Hydrocarbon potential of Permian coals of South Karanpura Coalfield,Jharkhand, India

The present study investigates the hydrocarbon generative potential of the coal seams of Barka Sayal Area of South Karanpura Coalfield, India, using petrological and geochemical characteristics. These coals are vitrinite rich followed by liptinite and inertinite. Rank wise these are sub-bituminous ‘A’ to high volatile bituminous ‘C’ and fall in the early catagenesis stage of evolution. The presence of Type III kerogen and high hydrogen index value indicates excellent gaseous hydrocarbon generative potential, but low T_max suggests a characteristic of immature source rock. The calculated high conversion (%) and sufficient oil yield (%) justifies the suitability of these coals for liquefaction processes.     

Matheuristic approaches for Q-coverage problem versions in wireless sensor networks

This article deals with sensor coverage scheduling in wireless sensor networks subject to Q-coverage constraints. The main concern is to maximize the network lifetime, while ensuring that each target is covered by a given number of sensors. Three different variations of this problem are considered. Column generation based exact approaches are developed for those problems where the auxiliary problem is solved by a two-level approach comprising a genetic algorithm and an integer linear programming formulation. The genetic algorithm takes advantage of the auxiliary problem structure and appears to be very efficient at providing the master problem with attractive columns. The auxiliary problem integer linear programming (ILP) formulation is then mostly used for proving the optimality status of the current master problem solution. The proposed approaches are shown to be significantly faster than column generation approaches relying only on the auxiliary problem ILP formulation.     

Effect of organic additives on the mitigation of volatility of 1-nitro-3,3'-dinitroazetidine (TNAZ): next generation powerful melt cast able high energy material

1-Nitro-3,3'-dinitroazetidine (TNAZ) was synthesized based on the lines of reported method. Thermolysis studies on synthesized and characterized TNAZ using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and hyphenated TG-FT-IR techniques were undertaken to generate data on decomposition pattern. FT-IR of decomposition products of TNAZ revealed the evolution of oxides of nitrogen and HCN containing species suggesting the cleavage of C/N-NO(2) bond accompanied with the collapse of ring structure. The effect of incorporation of 15% additives namely, 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole (AT), 3,5-diamino-1,2,4-triazole (DAT), carbohydrazide (CHZ), 5,7-dinitrobenzofuroxan (DNBF), bis (2,2-dinitropropyl) succinate (BNPS), triaminoguanidinium nitrate (TAGN), 2,4,6-trinitrobenzoic acid (TNBA) and nitroguanidine (NQ) on the volatility of TNAZ was investigated by undertaking thermogravimetric analysis. The TG pattern brings out the potential of BNPS and TAGN as additives to mitigate the volatility of TNAZ. The influence of additives on thermal decomposition of pattern of TNAZ was also investigated by DSC. The DSC results indicated that the additives did not have appreciable effect on the melting point of TNAZ. Scanning electron microscopic (SEM) studies were carried out to investigate the effect of additives on morphology of TNAZ. This paper also discusses the possible mechanism involved in between the TNAZ and TAGN and BNPS. It appears that the formation of charge transfer complex formation between the TNAZ and TAGN/BNPS. The effect of addition of high explosives such as CL-20, HMX and RDX on thermo-physical characteristics of TNAZ is also reported in this paper.     

Probing Aromaticity of Borozene Through Optical and Dielectric Response: A Theoretical Study

In this work, we report electronic structure calculations aimed at computing the linear optical absorption spectrum and static dipole polarizablity of a newly proposed boron-based planar aromatic compound borozene (B ₁₂ H ₆). For the purpose, we use the semiempirical INDO model Hamiltonian, accompanied by large-scale correlation calculations using the multi-reference singles-doubles configuration-interaction (MRSDCI) approach. We present detailed predictions about the energetics, polarization properties, and the nature of many-particle states contributing to various peaks in the linear absorption spectrum. Our results can be used to characterize this material in future optical absorption experiments. We also argue that one can deduce the aromaticity of the cluster from the optical absorption and static polarizability results.     

A One-Dimensional Model for Particulate Deposition and Hydrocarbon Condensation in Exhaust Gas Recirculation Coolers

Cooled exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is widely used in diesel engines to control engine out NO_x (oxides of nitrogen) emissions. A portion of the exhaust gases is recirculated into the intake manifold of the engine after cooling it through a heat exchanger. EGR cooler heat exchangers, however, tend to lose efficiency and have increased pressure drop as deposit forms on the heat exchanger surface. This adversely affects the combustion process, engine durability, and emissions. In this study, a 1-D model was developed to simulate soot deposition, soot removal, and condensation of several hydrocarbon (HC) species in a circular tube with turbulent gas flow at constant wall temperature. The circular tube, which makes up the computational domain in the model, represents a single channel from any EGR cooler geometry. The model takes into account soot particle deposition due to thermophoresis, diffusion, turbulent impaction, and gravitational drift. However, thermophoresis was found to be the most dominant deposition mechanism for boundary conditions at which EGR coolers typically operate. Soot removal was modeled by considering a force balance between the drag and van der Waals forces. A lognormal distribution of particles was assumed at the tube inlet. The evolution of the particle distribution in the bulk flow along the tube as well as the mass distribution in the deposit layer on the tube walls is predicted by the model. Condensation of six HC species between C₁₅-C₂₄ alkanes was also modeled. Predictions made by the model are in reasonably good agreement with experimental data obtained from a laboratory reactor under the same boundary conditions. There are several assumptions and simplifications built into the model, which can be refined further to improve it.

Copyright 2012 American Association for Aerosol Research     

Temperature-dependent short-channel parameters of FinFETs

The remarkable development and continual proliferation of research in the nanotechnology field have led to improvement in the efficiency of elementary devices. To improve their performance, the parameters of such devices can be scaled down while optimizing their characteristics. However, this simultaneously results in degraded switching characteristics and the appearance of short-channel effects. Multigate-based fin-shaped field-effect transistors (FinFETs) represent a new option to address all these problems. However, thermal failure of FinFET devices under nominal operating conditions is an important issue in the design and implementation of high-speed semiconductor devices. It is also seen that bulk FinFETs exhibit better thermal performance compared with silicon-on-insulator FinFETs. In the work presented herein, various FinFET characteristics including the subthreshold swing, drain-induced barrier lowering, threshold voltage, and drain current were investigated as functions of temperature. The (effective) channel length is larger than the physical gate length (in off-state) due to the undoped underlap regions. This paper also discusses the effects of drain, source, and gate overlap.     

Fuzzy Reliability Assessment of Distribution System with Wind Farms and Plug-in Electric Vehicles

Abstract

The equipment failures are highly uncertain in nature and simple average failure rate will not reflect this uncertainty. The uncertainty level further increases in reliability evaluation due to the integration of wind farm (WF) because of the intermittent nature of wind speed and random charging patterns of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). In this work, the uncertain variables in the distribution system (failure rate, repair time, WF output, PEVs charging and system load factor) are represented as fuzzy numbers to handle the uncertainty. The available uncertain data are used to find the probability distribution function (PDF) of that parameter and is converted into fuzzy membership function using transformation techniques. Failure rate of equipment is converted into failure probability using Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) method. Sampling method is applied to create the PDF of a variable which has average value. Fuzzy severity index (FSI) is proposed to find the importance of an equipment on reliability and is evaluated by measuring the fuzzy distance between the fuzzy reliability indices. The proposed assessment method is validated on modified RBTS bus 2 by comparing with analytical and MCS methods. The proposed method has been tested with integration of WFs and PEVs.     

Effects of fiber surface grafting by functionalized carbon nanotubes on the interfacial durability during cryogenic testing and conditioning of CFRP composites

Carbon fiber reinforced epoxy (CE) composite is ideal for a cryogenic fuel storage tank in space applications due to its unmatched specific strength and modulus. In this article, inter-laminar shear strength (ILSS) of carbon fiber/epoxy (CE) composite is shown to be considerably improved by engineering the interface with carboxyl functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotube (FCNT) using electrophoretic deposition technique. FCNT deposited fibers from different bath concentrations (0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 g/L) were used to fabricate the laminates, which were then tested at room (30°C) and in-situ liquid nitrogen (LN) (−196°C) temperature as well as conditioning for different time durations (0.25, 0.5, 1, 6, and 12 h) followed by immediate RT testing to study the applicability of these engineered materials at the cryogenic environment. A maximum increment in ILSS was noticed at bath concentration of 0.5 g/L, which was ~21% and ~ 17% higher than neat composite at 30°C and − 196°C, respectively. Short-term LN conditioning was found to be detrimental due to developed cryogenic shock, which was further found to be compensated by cryogenic interfacial clamping upon long-term exposure.     

The Einstein relation in nanostructured materials: simplified theory and suggestion for experimental determination

An attempt is made to study the Einstein relation for the diffusivity–mobility ratio (DMR) in quantum wells (QWs) and quantum well wires (QWWs) of tetragonal compounds on the basis of a newly formulated electron energy spectrum taking into account the combined influences of the anisotropies in effective electron mass, the spin–orbit splitting, and the presence of crystal field splitting, respectively. The results for quantum-confined III–V compounds form a special case of our generalized analysis. The DMR has also been studied for QWs and QWWs of II–VI and IV–VI materials. Taking QWs and QWWs of CdGeAs₂, InAs, CdS and PbSe as examples, it was found that the DMR increases with increasing carrier statistics and decreasing film thickness respectively in various oscillatory manners emphasizing the influence of dimensional quantizations and the energy band constants in different cases. An experimental method of determining the DMR in nanostructures with arbitrary dispersion laws has also been suggested and the present simplified analysis is in agreement with the suggested relationship. The well-known results for nanostructures with parabolic energy bands have also been obtained as special cases from this generalized analysis under certain limiting conditions.