Synthesis of amphiphilic magnetic microspheres by dispersion copolymerization of styrene and poly(ethylene oxide) macromonomer

Amphiphilic magnetic microspheres ranging in diameter from 5 to 100 µm were prepared by dispersion copolymerization of styrene and poly(ethylene oxide) vinylbenzyl (PEO‐VB) macromonomer (MPEO) in the presence of Fe₃O₄ magnetic fluid. The effects of various polymerization parameters on the average particle size were systematically investigated. The average particle size was found to increase with increasing styrene concentration and initiator concentration. It also increased with decreasing stabilizer concentration and molecular weight of MPEO. The content of the hydroxyl groups localized in the microspheres ranged from 0.01 to 0.2 mmol g^?1. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

A fully soft-switched extended-period quasi-resonantpower-factor-correction circuit

This paper presents the design criteria, procedure, and implementation of a soft-switched power-factor-correction (PFC) circuit based on the extended-period quasi-resonant (EPQR) principles. All power electronic devices including switches and diodes in the circuit are fully soft switched. The design method is demonstrated in a prototype circuit. The operating principles are confirmed with computer simulation and experimental results. A comparison of the EP-QR operation and zero-voltage-transition (ZVT) pulse-width modulation (PWM) method     

Investigation of texture effect on visual colour difference evaluation

The texture effect on visual colour difference evaluation was investigated in this study. Five colour centers were selected and textured colour pairs were generated using scanned textile woven fabrics and colour‐mapping technique. The textured and solid colour pairs were then displayed on a characterized cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor for colour difference evaluation. The colour difference values for the pairs with texture patterns are equal to 5.0 CIELAB units in lightness direction. The texture level was represented by the half‐width of histogram, which is called texture strength in this study. High correlation was found between texture strength and visual colour difference for textured colour pairs, which indicates that an increasing of 10 units of texture strength in luminance would cause a decreasing of 0.25 units visual difference for the five colour centers. The ratio of visual difference between textured and solid colour pairs also indicates a high parametric effect of texture. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 30, 341–347, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.     

Nutrient removal performance of an anaerobic–anoxic–aerobic process as a function of influent C/P ratio

The laboratory scale anaerobic–anoxic–aerobic (A²O) process fed with synthetic brewage wastewater was designed to investigate the effects of changing feed C/P ratio on the performance of biological nutrient removal (BNR) processes. In the experiment, the influent chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration was kept at approximately 300 mg L^?1 while the total phosphorus concentration was varied to obtain the desired C/P ratio. Results showed that when the C/P ratio was lower than 32, phosphorus removal efficiency increased as C/P ratio increased linearly, while when the C/P ratio was higher than 32, the P removal efficiency was maintained at 90–98%, and effluent P concentration was lower than 0.5 mg L^?1. However, regardless of the C/P ratio, excellent COD removal (90% or higher) and good total nitrogen removal (75–84%) were maintained throughout the experiments. It was also found that very good linear correlation was obtained between COD uptake per unit P released in the anaerobic zone and C/P ratio. In addition, the P content in the wasted activated sludge increased with the decrease in the C/P ratio. Based on the results, it was recommended that the wastewater C/P ratio and its effects be incorporated into BNR design and operational procedures, appropriate C/P ratios were used to achieve the effluent treatment goals. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Minimal communication cost software construction in the Internet environment

This paper investigates the issue of building software in the Internet environment, where local area network (LAN) based systems are interconnected by links with different bandwidth and do not share file systems. The software is modeled as a directed acyclic graph. Each node in the graph represents a logical step in processing the software while the edges describe the order of execution. The problem is to construct the software at a particular LAN with minimum Internet communication cost. An optimal polynomial algorithm, SOFTCON, with time complexity is presented, where and are the number of nodes and edges in the graph describing the software respectively, is the number of LANs in the Internet environment, and is the time complexity of the network flow algorithm on the flow network with nodes and edges transformed from the directed acyclic graph of the software. Received: 6 December 1995 / 1 May 1996     

Synthesis, characteristics and oxygen-sensitive properties of SrMgxTi 1 − xO3 nanocrystals

SrMg_xTi_{1 - x}O₃ nanocrystals (x = 0.1–0.6) were synthesized by the stearic acid gel method. Powder samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron (XP) spectroscopy. The results showed that the lattice parameter a and the O 1s XP spectrum changed not only with the Mg content x but also with the grain size d of the samples. The conductivity of a thick film specimen fabricated on an aluminium oxide wafer was investigated in a nitrogen—oxygen atmosphere.     

The application of transmission-line modelling to the simulation ofan induction motor drive

The simulation of a complete induction motor drive is presented. The entire network is modelled using the transmission-line modelling (TLM) technique. The network is split into three sections which are solved independently and are joined together by link transmission-line models. Advantages of this approach are the explicit nature of the algorithm which remains unaltered irrespective of the network topology, unconditional stability, and straightforward modelling of switching elements. Results are presented for a complete drive which illustrate the capabilities and flexibility of the simulation technique     

A randomized voltage vector switching scheme for three-level powerinverters

In this paper, a feasibility study of a randomized space vector switching scheme for three-level inverters is reported. Based on the traditional space vector concept for pulse width modulation (PWM) inverters, the sequence of the space vector is randomized in this scheme. The overall vector, resulting from the randomization, is mathematically identical to that of the traditional space vector. It has been found that the randomized scheme can effectively spread the switching noise over a wide frequency range and at the same time keep the steady-state link capacitor voltage balanced. The proposed scheme has been implemented in real time in a digital controller and its features have been experimentally confirmed     

A polymerizable photoredox initiation system for vinyl photopolymerization

A polymerizable photoredox system consisting of 4-methacryl oxbenzophenone (MABP) and N,N-dimethlaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) used for the photopolymerization of acrylonitrile (AN) was studied. It was found that the polymerization rate is proportional to the 0.93th power for the AN concentration, the 0.28th power for the MABP concentration, and the 0.25th power for the DMAEMA concentration. The overall activation energy of the polymerization obtained is 30.43 kJ/mol. The recorded ESR spectrum indicates that the excited-state MABP abstraets hydrogen mainly from the methyl group of the dimethylamino moiety. The comparison of the initiation ability of polymeric MABP or polymeric DMAEMA with their monomeric forms has also been done and the results indicate that in good solvents P (MABP) has a much higher initiation ability than that of monomeric MABP, but monomeric DMAEMA and P (DMAEMA) display almost the same initiation ability. In poor solvent, the initiation ability of P (MABP) is not so obviously higher than that in good solvents. The result of UV analysis of P (AN) initiated by the MABP–DMAEMA system indicates that both MABP and DMAEMA not only initiate the photopolymerization of AN, but also enter into P (AN) polymer chains. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.