Solubility of Natural Gas in Diesel Fuel

The solubility of commercially available natural gas in commercially available diesel fuel at room temperature and defined pressure is investigated experimentally. The gas phase is considered to be pure methane. The use of Henry's law to model the solubility is discussed. Solubility is given in terms of the mole fraction and the volumetric mass concentration of dissolved gas and the corresponding Henry's coefficients. The solubility is compared to that of pure methane in pure hexadecane, which is similar to diesel fuel with respect to the mean carbon number.     

Modeling Intermittent Drying of Wood under Rapidly Varying Temperature and Humidity Conditions with the Lumped Reaction Engineering Approach (L-REA)

For improving product quality and minimizing energy consumption during drying, intermittent drying is often recommended. The mathematical models that are used to describe intermittent drying are usually transport phenomena based, complex models. In this study, the lumped reaction engineering approach (L-REA) is implemented to model wood drying under rapid periodically changed drying air temperature and humidity with high number of cycles of intermittency. The equilibrium activation energy (ΔE _v,b ), an important parameter for REA approach, is evaluated according to the corresponding drying air temperature and humidity in each drying section. The results of modeling suggest the L-REA works well with the experimental data. The simplicity of the L-REA is obvious and is hoped to be used in an industrial setting more readily. The L-REA can be used for sustainable processing in industries to assist in energy audit and management.     

Systematic generation of cyclic operating procedures based on timed automata

Manual synthesis of cyclic operating procedure in a realistic system is widely regarded as a difficult task since it is both time-consuming and error-prone. It is thus desirable to develop a systematic approach to automatically generate the optimal schedule of operation steps so as to achieve one or more specific production goal. The timed automata are utilized in the present work for such a purpose. In particular, all components in a given system and the corresponding control specifications are characterized with automata according to the proposed modeling rules. By using parallel composition, a system automaton can be produced with these models and the most appropriate operation path can then be identified accordingly. For any practical application, a sequential function chart and the corresponding Gantt chart can also be easily extracted from this path. Three examples are presented in this paper to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.     

Thermodynamically consistent modeling of elementary electrochemistry in lithium-ion batteries

This paper is particularly concerned with the elementary reactions and transport processes that are responsible for Li-ion battery performance. The model generally follows the widely practiced approach developed by Newman and co-workers (e.g., Doyle et al., J. Electrochem. Soc. 140 (1993) 1526 [1]). However, there are significant departures, especially in modeling electrochemical charge transfer. The present approach introduces systems of microscopically reversible reactions, including both heterogeneous thermal reactions and electrochemical charge-transfer reactions. All reaction rates are evaluated in elementary form, providing a powerful alternative to a Butler-Volmer formalism for the charge-transfer reactions. The paper is particularly concerned with the influence of non-ideal thermodynamics for evaluating reversible potentials as well as charge-transfer rates. The theory and modeling approach establishes a framework for extending chemistry models to incorporate detailed reaction mechanisms that represent multiple competitive reaction pathways.     

基于热度曲线分类建模的微博热门话题预测

及时掌握大众关心的热点话题是企业进行商业创新和商务营销的重要前提。现有方法大都依赖于非结构化数据的处理或反复遍历样本集,使算法复杂性较高。文中从话题的统计特性出发,提出建立在结构化数据上的非参数方法。首先对单个话题构建表征话题传播扩散程度和关注聚焦程度的热度曲线;然后对这些形态丰富的热度曲线进行分类建模,得到不同类别曲线的共性特征及发展规律;最后使用分类模型上的加权投票规则预测新话题是否会发展成为热门话题。基于新浪微博平台进行数据收集和实验,结果表明该方法数据结构简单、效果良好、复杂度低且易于控制。     

Dimensional analysis of ionic transport problems in hydrated cement systems: Part 1. Theoretical considerations

The validity of the local equilibrium assumption in hydrated cement systems that a particular chemical reaction is instantaneous with respect to transport is examined using a dimensional analysis of electrochemical transport in cementitious materials. The transport equation parameters are scaled, resulting in a dimensionless equation. The dimensionless coefficient for each reaction/transport term determines its relative contribution to the overall process. The diffusion of ions in a reactive porous medium can be fully described on the basis of six independent dimensionless numbers. The analysis demonstrates that the kinetics of the reaction determine the appropriate time constant for the analysis. The formalism is applied to the dissolution of calcium hydroxide under an electrochemical potential gradient. The results are in agreement with previous observations and demonstrate quantitatively the local equilibrium hypothesis is valid in most practical cases where ions are transported by diffusion through a saturated material.     

The Diverse Applications of Cladistic Analysis of Molecular Evolution,with Special Reference to Nested Clade Analysis

The genetic variation found in small regions of the genomes of many species can be arranged into haplotype trees that reflect the evolutionary genealogy of the DNA lineages found in that region and the accumulation of mutations on those lineages. This review demonstrates some of the many ways in which clades (branches) of haplotype trees have been applied in recent years, including the study of genotype/phenotype associations at candidate loci and in genome-wide association studies, the phylogeographic history of species, human evolution, the conservation of endangered species, and the identification of species.     

Effects of the magnetic field on the relaxation of small particle systems

We study the effect of a magnetic field on the thermal relaxation of non-interacting small monodomain particles with a distribution of anisotropy constants and random easy-axes directions. Numerical calculations of the relaxation curves for different distribution widths, and under different magnetic fields H and temperatures T, have been performed in the framework of a two-state approximation. We show how the obtained data can be analyzed in terms of an modified Tln(t/τ₀) scaling from which the field dependence of the mean relaxing energy barriers can be extracted, a microscopic information which is not easily obtainable by other methods.     

Complex susceptibility analysis of magneto-fluids: Optical band gap and surface studies on the nanomagnetite-based particles

An aqueous stable magnetic fluid containing Fe₃O₄ nano-particles with a mean diameter of 4–7 nm, which is in the range of super-paramagnetism, is prepared. The particles are synthesized via co-precipitation method from ferrous and ferric solutions. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, transformer method are used to study the physical properties of the magnetic fluids and powders. A method is given to analyze and resolve the real and imaginary parts of the measured complex susceptibility of magnetic fluids. The band gap parameters of the magneto-nanopowders such as the direct-, indirect-band gap energies, Fermi energy and Urbach energy are determined. A comparative study between the different techniques used to calculate the powder particle size is presented. Adsorption of nitrogen gas is used to identify and determine the particles mean diameter and to study their microstructure, the magnetic properties and surface porosity. The study showed that the total pore system of the magnetic nano-powders consists mainly of mesopores.