Fuzzy expert system design for operating room air-condition control systems

In this study, a controlled fuzzy expert system (FES) was designed to provide the conditions necessary for operating rooms. For this purpose, existing operating rooms have been studied to see if there are more useful, reliable and comfortable ones. How an operating room can be controlled with FES and its advantages and disadvantages have also been researched. For a theoretically visible FES to show system’s advantage a prototype operating room was built and a suitable configuration was designed. In this system, heat, humidity, oxygen and particles were used as input parameters, and a fresh air entrance and fan circulation were chosen as output parameters. With the help of an expert, appropriate linguistic expressions and the membership function of these expressions were defined. The sensors were classified and sensor information was transferred to computer by means of an interface designed. In order to transfer the data to the system simultaneously, an interface was written in C#. Whether it provides the most suitable control for the system prototype was determined by simulating the operation with varying numbers of patients and operation personnel. In these trials, input, output and other necessary parameters were collected in the computer.In the study, we obtained excellent results in prototype operating room control with FES. The analyses of the results carried out indicated that the controls performed with FES provide more economical, comfortable, reliable and consistent controls and that they are feasible in a real operating room.     

Structural control of core/shell polystyrene microcapsule‐immobilized microbial cells and their application to polymeric microbioreactors

Polystyrene microcapsules possessing a large single core and highly microporous wall were prepared as immobilization supports for microbial cells by a new method based on phase separation of polystyrene within a mixed organic solvent system in an oil‐in‐water (o/w) emulsion. The structures of core and micropore were controlled by changing the concentration of isooctane in the organic phase and the temperature of solvent evaporation. The immobilization of baker's yeast into the polystyrene microcapsules was carried out by entrapping the yeast into calcium alginate beads before encapsulating in the microcapsules and followed by removing the beads with HCl solution. The morphology of the microcapsules was observed by means of SEM, and the activity of the immobilized yeast was evaluated by using the microcapsules in ethanol fermentation. It was found that the formation of the core and wall pore was remarkably influenced by the isooctane concentration, and the diameter of the core was affected by the temperature of solvent evaporation. The yeast was successfully immobilized into the polystyrene microcapsules at a high density and a high catalyst activity by the proposed immobilization method. Furthermore, the polystyrene microcapsules exhibited a high operational stability in the repeated batchwise fermentation test. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 89: 1966–1975, 2003