High modulus of isotactic polypropylene attained by coextrusion with atactic polystyrene

Orientation-induced crystallization of crystallizable polymer melts can occur, under certain conditions, during flow through converging channels. Attempts have been made to achieve this phenomenon in a two-phase system, i.e., during simultaneous extrusion of a continuous concentric core of polypropylene within a polystyrene matrix through a conical duct. On one occasion, using Carlona P SY6100 (MFI = 11.0) with Hostyren N2000-V-01 (MFI = 25.0), a highly oriented polypropylene thread with a modulus of 14.6 GPa and a melting point of 178°C was extruded at a die temperature of approximately 170°C and a pressure lower than 40 MPa. It is, in principle, possible to form highly oriented, fiber-like structures as reinforcing elements in a polymer matrix.     

Computational complexity of sorting and joining relations withduplicates

It is shown that the existence of duplicate values in some attribute columns has a significant impact on the computational complexity of the sorting and joining operations. This is especially true when the number of distinct tuple values is a small fraction of the total number of tuples. The authors characterize a multirelation M (n, L) by its cardinality n and the number of distinct elements L it contains. Under this characterization, the worst time complexity of sorting such a multirelation with binary comparisons as basic operations is investigated. Upper and lower bounds on the number of three-branch comparisons needed to sort such a multirelation are established. Thereafter, the methodology used to study the complexity of sorting is applied to the natural join operation. It is shown that the existence of duplicate values in the join attribute columns can be exploited to reduce the computational complexity of the natural join operation     

Improving stability of high-viscosity marine fuels based on residual fractions

Translated from Khimiya i Tekhnologiya Topliv i Masel, No. 2, pp. 22–24, February, 1989.     

Hydrogenation of canola oil in the presence of nickel and the methyl benzoate-chrome carbonyl complex

Canola oil was hydrogenated using a mixture of homogeneous methyl benzoate-Cr(CO)₃ and heterogeneous nickel catalysts. The effect of the methyl benzoate-Cr(CO)₃_to-nickel ratio on the activity, specific isomerization index, linoleate and linolenate selectivities, and fatty acid composition was evaluated, and the results compared with those obtained with commercial nickel catalyst and methyl benzoate-Cr(CO)₃ used individually. At higher chromium-to-nickel ratios the activity of nickel was inhibited and the system behaved essentially like the pure chrome complex, while at low chromium-to-nickel ratios the characteristics of the nickel predominated. In a short transition zone relatively high reaction rates were obtained with significantly reducedtrans-isomer levels in the product. In a broader sense, it may be possible to combine a homogeneous and heterogeneous catalyst while retaining the advantages of both. We may thus be able to design catalyst systems for specific applications.     

Mössbauer spectroscopic studies of Fe-substituted YIG

Compositional dependence of hyperfine parameters, determined through Mössbauer spectral analysis has been studied for Y_3−xFe_5+xO₁₂ (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5) garnet system at 300 K. The Mössbauer spectra have been fitted with three sextets in the ferrimagnetic state corresponding to Fe³⁺ ions at tetrahedral (d), octahedral (a) and dodecahedral (c) sites of the crystal structure. It is observed that isormershift, quadrupole shift and hyperfine field of d-site show no significant variation with Fe³⁺ concentration. The change in hyperfine fields of a- and c-sites with composition (x) has been explained on the basis of strength of exchange integrals, change in isomershift can be understood due to s-electron charge distribution and asymmetric displacement of oxygen ions surrounding the a- and c-sites seems to be responsible for observable quadrupole shift. The magneton number values obtained from magnetization and Mossbauer data are in agreement to those calculated using Neel's three sublattice model of ferrimagnetism.