Treatment of seafood industrial wastewater coupled with electricity production using air cathode microbial fuel cell under saline condition

The present study investigated seafood industrial wastewater treatment with corresponding power generation in air cathode microbial fuel cell under saline condition (40 g/L). The results recorded total chemical oxygen demand) removal of 52 ± 1.8%, 64 ± 1.1%, 85 ± 1.2%, 89 ± 1.4%, and 76 ± 1.2% to the corresponding organic load (OL) of 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, and 1.5 gCOD/L under saline condition. Soluble chemical oxygen demand reduction was in the range of 46% to 78% at OL of 0.5 to 1.5 gCOD/L. The maximum power density (530 ± 15 mW/m²) and coulombic efficiency (52 ± 2.4%) was procured at the OL of 1.25 and 0.5 gCOD/L, respectively. Total suspended solids removal was 74 ± 1.5% at OL of 1.25 gCOD/L and 64 ± 1.3% at OL 1.5 gCOD/L. Bacterial community analysis for anode region samples for OL 0.5 and 1 gCOD/L was extensively dominated by Bacillus (MN880233) with 75.8% and 55.8%, respectively. Interestingly at 1.25 gCOD/L OL, Rhodococcus (MN880237) was predominant (42.3%) strain in the anode region and recorded high power production under saline condition. Sludge samples subjected to phylogenetic analysis explored the dominance of Clostridium, Turicibacter, and Marinobacter at different OL from 0.5 to 1.5 gCOD/L. Bacterial community results at 1.25 gCOD/L of OL sludge samples revealed completely different strains of dominancy in the community. Marinobacter (53.3%), Ochrobactrum (19.3%), and Bacillus (8.1%). Thus, the phylogenetic analysis of the anodic and sludge samples clearly detailed the presence of halophilic bacterial strains with high potential to treat seafood processing industrial wastewater and excellent exoelectrogenic activity for power production.     

Mobile App Usage Pattern Prediction Using Hierarchical Flexi-Ensemble Clustering (HFEC) for Mobile Service Rating

Nowadays, the mobile app market becomes rapidly increased in world wide. The mobile app marketers have smart enough to understand the requirements and demands of customers and perform their aspirations. They delight them. It provides growth, profitability, and creativity with lot of inventions. The main aim of this research is to analyze the customer interest and preferences of mobile service providers. This paper proposed the clustering model named as Hierarchical Flexi-Ensemble Clustering. It provides the final result with robustness and improved quality. Before clustering, the unwanted features are removed by using the Genetic Algorithm based on the Collective Materials technique. The customer preferences are analyzes with the clustering of mobile usage patterns. The analysis determined that the app usage pattern based on the most frequent word, rating category, rating character count, rating word count and content-based rating in the google play store app dataset. Finally, the results are compared with the existing methods to analyze the superior performance of proposed method. The comparison analysis is estimated based on the based on the average hit rate at different cache sizes. The work is concluded with the app pattern prediction in the form of clustering for app marketing service. From the marketing side, they can analyze the customer preferences and satisfaction.

     

Effect of dissolved organic material and cations on freeze-thaw conditioning of activated and alum sludges

Freeze-thaw conditioning effectively dewaters alum and activated sludges, but it works better on alum sludge than it does on activated sludge. The main difference between alum sludge and activated sludge is that activated sludge has high concentrations of both dissolved organic material and ions. Dissolved organic material and ions may possibly alter the freezing process and decrease the effectiveness of freeze-thaw conditioning on activated sludge. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of dissolved organic material and cations on freeze-thaw conditioning of sludges, and to improve the effectiveness of freeze-thaw conditioning on activated sludge. The results of this study show that although protein, carbohydrate and cation concentrations in activated sludge supernatant are initially high, they dramatically increase after freeze-thaw conditioning. The increase is likely to come from the release of extracellular and intracellular material to sludge supernatant. The observed increase in the DNA concentration in activated sludge supernatant after freeze-thaw conditioning indicates that freeze-thaw causes cell disruption. Alum sludge supernatant, on the other hand, initially contains low concentrations of proteins, carbohydrates and cations which do not noticeably change after freeze-thaw conditioning. When ECPs (extracellular polymers) and cations are extracted from activated sludge before freeze-thaw conditioning, the sludge settles and dewaters better after the freeze-thaw. The resulting aggregates are smaller and denser resembling the “coffee ground” aggregates of alum sludge.     

Enzymatic esterification of (−)-menthol with lauric acid in isooctane by sorbitan monostearate-coated lipase from Candida rugosa

Esterification of (−)-menthol and (±)-menthol with lauric acid in isooctane was successfully catalyzed by a commercial nonioic surfactant (sorbitan monosterate)-coated lipase from Candida rugosa (Lipase AY “Amano” 30) at the molar ratio of 1∶1 and at 35°C using 1.5 g enzyme/g (−)-menthol and 0.1-g molecular sieves. After 1 h, molar conversion of (−)-menthol reached 81%. Equilibrium was reached after ca. 4 h, giving a (−)-menthol molar conversion of 94%. Under the same conditions, native lipase catalyzed the esterification of (−)-menthol and lauric acid to yield a molar conversion of 93% after 72 h. Coating the lipase with sorbitan monosterate increased the esterification rates of both (−)-menthol and (±)-menthol with lauric acid. After 6 h, the molar conversions of (−)-menthol and (±)-menthol were 94, and 62%, respectively.     

Tailoring the multiferroic properties of BiFeO3 by co-doping Er at Bi site with aliovalent Nb,Mn and Mo at Fe site

Single phase multiferroic undoped BiFeO₃ notoriously suffers due to the poor spin–charge coupling resulting in limitations to device applications. The present work focuses on the tailoring of its multiferroic and magnetoelectric coupling properties by synthesizing multiferroic Bi_0.95Er_0.05Fe_0.98TM_0.02O₃ (TM = Nb, Mn and Mo) ceramics. The ferroelectric, magnetic, current leakage measurements and magnetoelectric effect were investigated. XRD along with the Reitveld refinement results confirms that all the samples possess perovskite based rhombohedral structure and reveals that doping of (Er, Nb), (Er, Mn) and (Er, Mo) induced the crystallographic distortion in the BFO lattice and hence induced a variation in the bond lengths and bond angle. Dual doping significantly enhanced the electrical, magnetic properties and magnetoelectric coupling as compared to BiFeO₃. Doping has lowered the leakage current by three to four orders compared to BFO. The lattice distortion, reduced leakage current and destruction of spin–cycloidal structure could be the origin for these improved features. The (Er, Nb) doped BiFeO₃ yields enhanced ferroelectric character with the maximum polarization value of 0.46 µC/cm², maximum ME coupling of 0.22 mV/cm at a magnetic field of 130 G, an improved magnetization with a remanance value of 0.0903 emu/g and the lowest leakage current density.     

Structures and Performance of White Clay-Filled Isotactic-Polypropylene Composites Prepared by Double-Molding Techniques

Various contents of Bangladeshi white clay (WC)-filled Isotactic polypropylene (iPP) composites were fabricated by double-molding techniques. Scanning electron micrographs shows a good impact between iPP matrix and fillers. X-diffraction and IR spectroscopic measurements reveal that inclusion of fillers develops an additional γ-crystal along with the α- and β-crystals that are merely observed in the neat iPP. Young's modulus and microhardness are found to increase with increasing WC content. Thermal analyses represent a considerable increase of thermal stability of the composites with filler addition. Appearance of new crystalline phase by filler inclusion and performances of the composites are discussed in detail.     

Preparation and Mechanical Characterization of Gelatin-Based Films Using 2-Hydroxyethyl Methacrylate Cured by UV Radiation

Gelatin films were prepared from gelatin granules in aqueous medium by casting. Tensile strength, tensile modulus and elongation at break of the gelatin films were found to be 27 MPa, 100 MPa and 4%, respectively. Gelatin films were soaked in five different formulations containing 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) (10–50%, by wt), methanol and photoinitiator and then cured under UV radiation. Again, a series of gelatin solutions was prepared by blending varying percentages (10–50% by wt) of HEMA and then films were prepared and UV cured. It was found that tensile properties of gelatin films improved significantly.     

FUZZY GAIN SCHEDULED CSTR WITH GA-BASED PID

In this article, a new control scheme, the gain scheduled genetic algorithm (GA)-based PID is proposed for a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR). A CSTR is a highly nonlinear process that exhibits stability in certain regions and instability in other regions. The proposed control scheme implements the characteristics of the genetic algorithm's (GA) global optimization to optimize the PID's three control parameters, k_p, k_i, k_d, to obtain the best control effect by minimizing the integral square error online. The PID controller parameters tuned by the GA for each region are gain scheduled by a fuzzy logic scheduler. Fuzzy gain scheduling is a special form of fuzzy control that uses linguistic rules and fuzzy reasoning to determine the controller parameter transition policy for the dynamic plant subject to large changes in its operating state. Simulation results show the feasibility of using the proposed controller for the control of the dynamical nonlinear CSTR.     

Swelling behavior of poly(acrylamide‐co‐N‐vinylimidazole) hydrogels under different environment conditions

A series of random copolymers of acrylamide and N‐vinylimidazole, poly(AAm‐co‐NVI), with various compositions were prepared using redox copolymerization. The influence of environmental conditions such as pH, temperature, and ionic strength on the swelling behavior of the copolymeric hydrogels was investigated. The hydrogels exhibited the highest equilibrium swelling in basic medium at high temperature. Equilibrium swelling decreased with rising ionic strength at pH 5.0. As pH increased, equilibrium swelling of the hydrogels increased at pH 11.0 and I = 0.20 M. Swelling kinetics of the hydrogels was found to be non‐Fickian at 25°C. The process tended to be Fickian at higher pH and temperature. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 96: 1783–1788, 2005