Oily water treatment using a new steady-state fiber-bed coalescer

This study was concerned with the possibility of oil separation from two heavily polluted wastewater types: formation water and wastewater from hardening shop, using bed a newly developed coalescer. Experiments were carried out using original wastewaters and an artificial model wastewater. Results obtained for seven samples of formation water of very different quality showed that the water properties had no significant effect on bed coalescence efficiency. In contrast to this, crude oil properties strongly influenced steady-state bed coalescence. In the treatment of hardening oily wastewater in situ during a 4-month period oil concentration in the effluent was less than 20mg/l in all experiments. It appeared that oil concentration and water quality had no effect on bed separation efficiency. Special design of the coalescer and use of two filter materials ensured its good performance. Namely, the pipe-in-pipe construction provided the water orientation change several times while passing through the unit, making inertia one of dominant separation mechanisms.     

The Parallel Image Processing Environment (PIPE): automated parallelization of satellite data analyses

A Beowulf‐type cluster can: (1) mitigate many issues associated with the analysis of large, complex remotely sensed data sets; (2) shorten the response time of operational agencies to crisis‐management situations; and (3) expedite the reanalysis of large archives of satellite data. Whereas most Beowulf‐type designs support modeling applications, the Parallel Image Processing Environment (PIPE) addresses the unique requirements of remote sensing applications. PIPE has four hierarchical layers: hardware, operating system, middleware and applications. Rocks, a middleware sublayer, manages the cluster. DIAL‐developed interprocess communication and control daemons form the second middleware sublayer. They encapsulate user‐defined applications and thereby support automated, user‐transparent parallelization of satellite data analyses, implemented in the applications layer using generalized constructs. The daemons also monitor resource (computational and I/O) utilization on a node/thread basis, a feature not supported by other generally available monitoring utilities. The application support libraries are fully extensible, facilitate the reuse of modular and commonly used software functions in new applications and thereby reduce both the cost and time to implement new applications. Two applications (signal analysis, image classification) show PIPE's versatility and performance characteristics. PIPE is intrinsically scalable, reliable and can be incrementally implemented. A comparison with other embarrassingly parallel systems is also provided. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance evaluation of canine-associated Bacteroidales assays in a multi-laboratory comparison study

The contribution of fecal pollution from dogs in urbanized areas can be significant and is an often underestimated problem. Microbial source tracking methods (MST) utilizing quantitative PCR of dog-associated gene sequences encoding 16S rRNA of Bacteroidales are a useful tool to estimate these contributions. However, data about the performance of available assays are scarce. The results of a multi-laboratory study testing two assays for the determination of dog-associated Bacteroidales (DogBact and BacCan-UCD) on 64 single and mixed fecal source samples created from pooled fecal samples collected in California are presented here. Standardization of qPCR data treatment lowered inter-laboratory variability of sensitivity and specificity results. Both assays exhibited 100% sensitivity. Normalization methods are presented that eliminated random and confirmed non-target responses. The combination of standardized qPCR data treatment, use of normalization via a non-target specific Bacteroidales assay (GenBac3), and application of threshold criteria improved the calculated specificity significantly for both assays. Such measures would reasonably improve MST data interpretation not only for canine-associated assays, but for all qPCR assays used in identifying and monitoring fecal pollution in the environment.     

Cationic polymerization of high-molecular-weight phthalaldehyde-butanal copolymer

Low ceiling temperature polyaldehydes are of interest for transient materials because the temperature of depolymerization can be at or below room temperature. There is interest in expanding the number of aldehydes which can be copolymerized so as to change the vapor pressure and other properties of the depolymerized products. Although fast depolymerization has been achieved with polyaldehydes, the rate of monomer evaporation after depolymerization can be controlled by incorporating lower molecular weight monomers into the polymer. High vapor pressure aliphatic aldehydes have been copolymerized with low vapor pressure and high reactivity phthalaldehyde to create stable, high molecular weight polymers with high vapor pressure. A method for measuring the depolymerization time by quartz crystal microbalance has been developed. The copolymer of phthalaldehyde and butanal improves the evaporation time for the polymer by a factor of 11. The onset of thermal decomposition of the copolymer was increased from 107 °C for the phthalaldehyde homopolymer to 141 °C for the copolymer. The tensile strength of the copolymer was 0.8–1.6 GPa. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 46921.     

Effects of Global Warming on Precipitation Extremes: Dependence on Storm Characteristics

This study investigates the relationship between historically observed changes in extreme precipitation magnitudes and temperature (P_ex-T relationship) at multiple locations in Canada. The focus is on understanding the behavior of these relationships with regards to key storm characteristics such as its duration, season of occurrence, and location. To do so, three locations are chosen such that they have large amounts of moisture available near them whereas four locations are chosen such that they are located in the land-locked regions of Canada and subsequently have no nearby moisture source available on them. To investigate the effect of different storm durations on P_ex-T relationship, storms of durations: 5, 10, 15, 30 min, 1, 2, 6, 12, 24 h are considered. Finally, P_ex-T relationship is analyzed separately for summer and winter seasons to quantify the influence of seasons. Results indicate strong influences of storm duration, season of occurrence, and location on observed precipitation scaling rates. Drastic intensification of precipitation extremes with temperature is obtained for shorter duration precipitation events than for longer duration precipitation events, in summers than in the winters. Furthermore, in summertime, increases in the intensity of convection driven precipitation extremes is found highest at locations away from large waterbodies. On the other hand, in wintertime most drastic increases in extreme precipitation are obtained at locations near large waterbodies. These findings contribute towards increasing the current understanding of precipitation extremes in the context of rapidly increasing global temperatures.     

Properties of thermomechanically rolled Nb/Ti microalloyed steel sheets

Structure and mechanical properties of a Nb/Ti microalloyed steel, thermomechanically rolled on a strip-production facility, are evaluated. Small (0.02%) titanium addition to niobium-containing steel is found to increase precipitation while reducing grain-refining potential of niobium. This effect increases with increasing finish-rolling temperature, and is also reflected in an increased charpy energy transition temperature. A reduced tendency for precipitation in a nitrogen-free austenite together with the short interpass times in the finishing train, is assumed to reduce the tendency for pancaking, which is prerequisite for an effective grain refining.     

如何让钱成为生财工具

当问到这样一个问题：如果所有工作任你选，你会选择做什么？人们会梦想自己能在充满异国风情的地方工作，或是位居要职，或是有份喝酒赚钱两不误的美差。     

Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Management of Water Resources: 2. Case Studies

ABSTRACT

The new ethic of sustainable development extends the main principles of water resources management. Computer-based decision support systems are explored in order to identify their role in the implementation of these principles into water resource management practice. The first part of this research (see the previous article in this issue) has demonstrated that sustainable development is a global concept that needs to be made reality in any component of every decision support system to be developed for successful management of water resources. This article presents four successful case studies of decision support systems (DSSs) for sustainable management of water resources. Development of a DSS for sustainable water resource management is seen as a process, and while the issues covered in these four examples are the priorities in their respective domains, it is certain that new issues will emerge in different fields of application. So, what is presented here is thus a snapshot of current best efforts     

Static fatigue and compressive stress generation in an aged crack

In classic experiments by Michalske and others, it was found that cracks aged statically below the fatigue limit acquired a temporary strength increase compared to the non‐aged crack. In our previous publication we observed that cracks growing near the fatigue limit exhibited a time dependent slowing down of crack growth. Both of these phenomena are related to a toughening of the crack tip that we attribute to a water‐assisted surface stress relaxation mechanism. To test this hypothesis, the K‐v crack growth curves have been measured using the double cantilever beam (DCB) experimental technique for two commercial glasses, a sodium aluminosilicate, and a potassium aluminosilicate, both of which exhibit clear fatigue limits in air. Using polarimetry, it is shown that the stress state near an unloaded but previously aged crack tip is opposite in sign to the stress state near the tip of a crack held in Mode I loading. These results clearly indicate that a stress relaxation mechanism is occurring at the crack tip.     

Activated sludge-loaded polyvinyl alcohol microparticles for starch wastewater treatment in an airlift bioreactor

Emulsification followed by freezing and thawing cycles was applied to produce poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) microparticles and to simultaneously immobilize activated sludge. Activity of the obtained microparticles (～400 μm in diameter) was evaluated in glucose syrup solutions and heat-pretreated wastewater from a starch factory by measurements of permanganate index (COD _Mn ) reduction. The reaction followed first-order kinetics, revealing slight mass transfer limitations in PVA microparticles as determined from the kinetic rate constant that was ～35% lower than that in the freely suspended activated sludge culture. Yet, efficiency of the microparticles increased almost five-fold in a laboratory airlift bioreactor operating either in batch or continuous regimes. Over 19 days of operation under high organic loadings in the industrial wastewater (～100 kgCOD m^?3 d^?1), PVA microparticles (12.4% volume fraction) remained active and induced a decrease of over 90% of biodegradable COD _Mn at the hydraulic retention time of 8 h.