A construction and improvement heuristic for a liquefied natural gas inventory routing problem

We present a large scale ship routing and inventory management problem for a producer and distributor of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The problem contains multiple products, inventory and berth capacity at the loading port and a heterogeneous fleet of ships. The goal is to create an annual delivery program to fulfill the producer’s long-term contracts at minimum cost, while maximizing the revenue from selling LNG in the spot market. To solve this problem we have developed a construction and improvement heuristic (CIH).The CIH is a multi-start local search heuristic that constructs a set of solutions using a greedy insertion procedure. The solutions are then improved using either a first-descent neighborhood search, branch-and-bound on a mathematical formulation, or both. Tests on real-life instances show that the CIH provides good solutions in a short amount of time.     

Planar-Based Visual Inertial Navigation: Observability Analysis and Motion Estimation

In this paper, we address the problem of ego-motion estimation by fusing visual and inertial information. The hardware consists of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a monocular camera. The camera provides visual observations in the form of features on a horizontal plane. Exploiting the geometric constraint of features on the plane into visual and inertial data, we propose a novel closed form measurement model for this system. Our first contribution in this paper is an observability analysis of the proposed planar-based visual inertial navigation system (VINS). In particular, we prove that the system has only three unobservable states corresponding to global translations parallel to the plane, and rotation around the gravity vector. Hence, compared to general VINS, an advantage of using features on the horizontal plane is that the vertical translation along the normal of the plane becomes observable. As the second contribution, we present a state-space formulation for the pose estimation in the analyzed system and solve it via a modified unscented Kalman filter (UKF). Finally, the findings of the theoretical analysis and 6-DoF motion estimation are validated by simulations as well as using experimental data.     

Comparison of different peeling systems for kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa,cv Hayward)

Galicia (N.W. Spain) produces 60% of Spanish kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) and 5–20% of these are ‘destrío’ fruits, which do not reach market size and the appropriate form. These rejected fruits can be processed into products, thus increasing their added value. The processing of kiwifruit always includes a peeling operation, which can be performed by different systems. The most suitable conditions for caustic peeling and thermal peeling were established. Then, the two peeling systems were compared with manual peeling with the aim of selecting the best system to remove the peel of the ‘destrío’ kiwifruit. The fruits, once harvested, were stored in a cold chamber at 0 °C. Before processing or marketing kiwifruits, it is necessary to remove them from storage in cold chamber and storage at room temperature. In this study, different storage times at room temperature before peeling kiwifruits were also tested. The best system for peeling the kiwifruit was thermal peeling as this system resulted in the lowest weight loss and preserved the green colour characteristic of the kiwifruit. The best time for peeling the kiwifruit was after 8 days of storage at room temperature, after being removed from the cold chamber.     

Ilmenite with addition of NiO as oxygen carrier for chemical-looping combustion

The naturally occurring mineral ilmenite, FeTiO₃, has been examined as oxygen carrier for chemical-looping combustion. NiO-based particles have been used as an additive, in order to examine if it is possible to utilize the catalytic properties of metallic Ni to facilitate decomposition of hydrocarbons into more reactive combustion intermediates such as CO and H₂. Firstly, ilmenite was examined by oxidation and reduction experiments in a batch fluidized-bed reactor. These experiments indicated moderate reactivity between ilmenite and CH₄, which was used as reducing gas. However, adding 5 wt.% of NiO-based particles to the ilmenite improved the conversion of CH₄ greatly, resulting in an increase in combustion efficiency with a factor of 3. Secondly, 83 h of chemical-looping combustion experiments were conducted in a small circulating fluidized-bed reactor, using ilmenite as oxygen carrier and natural gas as fuel. A wide range of process parameters and different levels of NiO addition were examined. Occasionally, there were problems with the circulation of solids between the air reactor and fuel reactor, but most of the time the experiments worked well. The products were mostly CO₂, H₂O and unconverted CH₄. Adding small amounts of NiO-based particles to the reactor increased the conversion of the fuel considerably. For the base case conducted at 900°, the combustion efficiency was 76% for pure ilmenite and 90% for the corresponding experiments with 1 wt.% NiO-based particles added to the reactor. The properties of ilmenite were found to change considerably during operation. Used particles had lower density, were more reactive and more porous than fresh particles. These changes appear to have been physical, and no unexpected chemical phases could be identified.     

Kinetic modeling of Fe‐BEA as NH3‐SCR catalyst—effect of phosphorous

The focus of this work is to investigate whether a previously developed microkinetic deactivation model for hydrothermally treated Fe‐BEA as NH₃‐SCR catalyst can be applied to describe chemical deactivation of Fe‐BEA due to phosphorous exposure. The model describes the experiments well for Fe‐BEA before and after phosphorous exposure by decreasing the site density, representing deactivation of sites due to formation of metaphosphates blocking the active iron sites, while the kinetic parameters are kept constant. Furthermore, the results show that the activity for low‐temperature selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is very sensitive to loss of active monomeric iron species due to phosphorous poisoning compared to high‐temperature SCR. Finally, the ammonia inhibition simulations show that exposure to phosphorous may affect the internal transport of ammonia between ammonia storage sites buffering the active iron sites, which results in a lower SCR performance during transient conditions. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 215–223, 2015