Polyethylene glycol (PEG)/diatomite composite as a novel form-stable phase change material for thermal energy storage

This paper deals with the preparation, characterization, and determination of thermal energy storage properties of polyethylene glycol (PEG)/diatomite composite as a novel form-stable composite phase change material (PCM). The composite PCM was prepared by incorporating PEG in the pores of diatomite. The PEG could be retained by 50 wt% into pores of the diatomite without the leakage of melted PEG from the composite. The composite PCM was characterized by using SEM and FT-IR analysis technique. Thermal properties of the composite PCM were determined by DSC analysis. DSC results showed that the melting temperature and latent heat of the composite PCM are 27.70 °C and 87.09 J/g, respectively. Thermal cycling test was conducted to determine the thermal reliability of the composite PCM and the results showed that the composite PCM had good thermal reliability and chemical stability. TG analysis showed that the impregnated PEG into the diatomite had good thermal stability. Thermal conductivity of the composite PCM was improved by adding expanded graphite in different mass fractions. Thermal energy storage performance of the composite PCM was also tested.     

Chemical and antioxidant properties of pomegranate cultivars grown in the Mediterranean region of Turkey

Arils from six pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) cultivars obtained from various sites from the Mediterranean region of Turkey were evaluated for their chemical and antioxidant properties. These properties included total phenolics (TP), total monomeric anthocyanins (TMA), soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity (TA), individual sugars and organic acids. Antioxidant capacities of arils were determined by both the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) and trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) assays. The antioxidant capacities averaged 5.60 and 7.35 mmol TE/l by the TEAC and FRAP methods. Variability among cultivars was greatest for TMA content (CV 132%); individuals ranged from 6.1 to 219 mg cy3-Gluc l⁻¹. TP means averaged 1507 mg GAE/l. Levels of FRAP, TEAC, TP, and TMA were strongly correlated (r = 0.82–0.96). The major sugars were fructose (6.4 g/100 ml) and glucose (6.8 g/100 ml), the major acids were citric (1.78 g/100 ml) and malic (0.12 g/100 ml).     

Application of unreacted-core model to in situ gelatinization of chickpea starch

Unreacted-core model for reaction-controlled systems was tested on modeling of starch gelatinization in whole chickpea (in situ) during cooking. Experiments were conducted in deionized water at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 °C. The process was followed through images of the flat sides of the chickpea cotyledons. During cooking between 60 and 100 °C, a white core in the original color of the cotyledons and a surrounding opaque yellow zone were observed on the cotyledons. According to birefringence studies starch granules in the yellow zone were gelatinized, and in the white core they remained ungelatinized. The formation of the yellow color was connected to the gelatinization in the peripheral zone. During cooking at 50 °C the color change was not observed because of working below the gelatinization temperature of chickpea starch. The area of the gelatinized zone increased at the expense of the area of the ungelatinized core with the progress of the cooking. The unreacted-core model fitted the process very well, and the estimated gelatinization times were in good agreement with the experimental gelatinization times. The kinetic data for the gelatinization reaction estimated after verifying the unreacted-core model were in agreement with the literature. These findings indicated that the in situ gelatinization of chickpea starch can be modeled using the unreacted-core model, and the process is effectively gelatinization-controlled under the given conditions.     

MaTRU‐KE revisited: CCA2‐secure key establishment protocol based on MaTRU

Quantum attack–resistant cryptosystems are required for secure communication since there is a big demand to have quantum computers. Lattice‐based cryptography is one of the quantum‐secure families due to its key/ciphertext sizes and performance. NTRU‐based cryptosystems, a member of lattice‐based cryptosystems, have received much more attention. MaTRU, a noncommutative version of NTRU with some matrix properties, is used to obtain a key exchange protocol in 2018. In this paper, we focus on MaTRU‐based key exchange protocols having CCA2 properties. We propose CCA2‐secure versions of MaTRU‐KE and then provide a security analysis of CCA2‐secure key establishment protocols. We also provide a comparison with the previous ones.     

A distributed multi-GPU system for high speed electron microscopic tomographic reconstruction

Full resolution electron microscopic tomographic (EMT) reconstruction of large-scale tilt series requires significant computing power. The desire to perform multiple cycles of iterative reconstruction and realignment dramatically increases the pressing need to improve reconstruction performance. This has motivated us to develop a distributed multi-GPU (graphics processing unit) system to provide the required computing power for rapid constrained, iterative reconstructions of very large three-dimensional (3D) volumes. The participating GPUs reconstruct segments of the volume in parallel, and subsequently, the segments are assembled to form the complete 3D volume. Owing to its power and versatility, the CUDA (NVIDIA, USA) platform was selected for GPU implementation of the EMT reconstruction. For a system containing 10 GPUs provided by 5 GTX295 cards, 10 cycles of SIRT reconstruction for a tomogram of 4096²×512 voxels from an input tilt series containing 122 projection images of 4096² pixels (single precision float) takes a total of 1845 s of which 1032 s are for computation with the remainder being the system overhead. The same system takes only 39 s total to reconstruct 1024²×256 voxels from 122 1024² pixel projections. While the system overhead is non-trivial, performance analysis indicates that adding extra GPUs to the system would lead to steadily enhanced overall performance. Therefore, this system can be easily expanded to generate superior computing power for very large tomographic reconstructions and especially to empower iterative cycles of reconstruction and realignment.     

Environmentally Friendly Photocatalytic Oxidation of Aromatic Alcohol to Aldehyde in Aqueous Suspension of Brookite TiO2

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) has been applied to the study pertaining to preparation and characterization of catalysts used in propylene polymerization. The analysis has indicated support/donor interaction in active support (adduct) and active support/TiCl₄ interaction during catalyst preparation process. A systematic study has been made to identify suitable adduct from a set of three adducts for catalyst synthesis. Precise binding energy of Titanium species on catalyst surface has been measured and its dispersion on support has been evaluated to correlate catalyst performance with the surface spectroscopic parameters.     

Nonlinear identification of a spark ignition engine torque based on ANFIS with NARX method

Spark ignition (SI) engines have a nonlinear dynamic system with inherent uncertainties and unpredictable disturbances. The identification of a nonlinear system is vital in many fields of engineering. In this study, SI engine torque is identified from an input–output measurement. This study aims to propose a dynamic nonlinear model that uses an adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system and a nonlinear auto‐regressive with exogenous input structure to identify the dynamic nonlinear behavior of an SI engine. Considerable good performance is achieved using the adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system nonlinear auto‐regressive with exogenous input method. For model validation, the proposed method is compared with the more conventional identification approach called the Hammerstein method. The results show that the two methods are in excellent agreement. The Hammerstein model was chosen because its identification result of the SI system was studied previously by the author. Validation results prove that the ability of the proposed model can capture the highly nonlinear behavior of the SI system.     

One-information suboptimal control repercussion on the fine structure of wall turbulence

The suboptimal control with the cost function directly connected to the wall shear and introduced for a while has been revisited through direct numerical simulations of high temporal and spatial resolution. Its effect on the fine structure of the wall turbulence has been analyzed in details, essentially through the spanwise vorticity transport mechanism. It is shown that only half of the viscous sublayer is mainly affected by the control. The actuation efficiency is limited in terms of the wall shear stress reduction, but is high as long as the turbulent wall activity is concerned. The wall shear stress is reduced due both to the reduction of the shear production in the viscous sublayer and to the contribution of the turbulent body force. The dissipation involving in the streamwise vorticity fluctuations transport equation increases significantly and overcomes the production in a thin layer near the wall leading to a drastic diminution of the turbulent wall shear stress fluctuations.