Palm-based biofuel refinery (PBR) to substitute petroleum refinery: An energy and emergy assessment

As the most active palm industry cluster in the world, Malaysia produces enormous amount of biomass from the industry. This work studies the possibility of creating a renewable and sustainable source of energy by fully utilizing an area of land to provide liquid biofuel for the country. Palm-based biofuel refinery (PBR) proposed in this study has the ultimate goal to displace petroleum fuels and fulfill domestic energy demand. It fully utilizes indigenous palm biomass to fulfill 35.5% of energy demand in the country by using land area of only 8% of current palm cultivation. The operation concept of PBR is similar to petroleum refinery in which a single source feedstock (crude petroleum) can be processed to multiple products. In PBR, products from an oil palm plantation will be converted to various biofuel end products. Renewable biofuel such as biodiesel and bioethanol can be produced from crude palm oil and lignocellulosic residues. Energy and emergy assessment were made in this work to evaluate the sustainability and efficiency of PBR. Biofuel produced from PBR has a high energy equivalent of 31.56 MJ/kg as 1 ha of land can produce 182,142 MJ annually. Although there are still obstacles to be overcome, it is important for Malaysia to develop its own energy supply from indigenous resources as an initiative not only for security but also lower carbon emission.     

Three‐level and mixed‐level orthogonal arrays for lean designs

Orthogonal arrays (OA's) are widely used in design of experiments. Each OA has a specific number of rows that is fixed by the number of factors in the OA and the number of levels in each factor. In a practical application of an industrial experiment, however, because of various operational constraints it could happen that the number of runs of the experiment cannot be set exactly equal to the number of rows of an OA. In this case, a lean design can be used. A lean design is obtained by removing some specific rows and columns from the extended design matrix formed from an OA, so that the resulting sub‐matrix still allows efficient estimation of the effects of some of the factors. Tables for 2‐level lean designs are already available in the literature. In this paper, the authors will investigate 3‐level lean designs and mixed‐level lean designs, and construct tables for such designs for convenient use. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An information management paradigm for statistical experiments

Optimization of engineering processes and products via statistical design of experiments is an approach well known to statisticians but still not popularly used by technical personnel. This paper sets out a pattern of reasoning that would facilitate the appreciation, on the part of non‐mathematicians, of the principles and advantages of using statistical experimental design for process and product modeling and optimization. Use is made of the concepts of information transformation and conservation in a language that is familiar to those of purely technical background, leading to better understanding, acceptance and application of the efficiency and effectiveness of statistical experiments. In today's environment of the prevalence of software and hardware for statistical analysis, engineers concerned with quality and reliability would particularly benefit from such a paradigm for process and product performance improvement. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis and properties of fluoro‐polyetherimides

A series of amorphous fluoro‐polyetherimides based on 2,2′‐bis(3,4‐dicarboxyphenyl) hexafluropropane dianhydride (6FDA) and di‐ether‐containing diamines 4,4′‐bis(3‐aminophenoxy)diphenyl sulfone (m‐SED), 4,4′‐bis(4‐aminophenoxy)diphenyl sulfone (p‐SED), 4,4′‐bis(4‐aminophenoxy)diphenyl propane (BPADE) were synthesized. These melt processable polyetherimide polymers from p‐SED and BPADE showed excellent electrical properties. The dielectric constants, 2.74 and 2.65 at 10 MHz respectively, are lower than commercially available polyetherimide ULTEM® 1000, and polyimide Kapton® H films. In addition, we found that trifluoromethyl groups‐containing polyimides not only show extraordinary electrical properties, but they also exhibit excellent long‐term thermo‐oxidative stability and reduced water absorption relative to non‐fluorinated polyimides. The weight retention of these fluoro‐polyetherimides at 315°C for 300 h in air varies from 93% to 98%. Whereas, their moisture absorption at 100 RH at 50°C was in the range of 0.3% to 1.05%, which is much lower than those of Ultem 1000 and Kapton H. In the case of fluoro‐polyetherimides from p‐SED and m‐SED (para and meta isomers) diamines with ‘ether’ and sulfonyl (‐SO₂‐) spacer groups, the d‐spacing and T_g values decreased from 4.72Å to 4.56Å and 293°C to 244°C respectively. Similarly, the transparency of these polymer films (in the range of 80% to 90%) at 500 nm solar wavelength was higher than Ultem 1000 and Kapton H.     

Crosstalk between Schizophrenia and Metabolic Syndrome: The Role of Oxytocinergic Dysfunction

The high prevalence of metabolic syndrome in persons with schizophrenia has spurred investigational efforts to study the mechanism beneath its pathophysiology. Early psychosis dysfunction is present across multiple organ systems. On this account, schizophrenia may be a multisystem disorder in which one organ system is predominantly affected and where other organ systems are also concurrently involved. Growing evidence of the overlapping neurobiological profiles of metabolic risk factors and psychiatric symptoms, such as an association with cognitive dysfunction, altered autonomic nervous system regulation, desynchrony in the resting-state default mode network, and shared genetic liability, suggest that metabolic syndrome and schizophrenia are connected via common pathways that are central to schizophrenia pathogenesis, which may be underpinned by oxytocin system dysfunction. Oxytocin, a hormone that involves in the mechanisms of food intake and metabolic homeostasis, may partly explain this piece of the puzzle in the mechanism underlying this association. Given its prosocial and anorexigenic properties, oxytocin has been administered intranasally to investigate its therapeutic potential in schizophrenia and obesity. Although the pathophysiology and mechanisms of oxytocinergic dysfunction in metabolic syndrome and schizophrenia are both complex and it is still too early to draw a conclusion upon, oxytocinergic dysfunction may yield a new mechanistic insight into schizophrenia pathogenesis and treatment.     

Circle Chart for the Monitoring of Maxima in Periodic Processes

An important process characteristic is process maxima as it is often an important quality or performance parameter. Such measurements often play a vital role in process analysis and have to be monitored carefully. In this paper, we consider the problem of monitoring process maxima when the process exhibits a kind of periodicity. A circle chart for periodical process maxima with or without seasonal patterns monitoring is developed and studied, by modeling the process maxima using the extreme value distribution. Mean normalization is applied for periodic process monitoring with seasonal patterns to facilitate comparison between different sections and periods. The average cycle run length is proposed to measure charting efficiency. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development and characterisation of error functions in design

As simulation is increasingly used in product development, there is a need to better characterise the errors inherent in simulation techniques by comparing such techniques with evidence from experiment, test and in-service. This is necessary to allow judgement of the adequacy of simulations in place of physical tests and to identify situations where further data collection and experimentation need to be expended. This paper discusses a framework for uncertainty characterisation based on the management of design knowledge leading to the development and characterisation of error functions. A classification is devised in the framework to identify the most appropriate method for the representation of error, including probability theory, interval analysis and Fuzzy set theory. The development is demonstrated with two case studies to justify rationale of the framework. Such formal knowledge management of design simulation processes can facilitate utilisation of cumulated design knowledge as companies migrate from testing to simulation-based design.

Modeling and Simulation for Transient Thermal Analyses Using a Voltage-in-Current Latency Insertion Method

This article presents a modeling and simulation method for transient thermal analyses of integrated circuits(ICs) using the original and voltage-in-current(VinC) latency insertion method(LIM). LIM-based algorithms are a set of fast transient simulation methods that solve electrical circuits in a leapfrog updating manner without relying on large matrix operations used in conventional Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis(SPICE)-based methods which can significantly slow down the sol...