are independent and diverse in its mode of operation. They consist of quick acting mechanisms like dropping of safety rods by gravity, poison injection, etc. Typically in liquid poison injection system wherein high flow velocities are involved, there is significant fluid structure interaction associated with cyclic shock transients in the system. One such phenomenon has been captured and analyzed to understand the dynamics involved in the loop. The trends of loop pressure and vibration indicated presence of more than two pressure transients after complete injection of poison. The first transient arrived after 1.44 s and the second after 0.75 s. The reverse pressure pulses that manifested in the loop as a result of fast injection of fluid has been mathematically characterized by solving basic fluid balance equations. Possibility of ball lifting due to momentum pulse is also discussed.     

Mass transfer and biochemical reaction in enzyme membrane reactor systems—I. Single enzyme reactions

The effective use of an enzyme as a biological catalyst for process scale conversion is greatly enhanced by immobilizing the enzyme within the matrix of a membrane whose walls are permeable to the substrate and product. The enzyme is thus stabilized for reuse, but the apparent activity is reduced compared to that obtained with the free enzyme because of transport resistances in the bulk fluid near the membrane and within the membrane itself. To account for this reduction, solutions to the differential equations describing the mass transport-kinetic models can be obtained for certain important cases. The reaction is considered to be first-order and isothermal, and to occur in one of two modes of operation: fixed-bed or batch (limited volume). Irreversible and reversible reactions and plane sheet and spherical geometries of the membrane are considered. An example of the application of these solutions to actual data obtained with a laboratory scale immobilized enzyme reactor is presented.     

Thermal instability in a micropolar fluid layer subject to a magnetic field

In the present paper we have considered thermal instability in a heat conducting micropolar fluid layer under the influence of a transverse magnetic field. Assuming the bounding surfaces to be rigid the eigenvalue problem is solved using finite-difference and Wilkinson's iteration techniques. Here it is seen that the instability sets in not only for adverse temperature gradient but also for positive temperature gradient. Both the microtation and the magnetic field are seen to stabilize the fluid layer. However, the stabilizing effect of microrotation becomes less significant when the strength of the magnetic field is large. In the case of heating from below, the critical wave number is seen to be insensitive to increase in the strength of the magnetic field, while it increases significantly when the fluid is heated from above.     

Kinetics of pyrolysis of pure and doped cobalt oxalate

The object of the present work was to illustrate the effect of impurities on the kinetics and energetics of the thermal decomposition of pure cobalt oxalate. Cationic impurities like Mg²⁺, Mn²⁺, Fe²⁺, Ni²⁺, Cu²⁺, Zn²⁺, Cd²⁺, Pb²⁺, Zr⁴⁺ have been introduced into pure cobalt oxalate dihydrate and differential thermal analysis has been used to determine the enthalpy and energy of activation for the decomposition reaction of pure and doped samples.     

Microstructural and magnetic studies on P/M processed (Nd14.9Dy1.9)(Fe65.0Co8.0Cu1.0Ga1.0Nb0.7) B7.5 alloy

Sintered samples of (Nd_14.9 Dy_1.9) (Fe₆₅ Co₈ Cu_1.0 Ga_1.0 Nb_0.7)B_7.5 were prepared and subjected to stepwise annealing in the temperature range 875 K–675 K. The XRD and metallographic (optical and electron microscopy) studies reveal a multi-phase microstructure with each phase showing different solubility of the alloying additions. This alloy has T _C of 705 K with an intrinsic coercivity of 1000 kA/m and energy product of 250 kJ/m³ at RT. Solubility of Co into the matrix phase and that of Ga and Cu into the Nd-rich grain boundary phase are considered to be the main contributing factors for the significant enhancement in T _C and H _ci respectively of the multi-component alloy when compared to those of ternary NdFeB, wherein H _ci = 720 kA/m and T _C = 585 K.     

Design of efficient fractional operator for ECG signal detection in implantable cardiac pacemaker systems

A low power and high-performance digital electrocardiogram (ECG) detector has become a basic requirement in modern implantable cardiac pacemakers. A fractional operator-based digital ECG detector for modern pacemaker systems is proposed in this work. Instead of conventional thresholding, an adaptive slope prediction threshold is utilized for the detection of ECG peaks. A stochastic search-based algorithm, namely, cuckoo search algorithm, is used to design an optimal fractional operator that is used for ECG denoising. It has been found that the proposed adaptive slope prediction threshold increases the QRS complex detection performance. A low detection error rate (DER) ranges from 0.01% to 0.56%, positive predictivity (P+) ranges from 99.32% to 99.98%, sensitivity (Se) ranges from 99.45% to 99.98%, and a detection accuracy (Acc) ranges from 99.43% to 99.96% for different databases are achieved for the proposed ECG detector, which is better compared with the existing ECG detectors. The proposed design of fractional order operator based on the lattice wave digital filter (LWDF) requires a minimum number of the multipliers for its structural realization.