Discharge performance of Zn-air fuel cells under the influence of Carbopol 940 thickener

A dynamic research endeavor has been performed in this research study by constructing and operating an innovative flowing type anode (zinc gel) along with Carbopol 960 additives as thickener in a zinc-air fuel cell. This gel constituted of a mixture of Zn powder, thickener, and potassium hydroxide (KOH) electrolyte, and it was fueled into the cell with a peristaltic pump. The flowing Zn anode allowed the reaction-produced water, carbonate, and zinc oxide (ZnO) to be discharged from the cell. Basic operating parameters of the fuel cell like the concentrations of the Zn powder, thickener, and electrolyte along with the number and grid density of the current collector grid, cell operation temperature, and air flow rate were all optimized for effective and enhanced fuel cell performance. It was determined based on voltage production along with current and energy density generation. The augmented experimental results were as follows; thickener concentration of 1 to 2 wt% was observed to be optimum above which the electrolyte acquired a solid state. The voltage production was stable at electrolyte concentrations of 60 to 65 wt% and Zn powder concentrations lower than 40 wt%, and concentrations greater than this resulted in reduced cell performance. The implementation of four current collector grids each with an opening density of 144 grid/cm² had efficiently amplified cell performance. The ideal cell temperature was determined to be 40°C, and maximum cell production was attained at an air flow rate of 2 m/s. Consequently, effective improvement and advancement in the processes and operational parameters were achieved in this zinc-air fuel cell with a state-of-the-art anode fuel. This will surely provide great opportunities for their applications in the future.     

Fault Aware Dynamic Resource Manager for Fault Recognition and Avoidance in Cloud

Fault tolerance (FT) schemes are intended to work on a minimized and static amount of physical resources. When a host failure occurs, the conventional FT frequently proceeds with the execution on the accessible working hosts. This methodology saves the execution state and applications to complete without disruption. However, the dynamicity of open cloud assets is not seen when taking scheduling choices. Existing optimization techniques are intended in dealing with resource scheduling. This method will be utilized for distributing the approaching tasks to the VMs. However, the dynamic scheduling for this procedure doesn’t accomplish the objective of adaptation of internal failure. The scheme prefers jobs in the activity list with the most elevated execution time on resources that can execute in a shorter timeframe, but it suffers with higher makespan; poor resource usage and unbalance load concerns. To overcome the above mentioned issue, Fault Aware Dynamic Resource Manager (FADRM) is proposed that enhances the mechanism to Multi-stage Resilience Manager at an application-level FT arrangement. Proposed FADRM method gives FT a Multi-stage Resilience Manager (MRM) in the client and application layers, and simultaneously decreases the over-head and degradations. It additionally provides safety to the application execution considering the clients, application and framework necessities. Based on experimental evaluations, Proposed Fault Aware Dynamic Resource Manager (FADRM) method 157.5 MakeSpan (MS) time, 0.38 Fault Rate (FR), 0.25 Failure Delay (FD) and improves 5.5 Performance Improvement Ratio (PIR) for 25, 50, 75 and 100 tasks and 475 MakeSpan (MS) time, 0.40 Fault Rate (FR), 1.30 Failure Delay (FD) and improves 6.75 improves Performance Improvement Ratio (PER) for 100, 200, 300 and 500 Tasks compare than existing methodologies.     

Diode-pumped, continuous-wave Tm:YAIO3 laser

A continuous-wave, diode-pumped, room-temperature Tm:YAlO3 laser was built, characterized, and compared with a theoretical model. Spectroscopic parameters of the laser crystal, such as the pump band ((3)H4 manifold) lifetime, the upper laser level ((3)F4 manifold) lifetime, and the absorption coefficient were measured. The experimental data were used to calculate the quantum efficiency of Tm self-quenching of the (3)H4 manifold.     

Annealing effect on cadmium in situ doping of chemical bath deposited PbS thin films

This paper describes the effect of annealing on PbS and Cd-doped PbS thin films prepared by chemical bath deposition at different bath temperatures (T_b). The X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical absorption, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyses have been performed to explore the properties of PbS and PbCdS films. From the XRD measurements, the particle size (D) of as-deposited PbS and PbCdS films is estimated to be 22 (27) and 12 (9) nm, respectively, for a T_b of 75 (85) °C. A reduction in D was noticed upon annealing the films at 200 °C, irrespective of the T_b and the doping. The optical band gap energy (E_g) of as-deposited PbS films grown at different T_b is found to be in the range of 1.22-1.42 eV. Doping of PbS with Cd and annealing have led to increase in E_g up to 2.61 (2.66) eV. Optical studies revealed prominent blue shifts in the E_g of as-deposited and annealed films due to quantum confinement effect. The addition of Cd into PbS was confirmed by EDX analysis.     

A New Learning Algorithm Using Simultaneous Perturbation with Weight Initialization

A new learning algorithm is proposed for training single hidden layer feedforward neural network. In each epoch, the connection weights are updated by simultaneous perturbation. Tunneling using perturbation technique is applied to detrap the local minima. The proposed technique is shown to give better convergence results for the selected problems, namely neuro-controller, XOR, L-T character recognition, two spirals, simple interaction function, harmonic function and complicated interaction function. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Tailoring the electronic and photocatalytic properties of Mo1−xWx S2 monolayers via biaxial strain

Journal of Materials Science - Using total energy calculations, we thoroughly looked into the two-dimensional (2D) ternary Mo1?xWxS2 monolayers by exploring their electronic band structures...     

Regulating Electronic Structure of Iron Nitride by Tungsten Nitride Nanosheets for Accelerated Overall Water Splitting

Two essential characteristics that are required for hybrid electrocatalysts to exhibit higher oxygen and hydrogen evolution reaction (OER and HER, respectively) activity are a favorable electronic configuration and a sufficient density of active sites at the interface between the two materials within the hybrid. In the present study, a hybrid electrocatalyst is introduced with a novel architecture consisting of coral-like iron nitride (Fe₂N) arrays and tungsten nitride (W₂N₃) nanosheets that satisfies these requirements. The resulting W₂N₃/Fe₂N catalyst achieves high OER activity (268.5 mV at 50 mA cm⁻²) and HER activity (85.2 mV at 10 mA cm⁻²) with excellent long-term durability in an alkaline medium. In addition, density functional theory calculations reveal that the individual band centers experience an upshift in the hybrid W₂N₃/Fe₂N structure, thus improving the OER and HER activity. The strategy adopted here thus provides a valuable guide for the fabrication of cost-effective multi-metallic crystalline hybrids for use as multifunctional electrocatalysts.     

Optimal Resource Allocation and Quality of Service Prediction in Cloud

In the present scenario, cloud computing service provides on-request access to a collection of resources available in remote system that can be shared by numerous clients. Resources are in self-administration; consequently, clients can adjust their usage according to their requirements. Resource usage is estimated and clients can pay according to their utilization. In literature, the existing method describes the usage of various hardware assets. Quality of Service (QoS) needs to be considered for ascertaining the schedule and the access of resources. Adhering with the security arrangement, any additional code is forbidden to ensure the usage of resources complying with QoS. Thus, all monitoring must be done from the hypervisor. To overcome the issues, Robust Resource Allocation and Utilization (RRAU) approach is developed for optimizing the management of its cloud resources. The work hosts a numerous virtual assets which could be expected under the circumstances and it enforces a controlled degree of QoS. The asset assignment calculation is heuristic, which is based on experimental evaluations, RRAU approach with J48 prediction model reduces Job Completion Time (JCT) by 4.75 s, Make Span (MS) 6.25, and Monetary Cost (MC) 4.25 for 15, 25, 35 and 45 resources are compared to the conventional methodologies in cloud environment.     

Thermal analysis of oxime-blocked toluene diisocyanates

Oxime-blocked toluene diisocyanates were synthesized and characterized by infrared spectra, nuclear magnetic resonance spectra, elemental analysis etc. Thermal analyses of blocked isocyanates were done by thermogravimetry. Solubility of blocked isocyanates in various polyols was tested. Formation of isocyanate on heating the blocked isocyanate was identified by gas chromatographic analysis.     

Investigations on the mechanism of flame retardancy in HET acid containing unsaturated polyester resins

Unsaturated polyesters containing varying amounts of HET acid (1,4,5,6,7,7-hexachloro-5-norbornene-2,3-dicarboxylic acid) were synthesized and cured with styrene to give flame-retarding unsaturated polyester resins. The thermal properties were investigated by DTA (differential thermal analysis), TVA (thermal volatization analysis), SATVA (subambient thermal volatilization analysis), and weight loss measurements. The studies revealed that the reverse Diels–Alder reaction of the HET acid units present in the polyester backbone proceeds in the temperature range 300–350°C and yields hexachlorocyclopentadiene. The influence of the HET acid content on the mass distribution of the products of pyrolysis (450°C) was analyzed b means of a gas chromatograph coupled with a mass spectrometer. With increasing HET acid content, the total amount of aromatics evolved from the cured resins is decreased. Concurrently, the relative amount of styrene produced is decreased while the relative amounts of toluene and ethyl benzene are increased. This finding strongly suggests that the hexachlorocyclopentadiene interferes as a chain transfer agent with the unzipping reaction of the polystyrene chains. Further support for this interpretation is derived from the enhanced char formation with increasing HET acid content, as observed by the weight loss measurements.