Thermal runaway prevention in catalytic packed bed reactor by solid temperature measurement and Control

Magnetic crystallite thermometry has been used to measure the average nickel crystallite temperature in packed bed reactors during ethane hydrogenolysis, an exothermic reaction. The technique is based on the temperature dependence of the magnetic moment of dispersed nickel catalysts. Measurement of the average catalyst temperature is very useful for reactor control because of its shorter time constant compared with exit fluid temperature. Bed temperature control based on the exit fluid temperature, which has often been used as a control variable, is too slow to protect thermal runaway of the bed. The advantage of short time constant by measuring the average catalyst temperature has been incorporated with enhanced feedback control system to control the bed temperature and prevent the thermal runaway of the catalyst bed. An enhanced feedback control structure with supervisory action performed better than the classical proportional-integral control in runaway prevention when the two control schemes were compared with each other on the basis of the trippoint (incipient thermal runaway).     

Dissipative structures of autocatalytic reactions in tubular flow reactors

Dissipative structures of autocatalytic reactions with initially uniform concentrations are studied in tubular flow reactors. A unique steady state exists in a continuous stirred tank reactor. Linear stability analysis predicts either a stable node, a focus or an unstable saddle-focus. Sustained oscillations around the unstable focus can occur for high values of Damköhler number. In distributed parameter systems, travelling, standing or complex oscillatory waves are detected. For low values of Damköhler number, travelling waves with pseudo-constant patterns are observed. With intermediate values of Damköhler number, single or multiple standing waves are obtained. The temporal behavior indicates also the appearance of retriggering or echo waves. For high values of Damköhler number, both single peak and complex multipeak oscillations are found. In the cell model, both regular oscillations near the inlet and chaotic behavior downstream are observed. In the dispersion model, higher Peclet numbers eliminate the oscillations. The spatial profile shows a train of pulsating waves for the discret model and a single pulsating or solitary wave for the continuous model.     

Infrared reflectance and transmission spectra of semiconducting non-stoichiometric CdGe x As2

The infrared reflectance and transmission spectra of amorphous CdGe _x As₂ were investigated to study the amorphous structure with varying Ge content. The mid-infrared optical absorption edges of amorphous CdGe _x As₂ with 0<x<1.2, were observed in the range 1.6–1.7 m, indicating a structural similarity in short-range order throughout. Comparing the reflectance and transmission spectra of amorphous and devitrified crystalline phases established that the structures of amorphous CdGe _x As₂ transformed from the CdAs₂ basic structure to the chalcopyrite (CdGeAs₂) structure, as one progressed fromx=0 tox=1.2. The infrared spectra were interpreted interactively with radial distribution function, magnetic susceptibility, density measurements, and crystallization studies. The crystallization behaviour of amorphous CdGe _x As₂ that was heat treated at different temperatures was investigated using far-infrared transmission spectra.     

Galvanic coupling effect on corrosion behavior of Al alloy-matrix composites

Galvanic coupling effect on the corrosion of SiC-reinforced aluminum alloy-matrix composites was investigated in a sodium chloride solution. The potentiodynamic polarization measurement indicated that pitting potentials of metal matrix composites (MMCs) and AA2124 matrix alloy were similar, and pitting potential of MMCs was almost same as corrosion potential, while pitting susceptibility of MMCs was higher than that of AA2124 alloy. Galvanic current by formation of galvanic couple between SiCw and matrix reveals very low value because of large cathodic polarization of SiC. However, by increasing potential of matrix to pitting potential by this galvanic couple and thus, forming pits easily at the weak passive film near SiC reinforcing phase preferentially, it is concluded that pitting susceptibility of MMCs increases highly than AA2124 alloy of matrix composition.     

A note on the optimal pricing and production decisions with price‐driven substitution

Recently, Kim and Bell ( 2011 ) developed a revenue managemnent pricing model with price‐driven substitution. The authors considered production decisions under unlimited production capacity and investigated the impact of price‐driven substitution on a firm's pricing and production decisions. The authors modeled the consumer demands for each market segment as linear additive demand function based on exogenous variables, where demand substitution occurred as a function of price differences between the two products. In this article, we extend this work to examine the impact of a production capacity constraint on the firm's joint pricing and inventory decisions. Based on this extended model, we investigate the impact of price‐driven substitution on a firm's pricing and production decisions where there is a limit on total capacity. We show how revenue managers should adjust prices and production levels to take into account price‐driven substitution under a capacity constraint setting. Both deterministic and stochastic models are developed, and the impact of price‐driven substitution and a capacity constraint on the optimal prices, production levels, and revenues is illustrated.     

A timing controller embedded driver IC with 3.24‐Gbps eDP interface for chip‐on‐glass TFT‐LCD applications

This paper presents a timing controller embedded driver (TED) IC with 3.24‐Gbps embedded display port (eDP), which is implemented using a 45‐nm high‐voltage CMOS process for the chip‐on‐glass (COG) TFT‐LCD applications. The proposed TED‐IC employs the input offset calibration scheme, the zero‐adjustable equalizer, and the phase locked loop‐based bang‐bang clock and data recovery to enhance the maximum data rate. Also, the proposed TED‐IC provides efficient power management by supporting advanced link power management feature of eDP standard v1.4. Additionally, the smart charge sharing is proposed to reduce the dynamic power consumption of output buffers. Measured result demonstrates the maximum data rate of 3.24 Gbps from a 1.1 V supply voltage with a 7.9‐inch QXGA 60‐Hz COG‐LCD prototype panel and 44% power saving from the display system.     

Usability Principles for Augmented Reality Applications in a Smartphone Environment

Through the rapid spread of smartphones, users have access to many types of applications similar to those on desktop computer systems. Smartphone applications using augmented reality (AR) technology make use of users' location information. As AR applications will require new evaluation methods, improved usability and user convenience should be developed. The purpose of the current study is to develop usability principles for the development and evaluation of smartphone applications using AR technology. We develop usability principles for smartphone AR applications by analyzing existing research about heuristic evaluation methods, design principles for AR systems, guidelines for handheld mobile device interfaces, and usability principles for the tangible user interface. We conducted a heuristic evaluation for three popularly used smartphone AR applications to identify usability problems. We suggested new design guidelines to solve the identified problems. Then, we developed an improved AR application prototype of an Android-based smartphone, which later was conducted a usability testing to validate the effects of usability principles.     

Window annealing for pixel-labeling problems

The pixel labeling problems in computer vision are often formulated as energy minimization tasks. Algorithms such as graph cuts and belief propagation are prominent; however, they are only applicable for specific energy forms. For general optimization, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based simulated annealing can estimate the minima states very slowly.This paper presents a sampling paradigm for faster optimization. First, in contrast to previous MCMCs, the role of detailed balance constraint is eliminated. The reversible Markov chain jumps are essential for sampling an arbitrary posterior distribution, but they are not essential for optimization tasks. This allows a computationally simple window cluster sample. Second, the proposal states are generated from combined sets of local minima which achieve a substantial increase in speed compared to uniformly labeled cluster proposals. Third, under the coarse-to-fine strategy, the maximum window size variable is incorporated along with the temperature variable during simulated annealing. The proposed window annealing is experimentally shown to be many times faster and capable of finding lower energy compared to the previous Gibbs and Swendsen-Wang cut (SW-cut) sampler. In addition, the proposed method is compared with other deterministic algorithms like graph cut, belief propagation, and spectral method in their own specific energy forms. Window annealing displays competitive performance in all domains.     

An object-based middleware supporting efficient interoperability on a smart home network

This paper proposes a novel object-based home network middleware for supporting the interoperability among home devices and smart grid devices. This middleware provides various types of abstract objects for flexible representation of heterogeneous home devices, which are classified based on their characteristics. It is also flexible enough to allow addition of new protocols and message conversion between different protocols through an abstraction layer, which are not supported by existing home network middlewares so that various protocols can be supported. As a result, it can be utilized to provide the interoperability among a variety of devices from sensors to typical home appliances as well as smart grid devices such as a home electric generator and a battery, which adopt different protocols. In order to demonstrate that home devices and smart grid devices are interoperable through the proposed middleware, we implement applications based on the middleware on a target platform consisting of embedded boards, sensors and laptops for emulation purposes of a home network. According to our emulation, this middleware can provide efficient interoperability among home devices and smart grid devices for future energy efficient home.