Thermal Evaluation of Diesel/Hydrogen Peroxide Fuel Blend

Thermal properties of fossil fuel are the key fundamental characteristics, which can distinguish any compound as a potential fuel. The performance of diesel fuel blend along with stability and solubility parameter designs are evaluated. The results from the experimental study indicate that the increase in hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) amount enhances the cetane number of diesel fuel blend significantly. However, the calorific value decreases as compared to pure diesel fuel. All values performed well according to the ASTM D‐975 diesel testing method. The thermodynamics of the prepared fuel blends also revealed that substantial solubility and diesel/H₂O₂ blend stability are provided even at lower temperatures. Such blends can be used as a feasible replacement of pure diesel fuel.     

An AW-HARIS Based Automated Segmentation of Human Liver Using CT Images

In the digestion of amino acids, carbohydrates, and lipids, as well as protein synthesis from the consumed food, the liver has many diverse responsibilities and functions that are to be performed. Liver disease may impact the hormonal and nutritional balance in the human body. The earlier diagnosis of such critical conditions may help to treat the patient effectively. A computationally efficient AW-HARIS algorithm is used in this paper to perform automated segmentation of CT scan images to identify abnormalities in the human liver. The proposed approach can recognize the abnormalities with better accuracy without training, unlike in supervisory procedures requiring considerable computational efforts for training. In the earlier stages, the CT images are pre-processed through an Adaptive Multiscale Data Condensation Kernel to normalize the underlying noise and enhance the image’s contrast for better segmentation. Then, the preliminary phase’s outcome is being fed as the input for the Anisotropic Weighted–-Heuristic Algorithm for Real-time Image Segmentation algorithm that uses texture-related information, which has resulted in precise outcome with acceptable computational latency when compared to that of its counterparts. It is observed that the proposed approach has outperformed in the majority of the cases with an accuracy of 78%. The smart diagnosis approach would help the medical staff accurately predict the abnormality and disease progression in earlier ailment stages.     

Maximization of heat transfer density from a vertical array of flat tubes in cross flow under fixed pressure drop using constructal design

The density of heat transfer rate from a vertical array of flat tubes in cross flow is maximized under fixed pressure drop using constructal design. With the constructal design, the tube arrangement is found such that the heat currents from the tubes to the coolant flow easily. The constraint in the present constructal design is the volume where the tubes are arranged inside it. The two degrees of freedom available inside the volume are the tube‐to‐tube spacing and the length of the flat part of the tubes (tube flatness). The tubes are heated with constant surface temperature. The equations of continuity, momentums, and energy for steady, two‐dimensional, and laminar forced convection are solved by means of a finite‐volume method. The ranges of the present study are Bejan number (dimensionless pressure drop) (10³ ≤ Be ≤ 10⁵) and tube flatness (dimensionless length of the tube flat part) (0 ≤ F ≤ 0.8). The coolant used is air with Prandtl number (Pr = 0.72). The results reveal that the maximum heat transfer density decreases when the tube flatness decreases at constant Bejan number. At constant tube flatness, the heat transfer density increases as the dimensionless pressure drop (Bejan number) increases. Also, the optimal tube‐to‐tube spacing is constant, irrespective of the tube flatness at constant Bejan number.     

Adsorption of U(Ⅵ) from acid solution on a low-cost sorbent:equilibrium,kinetic, and thermodynamic assessments

In this paper, waste clay was cured with ethyl acetate to obtain treated clay(TC), which was modified with gallic acid to obtain a low-cost sorbent that was characterized by EDX, SEM, and FTIR analysis. Uranium(Ⅵ) adsorption was achieved using the batch adsorption method on the TC and gallic acid-modified treated clay(GMTC). The maximum uptakes of U(Ⅵ) on TC and GMTC were 37.2 and 193.0 mg/g, respectively.The U(Ⅵ) adsorption kinetics on the TC and GMTC sorbents were well-fitted by the pseudo-second-order mechanism, and the adsorption equilibrium followed the Langmuir model. The optimum parameters were applied to El Sela leach solution for uranium recovery.     

High Stable Al-MCM-41: Structural Characterization and Evaluation for Removal of Methylene Blue from Aqueous Solution

Aluminosilicate (Al-MCM-41) was synthesized via a modified wet-method in a Si/Al atomic ratio of 13.64:1.00 and calcination at 500 °C. The structural     

Three-stage least squares-based iterative estimation algorithms for bilinear state-space systems based on the bilinear state estimator

Because of the product item of the control input and the state vector, the identification of bilinear systems is difficult. This paper considers the combined parameter and state estimation problems of bilinear state-space systems. On the basis of the observability canonical form and the model transformation, an identification model with a linear combination of the system parameters is obtained. Using the hierarchical principle, the identification model is decomposed into three submodels with fewer variables, and a three-stage least squares-based iterative (3S-LSI) algorithm is presented to estimate the system parameters. Furthermore, we derive a state estimator (SE) for estimating the unknown states, and present an SE-3S-LSI algorithm for estimating the unknown parameters and states simultaneously. After that, the least squares-based iterative algorithm is presented as a comparison. By analyzing the estimation results and the calculation amount, these two algorithms can identify the bilinear system effectively but the 3S-LSI algorithm can improve the computational efficiency. The simulation results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.     

Transport of pollutant in shallow flows: A space–time CE/SE scheme

This paper focuses on implementation of space–time CE/SE scheme for computing the transport of a passive pollutant by a flow. The flow model comprises of the Saint-Venant system of shallow water equations and the pollutant propagation is described by a transport equation. The one-dimensional and two-dimensional flow equations are numerically investigated using the CE/SE scheme. A number of test problems are presented to check the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed scheme. The results of CE/SE scheme are compared with the central scheme. Both the schemes are found to be in close agreement. However, our proposed CE/SE scheme accurately captures shocks and discontinuous profiles.     

Effect of pre-treatment and hydraulic retention time on biohydrogen production from organic wastes

This study investigated the effect of pre-treatment and hydraulic retention time (HRT) on biohydrogen production from organic wastes. Various pre-treatments including thermal, base, acid, ultrasonication, and hydrogen peroxide were applied alone or in combination to enhance biohydrogen production from potato and bean wastewater in batch tests. All the pre-treated samples showed higher hydrogen production than the control tests. Hydrogen peroxide pre-treatment achieved the best results of 939.7 and 470 mL for potato and bean wastewater, respectively. Continuous biohydrogen production from sucrose, potato and bean wastewater was significantly influenced by reducing the HRT as 24, 18 and 12 h. Sucrose and potato showed similar behavior, where the hydrogen production rate (HPR) increased with decreasing the HRT. Optimum hydrogen yield results of 320 mL-H₂/g-VS (sucrose) and 150 mL-H₂/g-VS (potato) were achieved at HRT of 18 h. Bean wastewater showed optimum HPR of 0.65 L/L.d with hydrogen yield of 80 mL-H₂/g-VS at 24 h HRT.