Transesterification of Palm-based Methyl Palmitate into Esteramine Catalyzed by Calcium Oxide Catalyst

The technology for transesterification reactions between methyl esters and alcohols is well established by using classical homogeneous alkaline catalysts, which provide high conversion of methyl esters to specialty or nonindigenous esters. However, in certain products where the purity of the esters is of concern, the removal of homogeneous catalysts after the completion of the reaction is a challenge in terms of production cost and water footprint. Therefore, a study to investigate the potential of heterogeneous catalysts was conducted on reactions between methyl palmitate and triethanolamine. The degree of basicity and active surface area of calcium oxide (CaO), zinc oxide (ZnO), and magnesium oxide (MgO) were first characterized by using temperature-programmed desorption (TPD-CO₂) and Brunauere–Emmett–Teller (BET), respectively. Among the metal oxides investigated, the CaO catalyst showed the best catalytic activity toward the transesterification process as it gave the highest conversion of methyl palmitate and yielded fatty esteramine compositions similar to the conventional homogeneous catalyst. The optimum transesterification condition by using the CaO catalyst utilized a lower vacuum system of approximately 200 mbar, which could minimize a considerable amount of energy consumption. Furthermore, low CaO dosage of 0.1% was able to give a conversion of 94.5% methyl ester and formed esteramine at 170 °C for 2 h. Therefore, the production of esterquats from esteramine may become more economically feasible through the methyl ester route by using the CaO catalyst, which can be recycled three times.     

The effect of absorber packing height on the performance of a hybrid liquid desiccant system

A hybrid system consisting of vapour compression unit, a liquid desiccant system, and a flat solar hot water collector were designed, fabricated and tested. This combination allowed for a separate control of humidity and temperature without energy penalty. Various packing heights of the absorber component were tested to determine the optimal performance of the combined unit. A 1000 mm packing height with cross-sectional area of 600×600 mm, proved to be the best height that gives promising improvements in the coefficient of performance of the vapour compression unit.     

Miscibility of oligomeric poly(dimethyl siloxanes) with long-chain unbranched alkanes: 2. Unsymmetrical cloud point curves

Previously obtained cloud point curves for mixtures of oligomeric poly(dimethyl siloxanes) (weight fraction W₁) with oligomeric polyethylenes have been supplemented by the use of samples of higher molecular weight. Initial flat regions at low-medium W₁ as well as a slight shoulder at extremely high W₁ are now considered to be due to crystallization, since the temperatures at which they occur are the melting points of the oligoethylenes. The actual cloud point curves were of an unsymmetrical dome shape, the form of which could not be simulated by using a concentration-independent interaction parameter g in the Flory-Huggins equation. However, spinodals calculated by assuming a quadratic dependence of g on composition were of the same shape as the experimental cloud point curves. The critical compositions calculated on this basis were also close to the experimental ones.     

Mathematical model to identify nitrogen variability in large rivers

The river Swale in Yorkshire, northern England has been the subject of many studies concerning water quality. This paper builds on existing data resources and previous 1D river water quality modelling applications at daily resolution (using QUESTOR) to provide a different perspective on understanding pollution, through simulation of the short‐term dynamics of nutrient transport along the river. The two main objectives are (1) building, calibration and evaluation of a detailed mathematical model (Advection‐Dispersion Model: ADModel), for nutrient transport under unsteady flow conditions and (2) the development of methods for estimating key parameters characterizing pollutant transport (velocity, dispersion coefficient and transformation rates) as functions of hydrological parameters and/or seasonality. The study of ammonium and nitrate has highlighted temporal variability in processes, with maximum nitrification and denitrification rates during autumn. Results show that ADModel is able to predict the main trend of measured concentration with reasonable accuracy and accounts for temporal changes in water flow and pollutant load along the river. Prediction accuracy could be improved through more detailed modelling of transformation processes by taking into account the variability of factors for which existing data were insufficient to allow representation. For example, modelling indicates that interactions with bed sediment may provide an additional source of nutrients during high spring flows. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-reinforcing mechanisms for cellularisation: a longitudinal case study

Firms that adopt cellular manufacturing (CM) often need to restructure their products, personnel, equipment, factory management and organisation culture. Despite voluminous literature on CM, only a few case studies related to cellularisation exist. Therefore, to enhance understanding in this area, this paper presents a longitudinal case study on cellularisation in an electronic assembly plant. Six years of data were collected from the observations and discussions of an industrialist and an academician. Events instrumental to the persistence of CM were highlighted, with reference to path dependence analysis. Cellularisation is not entirely evolutionary or teleological but is an interplay of the two; it is significantly influenced by the positive feedback of self-reinforcing mechanisms after departing from critical junctures. The observed self-reinforcing mechanisms were expounded and divided into six categories.     

Characterising and exploiting workloads of highly interactive video-on-demand

This paper presents a detailed characterisation of user behaviour for a series of interactive video experiments over a 12 month period, in which we served popular sporting and musical content. In addition to generic VCR-like features, our custom-built video-on-demand application provides advanced interactivity features such as bookmarking. The dramatic impact of such functionality on how users consume content is studied and analysed. We discuss in detail how this user behaviour can be exploited by content distributors to improve user experience. Specifically, we study how simple dynamic bookmark placement and interactivity-aware content pre-fetching and replication can reduce the impact of highly interactive media on CDN performance.     

Efficient and High-quality Recommendations via Momentum-incorporated Parallel Stochastic Gradient Descent-Based Learning

A recommender system (RS) relying on latent factor analysis usually adopts stochastic gradient descent (SGD) as its learning algorithm. However, owing to its serial mechanism, an SGD algorithm suffers from low efficiency and scalability when handling large-scale industrial problems. Aiming at addressing this issue, this study proposes a momentum-incorporated parallel stochastic gradient descent (MPSGD) algorithm, whose main idea is two-fold: a) implementing parallelization via a novel data-splitting strategy, and b) accelerating convergence rate by integrating momentum effects into its training process. With it, an MPSGD-based latent factor (MLF) model is achieved, which is capable of performing efficient and high-quality recommendations. Experimental results on four high-dimensional and sparse matrices generated by industrial RS indicate that owing to an MPSGD algorithm, an MLF model outperforms the existing state-of-the-art ones in both computational efficiency and scalability.