Facile Hydrothermal Synthesis of Hierarchical Sodium P Zeolite as a Nonphosphate Detergent Builder

This study reports the preparation of hierarchical NaP zeolite with the aim of obtaining a non-phosphate detergent builder as an alternative for environmental remediation from eutrophication phenomenon. Hierarchically structured NaP zeolite was easily synthesized hydrothermally and under different syntheses conditions. Samples were characterized using several standard techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and N₂ adsorption–desorption analysis. Three powder detergents were prepared by mixing main components such as linear alkylbenzene sulfonate, sodium sulfate, sodium silicate, and sodium carbonate as well as different amounts of as-synthesized zeolite and sodium tripolyphosphate in the detergent formulation as potential detergency builders. Some different detergency tests as pH value, water insolubility, foam height, moisture content, alcohol insolubility, and surface tension measurement were carried out for all synthetic detergent samples and two commercial ones. The results demonstrated that the high cleaning performance of the powders was obtained as using eco-friendly zeolite builders in comparison with phosphate-based commercial and synthetic detergent samples.     

GSA: A Gravitational Search Algorithm

In recent years, various heuristic optimization methods have been developed. Many of these methods are inspired by swarm behaviors in nature. In this paper, a new optimization algorithm based on the law of gravity and mass interactions is introduced. In the proposed algorithm, the searcher agents are a collection of masses which interact with each other based on the Newtonian gravity and the laws of motion. The proposed method has been compared with some well-known heuristic search methods. The obtained results confirm the high performance of the proposed method in solving various nonlinear functions.     

Sol–gel preparation of boron-containing cordierite Mg2(Al4−xBx)Si5O18 and its crystallization

Five cordierite-based powders were investigated regarding their thermal and crystallization behaviors. The powders were obtained from amorphous gels having nominal compositions of 2Mg : xAl : (4 − x)B : 5Si where x = 4 down to 0. Thermal gravimetry analysis of the dry gels showed some absorbed water and decomposition of organic ligands in addition to network condensation. Gradual substitution of B for Al in the dried gel powders showed a new band in their infrared spectra corresponding to triangular BO₃, whereas the bands corresponding to Al vanished. This also showed a noticeable effect on the crystallization trends, type and stability of cordierite. Cordierite crystallized in samples of B/Al ratio up to 1 while protoenstatite predominated in samples of higher B/Al ratios. In addition, some silica minerals, with little amorphous phase, were formed. Incorporation of boron and increase in temperature enhanced the transformation of γ cordierite to its form.     

Broadband absorption enhancement in hole-transport- layer-free perovskite solar cell by grating structure

Recently, the hole transport layer-free planar perovskite solar cells(HTL-free PSCs) have attracted intense attention. However, the poor absorption of light in the wavelengths longer than 800 nm is an important challenge in all configurations of PSCs. In this study, the HTL-free PSC with a gold rectangular grating at back contact is proposed. In order to improve the performance of the solar cell, effects of grating dimensions and periodicity on the absorption of the active layer are numerically ...     

Hydrothermal synthesis of different colors and morphologies of ZnO nanostructures and comparison of their photocatalytic properties

Various zinc oxide nanostructures were synthesized using thermal decomposition of zinc acetate dihydrate in a single process. The characterization of samples using powder X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope and FT-IR measurements revealed that the pure phase of different morphologies such as nanoparticles, nanowires and nanodisks had been synthesized successfully. Surprisingly some synthesized ZnO nanostructures were dark gray. The results showed that the reason may have been related to the oxygen deficiency and strong asymmetric stretching mode of wurtzite ZnO nanostructure. Using such samples, the photodegradation of Methylene blue was performed by UV–vis absorption measurement and the effect of morphology on the photocatalytic properties of different ZnO nanostructures was examined. The results showed that the nanodisks had the best photocatalytic performance among the other morphologies. The reason was attributed to the presence of specific crystal planes such as (0001) facets in nanodisks which can improve their photocatalytic performance.     

A stochastic gravitational approach to feature based color image segmentation

In this paper, a novel image segmentation algorithm based on the theory of gravity is presented, which is called as “stochastic feature based gravitational image segmentation algorithm (SGISA)”. The proposed SGISA uses color, texture, and spatial information to partition the image into homogenous and semi-compact segments. The proposed method benefits from the advantages of both clustering and region growing image segmentation techniques. The SGISA is equipped with a new operator called “escape” that is inspired by the concept of escape velocity in physics. Moreover, motivated by heuristic search algorithms, we incorporate a stochastic characteristic with the SGISA, which gives algorithm the ability to search the image for finding the fittest regions (pixels) that are suitable for merging. Several experiments on various standard images as well as Berkley standard image database are reported. Results are compared with a well-known clustering based segmentation method, C-means, a gravitational based clustering method (SGC), and the well-known mean-shift method. The results are reported using unsupervised criteria and pre-ground-truthed measures. The obtained results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method in color image segmentation.     

Multi-criteria expertness based cooperative Q-learning

One of the most influential points in cooperative learning is the type of exchanging information. If the content of exchanging information among agents is rich, cooperation gives rise to better results. To extract proper knowledge of agents during the cooperation process, some expertness measures that assign expertness levels to the other agents are used. In this paper, a new method named Multi-Criteria Expertness based cooperative Q-learning (MCE) is proposed that utilizes all of the expertness measures and attempts to enrich the exchanging information more efficiently. In MCE, all expertness measures are considered simultaneously and collective knowledge is equal to the combination of learned knowledge by each of expertness measures. The experimental results confirm outstanding performance of the proposed method on a sample maze world and a hunter-prey problem.     

Electromagnetic unbalance in power systems with untransposed transmission lines

Transposition of power transmission lines represents high costs due to the required transposition towers and also results in low mechanical and electrical strengths. These disadvantages make it desirable not to transpose lines if the resulting unbalances are not adverse. This paper proposes a method to predict the electromagnetic (combination of inductive and capacitive) unbalance of untransposed lines. The method is validated by its application to typical lines under various load conditions and various geometric mean radii.     

Oxalate content of some leafy vegetables and dry legumes consumed widely in Egypt

Oxalic acid and total oxalate contents were determined in four leafy vegetables and six dry legumes consumed widely in Egypt. The four vegetables, normally eaten raw, can be arranged according to their oxalate content, in descending order, as follows: green onion (leaves), green onion (bulbs), leek, radish (leaves), radish (roots) and roquette. Oxalic acid represented 76–86% of the total oxalates.Dry faba beans had the highest oxalic acid content, followed, in descending order, by fenugreek, lentils, peas, chickpeas and lupin. The ratio of oxalic acid to total oxalates differs according to the total oxalate content of the legume variety. Decortication, steeping, sprouting, stewing, boiling and baking reduced the oxalate content of seeds in different ways. Sprouting and steeping, followed by decortication, resulted in the most pronounced decrease in oxalates, especially in faba beans and lupin.     

Influence of silicon carbide on structural,optical and magnetic properties of Wollastonite/Fe2O3 nanocomposites

The influence of adding 10, 20 and 30% molar ratio of silicon carbide (SiC) separately to a composite of wollastonite (W) with a fixed content of 10%Fe₂O₃ prepared by wet precipitation method was studied. The crystal structure of the annealed composite powders was inspected by X-ray diffraction (XRD); revealing multi-phase structure. The highest estimated crystallite size investigated by Scherrer equation of W, SiC, WFe:SiC₁₀, WFe:SiC₂₀ and WFe:SiC₃₀ were 53.89, 54.6, 56.3, 48.5 and 54.6 nm respectively; demonstrating the formation of nanocomposites. Particles shape, size and crystallinity of the samples were studied using high resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM). The band gap E_g values of the nanocomposites increased with SiC content having an intermediate value that lies between that of γ-Fe₂O₃ (maghemite) and SiC. Ferromagnetic and paramagnetic contributions were observed in the magnetic hysteresis loops for the composites. This study highlighted that the coercive field (H_ci) of the composites improved with increasing the SiC content. The innovative wollastonite/Fe₂O₃/SiC with amended magnetic properties elicited attention due to their promising application in bone filler and industrial purposes.