Futuristic applications of hydrogen in energy,biorefining, aerospace,pharmaceuticals and metallurgy

The increasing world population, as well as demands for energy and industrial commodities, have led to an overall rise in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, demands for fossil fuels and petrochemicals are also gradually escalating in the developing and underdeveloped countries to sustain the transportation sector, industrial power generation and commodity chemical production. To address these challenges and to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change, there has been a growing interest in the development of renewable energy resources. Hydrogen is considered a strong candidate for the next-generation energy infrastructures as an energy carrier and vector, as well as a precursor or auxiliary component for several industrial processes. This review outlines current researches and applications of hydrogen in the processing and upgrading of hydrocarbon fuels, fuel cells, platform chemicals synthesis, pharmaceuticals, aerospace and maritime uses, metallurgy and electronics. Besides, applications of hydrogen as a direct fuel, synthesis of liquid hydrocarbons via Fischer-Tropsch process and syngas fermentation to alcohols are also reviewed. The specific utilization of hydrogen in the metallurgical industry is highlighted for metal reduction and in the oxyhydrogen flame for cutting and welding of metals. Besides, the article also describes the use of hydrogen in pharmaceutical industries for drug discovery. Finally, a variety of socio-economic aspects of hydrogen as a renewable fuel is also outlined in this article.     

Wavelet to DCT transcoding in transform domain

Wavelet to DCT transcoding provides inter-operability between standards using the two transforms for encoding. Transcoding in transform domain avoids inverse transform and re-transform operations and saves computation. In this paper, we propose new algorithms for transcoding wavelet coefficients to block DCT coefficients. In the first step, the wavelet coefficients are transformed into upsampled DCT coefficients. Subsequently, these trans-formed coefficients are synthesized in the block DCT space for transcoding. The proposed approach restricts all operations in the DCT domain that makes filtering involved in the synthesis process computationally efficient. The proposed technique could be used by the block DCT based services when the input is available as wavelet coefficients.     

Performance analysis of the Rainbow WDM optical network prototype

Rainbow is a prototype optical metropolitan area network (MAN) developed at IBM. It employs wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) on a fiber-optic, passive-star network topology, with each station equipped with a laser, which is fixed tuned to its own unique wavelength, and a Fabry-Perot filter, which is tunable across all wavelengths. This paper presents a model and analysis of the protocol used in the Rainbow prototype using the equilibrium point analysis (EPA) technique. We examine the system's throughput and how it is affected by various system parameters such as message arrival rate, message length, and timeout duration. We show that, for a given arrival rate, there is a timeout duration that will yield the optimal throughput. The analytical results are verified by simulation     

Optimizing amplifier placements in a multiwavelength opticalLAN/MAN: the unequally powered wavelengths case

Optical networks based on passive-star couplers and employing WDM have been proposed for deployment in local and metropolitan areas. These networks suffer from splitting, coupling, and attenuation losses. Since there is an upper bound on transmitter power and a lower bound on receiver sensitivity, optical amplifiers are usually required to compensate for the power losses mentioned above. Due to the high cost of amplifiers, it is desirable to minimize their total number in the network. However, an optical amplifier has constraints on the maximum gain and the maximum output power it can supply; thus, optical amplifier placement becomes a challenging problem. In fact, the general problem of minimizing the total amplifier count is a mixed-integer nonlinear problem. Previous studies have attacked the amplifier-placement problem by adding the “artificial” constraint that all wavelengths, which are present at a particular point in a fiber, be at the same power level. This constraint simplifies the problem into a solvable mixed-integer linear program. Unfortunately, this artificial constraint can miss feasible solutions that have a lower amplifier count but do not have the equally powered wavelengths constraint. In this paper, we present a method to solve the minimum-amplifier-placement problem, while avoiding the equally powered wavelength constraint. We demonstrate that, by allowing signals to operate at different power levels, our method can reduce the number of amplifiers required     

Mobile touch screen device use and associations with musculoskeletal symptoms and visual health in a nationally representative sample of Singaporean adolescents

This study aimed to describe contemporary technology use, especially smartphones and tablets (mobile touch screen devices), and examine associations with musculoskeletal symptoms and visual health among adolescents in Singapore. A representative sample of 1884 adolescents (50.4% girls) from grades primary 5 to post-secondary (10–18?years old), recruited from 13 schools, completed an online questionnaire in class. Total technology use was high, with smartphone duration being highest (mean?=?264 [SD?=?243] min/day). Patterns of use, including multitasking and bout length, were influenced by gender, school level, type of device and activities. Musculoskeletal discomfort and visual symptoms were commonly reported. After adjusting for potential confounders, more hours/day of smartphone use was associated with increased risk of neck/shoulders, upper back, arms and wrist/hand discomfort (OR?=?1.04[95%CI?=?1.01–1.07] to 1.07[1.03–1.10]) and visual symptoms (OR?=?1.05[1.02–1.08]), but was associated with decreased odds of myopia (OR?=?0.97[0.94–0.99]). No significant associations were found for tablet use.

Practitioner Summary: 1884 adolescents in Singapore completed an in-depth questionnaire regarding their use of technology. The smartphone was the device with the highest usage, and greater smartphone use was associated with increased odds of musculoskeletal and visual symptoms. High use of smartphones has physical health implications for adolescents.     

Transformation-Induced, Geometrically Necessary, Dislocation-Based Flow Curve Modeling of Dual-Phase Steels: Effect of Grain Size

The flow behavior of dual-phase (DP) steels is modeled on the finite-element method (FEM) framework on the microscale, considering the effect of the microstructure through the representative volume element (RVE) approach. Two-dimensional RVEs were created from microstructures of experimentally obtained DP steels with various ferrite grain sizes. The flow behavior of single phases was modeled through the dislocation-based work-hardening approach. The volume change during austenite-to-martensite transformation was modeled, and the resultant prestrained areas in the ferrite were considered to be the storage place of transformation-induced, geometrically necessary dislocations (GNDs). The flow curves of DP steels with varying ferrite grain sizes, but constant martensite fractions, were obtained from the literature. The flow curves of simulations that take into account the GND are in better agreement with those of experimental flow curves compared with those of predictions without consideration of the GND. The experimental results obeyed the Hall-Petch relationship between yield stress and flow stress and the simulations predicted this as well.     

Online integrated visual inspection and sorting system for fast reactor fuels

Mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) is designed to have initial burn up of 100,000 MWD/T. The major differences from thermal reactor fuel are relatively smaller dimension with central hole and higher plutonium concentration (21% and 28% of PuO₂) MOX pellets which are loaded into 2.5 m long clad tubes with depleted UO₂ blanket pellets at either end of the MOX stack. The relatively smaller dimension of fuel pellets for PFBR results in large volume at fabrication and inspection. To ensure fast and accurate inspection and sorting of as sintered pellets with less radiation exposure to personnel an integrated on line pellet inspection system for remote visual inspection and sorting of pellets based on diameter has been developed. Details of the integrated pellet inspection system developed at Advanced Fuel Fabrication Facility, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Tarapur along with the results of the performance trials has been described in this paper.     

Modeling Blockage Failures in Sewer Systems to Support Maintenance Decision Making

The objective of this research is to develop and implement a stochastic method that can be applied to characterize random failures in critical infrastructure systems. We particularly focus on blockage failures in sewer systems that are nonmechanistic and result from combination of external factors, including deterioration in condition. The method was implemented using a data set consisting of sewer blockage failure records from a small municipality. Statistical tests were conducted to: (1) ensure that available data set is representative and (2) estimate parameters of distributions that appropriately characterize failure event arrival pattern. Failure trends were also analyzed to identify the influence of local factors and justify the choice of the distributions used to characterize interarrival times. Based on the analysis, we explored the challenges in developing a reliability model across the life cycle of a sewer system. In addition, specific examples were also presented to illustrate how the method can be applied to support system maintenance decisions. The results of this study illustrate how the memoryless property can be assumed in analyzing failure events, while explicitly considering context specific influences. Finally, the methods described in this paper are extensible and can be applied generally to analyzing random failures in other infrastructure systems as well.     

Optimization of HV electrode systems by neural networks using a newlearning method

To avoid a large number of iterations, optimization of electrode shapes has been done by artificial neural networks (NN). Two practical examples have been considered, an axisymmetric single-phase GIS bus termination and an axisymmetric transformer shield ring. The shape of the electrodes has been taken as quarter-ellipse or half-ellipse because an ellipse has more flexibility than a circle. For NN, the so-called resilient propagation algorithm, learning faster than the standard back-propagation algorithm, has been employed. The training sets as well as the test sets of NN have been prepared by charge simulation method