Solid solution phases from thermally crystallized Li2O-MgO-Al2O3-SiO2 glasses

Phase transformations have been studied in glasses related in composition to Li₂O-MgO-SiO₂ (930° C) eutectic glass modified by $\text{Al}{}_2\text{O}{}_3\text{Li}{}_2\text{O}$ replacement on a cation per cation basis. Crystallization processes and changes in the solid solutions of the mineral phases developed during the controlled heating of the glasses have been followed using X-ray and microscopic techniques.Solid solutions of lithia aluminosilicate phases (B-eucryptite and/or B-spodumene s.s.) are the essential minerals that crystallize in glasses through most of the heat treatment applied. Lithium metasilicate, disilicate, clinoenstatite and cordierite are also encountered.B-eucryptite s.s. is formed in early stage of crystallization of the glass which transforms into B-spodumene s.s. at higher temperature (800° C). However, in some cases, it persists at temperatures as high as 1000° C.Metastable B-eucryptite-B-quartz s.s. can accomodate considerable amounts of Mg²⁺ and Al³⁺ ions in its lattice especially at lower temperature. At higher temperature for long duration, a redistribution of the elements takes place, and the cordierite phase then developed.     

Novel design for accurate alignment of high voltage electrodes assembly

A design is described which enables the accurate alignment of high voltage plane parallel electrodes used in an ultra-high vacuum assembly. The main features of this design are that it effectively overcomes the eccentricities which are present in both the glass-to-metal graded seal used in the housing envelope and in the linear motion drives employed to vary the gap separation between the electrodes, as well as being relatively simple to fabricate. The present design has been successfully tested in two large chambers at applied voltages of up to 100 kV and at a background pressure of better than 10^?9 torr.     

On the formation of Taylor bubbles in small tubes

The formation of Taylor bubbles and resulting bubble lengths were studied in a ID vertical tube for air-water and air-octane systems. In the co-flow tube/nozzle arrangement two nozzle sizes were used as gas inlets. Superficial velocities varied between 0.001- for the liquid and 0.002- for the gas. Three different mechanisms of initial bubble formation were observed. Of the three mechanisms, mechanism 3 is periodic (with period consisting of a bubble and a liquid slug), reproducible and can be simply modelled. After initial bubble formation further modifications may occur in the formed bubble size by coalescence or pairing. Bubble pairing is encouraged by smaller nozzles and liquid flow rates, while coalescence is observed only for cases where non-Taylor bubbles form initially.Two simple models have been proposed, the first predicts the size of the Taylor bubbles formed by mechanism 3 while the second attempts to predict the condition for bubble pairing to occur. Reasonable agreement with experimental results validates the predictions of the first model for a strong dependence of the volume of Taylor bubbles formed on the gas and liquid flow rates, a moderate dependence on nozzle diameter and a weak dependence (if at all) on the surface tension of the liquid used. Mismatch with the experimental results is caused (at least in part) by the experimental setup where there was no perfect axial alignment of the gas inlet. The experiments also suffered from problems at the outlet at low flow rates where smooth bubble disengagement could not be ensured for long Taylor bubbles. The second model for pairing predicts its occurrence for concentric tube/nozzle arrangements as a function of flow rates and channel diameters. The model over-predicted the range of liquid flow rates at which pairing was observed experimentally, but it captured the form of the boundary between different bubble volume modification mechanisms when represented on superficial velocity graphs.     

Methodology for Efficient Substrate Noise Analysis in Large-Scale Mixed-Signal Circuits

A methodology is proposed to efficiently analyze substrate noise coupled to a sensitive block due to an aggressor digital block in large-scale mixed-signal circuits. The methodology is based on identifying voltage domains on the substrate by exploiting the small spatial voltage differences on the ground distribution network of the aggressor circuit. Specifically, similarly biased regions on the substrate short-circuited by the ground network are determined, and each of these regions is represented by a single equivalent input port to the substrate. The remaining ports within that domain are ignored to reduce the computational complexity of the extraction process. An algorithm with linear time complexity is proposed to merge those substrate contacts exhibiting a voltage difference smaller than a specified value, identifying a voltage domain. An equivalent contact is placed at the geometric mean of the merged contacts, ignoring all of the remaining ports such as the source/drain junctions of the devices. The ground network impedance is updated for each merged contact based on the proposed algorithm to maintain sufficient accuracy of the noise voltage. The substrate with reduced input ports is extracted using an existing extraction tool to analyze the noise at the sense node. As compared to the full extraction of an aggressor circuit, the methodology achieves a reduction of more than four orders of magnitude in the number of extracted substrate resistors with a peak-to-peak error of 24%.     

Operational modeling of multistream heat exchangers with phase changes

Multistream heat exchangers (MSHE) enable the simultaneous exchange of heat among multiple streams, and are preferred in cryogenic processes such as air separation and LNG. Most MSHEs are complex; proprietary and involve phase changes of mixtures. Although modeling MSHE is crucial for process optimization, no such work exists to our knowledge. We present a novel approach for deriving an approximate operational (vs. design) model from historic data for an MSHE. Using a superstructure of simple 2‐stream exchangers, we propose a mixed‐integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulation to obtain a HE network that best represents the MSHE operation. We also develop an iterative algorithm to solve the large and nonconvex MINLP model in reasonable time, as existing commercial solvers fail to do so. Finally, we demonstrate the application of our work on an MSHE from an existing LNG plant, and successfully predict its performance over a variety of seasons and feed conditions. © 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2009     

Optical and electrical properties of electrochemically deposited polyaniline-CeO2 hybrid nanocomposite film

This paper reports the optical and electrical properties of electrochemically deposited polyaniline (PANI)-cerium oxide (CeO2) hybrid nano-composite film onto indium-tin-oxide (ITO) glass substrate. UV–visible spectroscopy and I-V characteristic were performed to study the optical and electrical parameters of the electrochemically deposited film. The film exhibited a strong absorption below 400 nm (3.10 eV) with a well defined absorbance peak at around 285nm (4.35 eV). The estimated band gap of the CeO2 sample was 3.44 eV and this value is higher than bulk CeO2 powder (Eg = 3.19 eV) due to quantum confinement effect.     

A self-tuning fuzzy PI controller for TCSC to improve power system stability

In this paper, a self-tuning fuzzy PI controller (STFPIC) is proposed for thyristor-controlled series capacitor (TCSC) to improve power system dynamic performance. In a STFPIC controller, the output-scaling factor is adjusted on-line by an updating factor (α). The value of α is determined from a fuzzy rule-base defined on error (e) and change of error (Δe) of the controlled variable. The proposed self-tuning controller is designed using a very simple control rule-base and the most natural and unbiased membership functions (MFs) (symmetric triangles with equal base and 50% overlap with neighboring MFs). The comparative performances of the proposed STFPIC and the standard fuzzy PI controller (FPIC) have been investigated on two multi-machine power systems (namely, 4 machine, 2 area system and 10 machine 39 bus system) through detailed non-linear simulation studies using MATLAB/SIMULINK. From the simulation studies it has been found out that for damping oscillations, the performance of the proposed STFPIC is better than that obtained by the standard FPIC. Moreover, the proposed STFPIC as well as the FPIC have been found to be quite effective in damping oscillations over a wide range of operating conditions and are quite effective in enhancing the power carrying capability of the power system significantly.     

Characteristics of heat transfer of impingement system with swap swirl generator

This article presents the computational fluid dynamic simulation of the heat transfer characteristics induced by a swap swirl air‐jet generator on the impingement surface. The study was carried out for conventional and swap twist tape inserts of twisted ratio y = 2.93 with various swap angles (α = 30°, 60°, 90°) at a constant distance of nozzle diameter impingement plate (L = 2D). The results show that the Nusselt number of the swirl impingement air‐jet depends on the twisted tape swap angles and airflow rate. The results also showed that the swap angle of 90° gave notable uniform local heat transfer distribution compared with the typical twist tape and other swap twist tapes (α = 30°, 60°). In addition, the predicted results of the local heat transfer coefficient help explain the local turbulence intensity and generation to assist the industrial applications of swirl impingement air‐cooling jet.     

Prediction of Egg Freshness and Albumen Quality Using Visible/Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Important changes occur in egg during storage leading to loss of quality. Prediction of these changes is critical in order to monitor egg quality and freshness. The aim of this research was to evaluate application of visible (VIS) and near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy as a rapid and non-destructive technique for egg quality assessment. Three hundred and sixty intact white-shelled eggs freshly laid by the same flock of hens fed with a standard feed were obtained. They were put under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity (T = 18 °C and RH = 55%) for 16 days of storage. Forty eggs were analyzed at day 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16. Transmission spectral data was obtained in the range from 350 to 2,500 nm. The non-destructive spectral data was compared to egg sample’s Haugh unit (HU) and albumen pH in terms of quality and to the number of storage days in terms of freshness. A partial least squares predictive model was developed and used to link the destructive assessment methods and the number of storage days with the spectral data. The correlation coefficient between the measured and predicted values of HU, albumen pH, and number of storage days were up to 0.94, R ² was up to 0.90 and the root mean square error values for the validation were 5.05, 0.06, and 1.65, respectively. These results showed that VIS/NIR transmission spectroscopy is a good tool for assessment of egg freshness and albumen pH and can be used as a non-destructive method for the prediction of HU, albumen pH, and number of storage days. In addition, the relevant information about these parameters was in the VIS and NIR ranging from 411 to 1,729 nm.