Co-variations of bacterial composition and catabolic genes related to PAH degradation in a produced water treatment system consisting of successive anoxic and aerobic units

This paper reports on the investigation of concentration levels of PAHs, community structure, as well as the abundance of PAH-related catabolic genes including upper-pathway dioxygenase genes (nahAc and phnAc) and down-pathway catechol dioxygenase genes (C12O and C23O) in a successive anoxic and aerobic treatment of produced water from the Jidong Oilfield, China. 93% of total PAHs were removed, almost equally contributed by the anoxic and aerobic units. However, PAHs of more than 3 benzene rings remained almost unchanged. The signals for phnAc and C12O were undetectable in this biological system, whereas the existence of nahAc and C23O was confirmed in the system and the copies of the two genes in the aerobic tank were 2 or 3 orders higher than those in the influent water sample. The different behavior of C23O demonstrated that mineralization of PAHs might mainly occur in the aerobic unit. The existence of nahAc and C23O genes in the influent and the high similarity of genotype between the influent and the two sludge samples suggested that bacteria existing in the influent contributed to PAH removal and bacteria harboring PAH catabolic genes were enriched in the sludge.     

A hybrid CAD-based construction site layout planning system using genetic algorithms

The efficient layout planning of a construction site is a fundamental task to any project undertaking. In an attempt to enhance the general practice of layout planning of construction sites, the paper introduces a novel approach for producing the sought layouts. This approach integrates the highly sophisticated graphical capabilities of computer-aided design (CAD) platforms with the robust search and optimization capabilities of genetic algorithms (GAs). In this context, GAs are utilized from within the CAD environment to optimize the location of temporary facilities on site. The functional interaction between GAs and CAD and the details of the GA-based layout optimization procedure are presented. A fully automated computer system is further developed to demonstrate the practicality of the chosen approach. In order to evaluate the system's performance, a local construction project with a 24,000m² site is used. The automated system produced highly satisfactory results and showed notable flexibility through its CAD-based input/output media.     

Extraction of zinc from blast‐furnace dust using ammonium sulfate

The reaction between roasted zinc blast‐furnace dust (BFD) and ammonium sulfate was studied in the temperature range 250–450 °C using different molar ratios to determine the maximum extraction of zinc. The reaction products are characterized. The composition of the untreated and roasted BFD, and reaction products was investigated by chemical, thermal, X‐ray diffraction and fluorescence analyses. The decomposition of ammonium sulfate leads to the formation of (NH₄)₂S₂O₇, NH₄HSO₄ and (NH₄)₃H(SO₄)₃. The main zinc reaction products are ZnSO₄, ZnSO₃, (NH₄)₂Zn(SO₄)₂, (NH₄)₂Zn₂(SO₄)₃ and (NH₄)₂Zn₄(SO₄)₅. The reaction mechanisms of these formations are discussed in detail. The identity of these products depends essentially on the temperature as well as the molar ratios of the reactants. The optimum conditions for the formation of soluble zinc compounds are molar ratio 1:8 of roasted zinc dust (ZnO) and (NH₄)₂SO₄ at 350 °C. Under these conditions, up to 95% of zinc was leached with 0.5 M sulfuric acid. Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

Improving the Response of Soil-Metal Structures during Construction

For economic reasons, manufacturers of soil-metal bridges have strived to build these structures under the shallowest possible depth of soil cover, below the one allowed by codes of practice. For such structures, special analysis is needed to circumvent or prevent the formation of failure mechanisms that may be triggered during construction or when subjected to traffic loads. Therefore, special features, such as transverse stiffeners attached to the metal shell and the use of thrust concrete beams, may be required to assist the corrugated metal shell in carrying the loads. In this paper, a novel design is proposed for such structures in which the surrounding soil is reinforced and the metal shell is tied into the soil. A finite-element analysis of long span soil-metal structures with shallow soil cover is carried out using these two designs. The analysis is verified and substantiated using field data obtained during the construction of an 18 m soil-metal bridge. Comparing the structural response from the two designs shows that the latter design can lead to a superior structure.     

Short and long-term bond performance of prestressed FRP sheet anchorages

This paper discusses experimental results of the short and long-term behavior of the anchorage zones of externally bonded prestressed fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets. An experimental program was conducted to investigate seven beams bonded with prestressed FRP sheets including anchored or unanchored FRP sheet ends. Using different layers of FRP sheet, the prestress level of FRP sheets varied from 20% to 40% of the guaranteed tensile strength. The experimental observation was conducted in an outdoor environment and lasted about twenty months when temperatures were in the 7–30 ^°C range. This study provides significant data on the development of the effective bonding lengths, as well as the initiation and propagation of debonding along the FRP-concrete interface due to creep effect of the adhesive layer. Although adhesive creep leads to debonding propagation at higher shear stress, this creep is favored at low shear stress because it increases the effective bond length which improves the bond capacity of FRP-concrete interface and prevents premature failure of the anchorages. The effective bonding length was found to increase to 50% due to creep of the adhesive layer. The anchored end of the FRP sheets using steel plates and anchor bolts is an effective solution to enhance the bond capacity of FRP-concrete interface for short and long-term loading.     

Evaluating the potential of plastic-containing materials as alternative reducing agents

The amount of discarded plastic-containing materials is increasing, and one option to help with this issue is to use these materials in bath smelting processes. The injection of plastic-containing materials to partially substitute coal in zinc-fuming processes has been studied in an industrial trial at Boliden–Rönnskär smelter. To evaluate the potential of plastic-containing materials, thermodynamic calculations were performed in this study. In the first step, a thermodynamic calculation was performed for trials with only coal injection, and then this calculation was applied to trials with the co-injection of plastic materials. The thermodynamic calculation shows that not all the injected coal participates in the reactions within the slag. Similarly, the calculation with the co-injection of plastic-containing materials shows that different amounts of each plastic material participate in the reactions within the slag bath.     

Subcritical multiplication factor and source efficiency in accelerator-driven system

The subcritical multiplication factor k_s   and the external neutron source efficiency φ^∗${\phi }^{\ast }$ are important parameters in the accelerator-driven system (ADS) performance assessment. The theoretical relation between k_s and the effective multiplication factor k_eff in a subcritical system is discussed in different cases of subcritical system. On the basis of the theoretical background, the dependence of k_s   and φ^∗${\phi }^{\ast }$ on subcriticality, source position, and energy is numerically investigated using a simple thermal subcritical model. For the sake of experimental evaluation of k_s   and φ^∗${\phi }^{\ast }$, the ADS experiments have been carried out in the subcritical systems combined with 14 MeV pulsed neutrons of the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA). The k_s   and φ^∗${\phi }^{\ast }$ parameters are successfully measured by utilizing the reaction rate distribution obtained by the optical fiber detectors in the subcritical system, within a relative difference of less than 7% and 12% for k_s   and φ^∗${\phi }^{\ast }$, respectively, between measured and calculated values for most studied cases.     

Experimental analysis for neutron multiplication by using reaction rate distribution in accelerator-driven system

Basic experiments are carried out in the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA) to study the nuclear characteristics of the accelerator-driven systems (ADS) and to establish a new neutron source for research. A method for measuring the neutron multiplication in the subcritical system is proposed by utilizing the reaction rate distribution obtained by the optical fiber detector. A comparison between the measured and calculated neutron multiplication shows agreement within a relative difference of 5% in most cases, through introducing certain correction factors.     

Power efficient scheduling heuristics for energy conservation in computational grids

Computation grids and computational clouds are becoming increasingly popular in the organizations which require massive computational capabilities. Building such infrastructures makes a lucrative business case, thanks to availability of cheap hardware components and affordable software. Maintaining computational grids or cloud, however, require careful planning as in such dedicated environments, round-the-clock availability of workstations is very crucial. Ensuring uninterrupted availability, not only demands mechanism for failover redundancy but also results in constant power drainage. The tradeoff between the cost and the performance is the constant dilemma that the operations of the data centers face today. In this paper, we propose various heuristics for power-aware scheduling algorithms for scheduling jobs with dependent tasks onto the computational grid. We formulate the problem as a multi-objective function which results in various cost-performance tradeoffs each lying within the solution boundary.     

Experimental and numerical iInvestigations of effects of silica colloids on transport of strontium in saturated sand columns

Transport experiments with strontium were conducted using saturated sand columns in the presence and absence of silica colloids, and numerical modeling was performed with modeling results compared to experimental data. The experiments were aimed at testing the hypothesis that under certain chemical conditions colloids act as movement-retarding agents and yield a larger effective retardation factor for the migrating contaminant. Four individual experiments were conducted to identify conditions where the mobility of silica colloids is increased or decreased, and a similar set was conducted for strontium transport in the absence of colloids. Mobility of colloids was found to increase with decreasing ionic strength and increasing pH, with the ionic strength having the more significant impact. The reverse effect was obtained for strontium. Based on these results, two additional experiments were conducted where both colloids and strontium were injected at the column inlet. Results showed that under certain conditions of ionic strength and pH (I = 3.0 x 10(-2) M and pH = 4-5.4) colloids retarded the movement of strontium. The retardation effect was obtained in two experiments under slightly modified conditions, which confirms the role of colloids as retarding agents. Afinite difference numerical model was used to (a) simulate mobile breakthrough curves and compare to experimental data and (b) estimate the model parameters describing cotransport of strontium and colloids. The model accurately predicted arrival time and the overall shape of the breakthrough curves.