Adsorption of atmospheric carbonate and evolution of acidity during grinding of abnormal montmorillonite

Montmorillonite (MMt) from Tunisia has been subjected to fine grinding and studied using FTIR spectroscopy, X-ray diffractograms, BET surface area, Brönsted and Lewis acidity analyse, and FTIR spectroscopy. As a result, significant changes in structural vibrations when MMt was mechanochemically treated were revealed. These changes include: a shift and a gradual decrease of structural OH, Si–O, and M–OH groups (M: octahedral cations; Al, Mg and Fe), which means that an imperfection was formed in the crystal mineral via a mechanochemical treatment. The grinding is associated with amelioration of the oxidative power of clay, which is manifested by the sharpening of the infrared absorption shoulder near 880 cm^–1. The thermo-FTIR adsorption of N-butylamine showed that acidity did not improve upon grinding. On the contrary, the mechanochemical treatment led to the creation of the basic sites which promote the adsorption of atmospheric dioxide carbon.     

New separation method of metal/plastic micronized particles using travelling wave conveyors

The paper reports an experimental investigation for studying the movement dynamics and the separation of micronized particles on a poly-phase travelling wave conveyor (TWC). A digital balance and a sensitive electrometer controlled by Labview software were used to analyse the velocity and the material flow rate on a three-phase conveyor with respect to the variation of both the amplitude and the frequency of the applied voltage. It was found that about 80% of the particles mass move together in one single wave and that the electric charge gained by the particles increases with the intensity of the electric field. Moreover, preliminary experiments showed that it is possible to separate a granular mixture of plastic and copper micronized particles using a TWC. Successful experiments were carried out on micronized samples of both electric cable and electronic card wastes. High purity metal was recovered.     

Fault isolation in manufacturing systems based on learning algorithm and fuzzy rule selection

Neural Computing and Applications - This paper addresses the fault detection and isolation problem in manufacturing systems. Some of these systems can be affected by several faults, a first way of...     

Crosslinking of Sericin on air atmospheric plasma treated polyester fabric

Durable and highly hydrophilic polyester fabric was produced by cross-linking Sericin on air-atmospheric plasma treated polyester fabric. Surface change properties were characterized by wettability measurements (water contact angle-WCA and % capillarity), Atomic Force Microscopy and zeta potential measurements. Chemical analyses using TBO dye were carried out to estimate surface functional groups after plasma treatment and Sericin cross-linking. Positive zeta potential values at low pH values, as well as AFM images confirm grafting of Sericin. With Sericin cross-linked onto both cleaned PET and plasma-treated PET, WCA reached that of PET subjected to plasma treatment alone, that is WCA between 40° and 46° compared to 81° for the hydrophobic untreated polyester fabric. However, plasma-treated polyester is readily subjected to aging, while cross-linked Sericin on plasma-treated PET yields a more durable hydrophilic finish with a high capillarity, 85% compared to 39% for Sericin on the untreated PET, and 3% for the untreated PET fabric. Plasma treatment creates chain-scissions at the polymer surface leading to the appearance of polar groups which promote the cross-linking of greater amount of Sericin.     

AUDIT: AnomaloUs data Detection and Isolation approach for mobile healThcare systems

Mobile health care systems highly depend on collected physiological data through medical sensors to provide high-quality care services. However, inaccurate physiological data from sensors pose a major challenge for health care providers when making decisions, whereas an erroneous decision can affect the user's life. We propose, in this paper, an anomalous data detection and isolation approach for mobile health care systems. Our approach, called AUDIT, detects inaccurate measurements in real time and distinguishes between faults or errors and health events. To do so, we propose reduced time and space complexities algorithms based on dimension reduction within the context of resource constraints. Furthermore, a decision algorithm is proposed while exploring the spatio-temporal correlation between physiological attributes. First, we describe our approach. Then, we give its implementation details. Finally, to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we show different experiments related to its detection performances and its time and space complexities.     

Metamodels in Europe: Languages, Tools, and Applications

Editor's note:This article provides an overview of current efforts in Europe for using metamodeling in the integrated development of critical systems such as automotive electronics. It distinguishes between lightweight versus heavyweight approaches, surveys a number of related current European projects, and gives details about the Speeds project to illustrate the role of metamodeling-driven system engineering.—Sandeep Shukla, Virginia Tech     

Duration modelling and evaluation for Arabic statistical parametric speech synthesis

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Sound duration is responsible for rhythm and speech rate. Furthermore, in some languages phoneme length is an important phonetic and prosodic factor. For...     

Synthesis of an organic-inorganic hybrid material by solid state intercalation of 2-mercaptopyridine into Na-, Al(III)- and Co(II)-montmorillonite

The preparation of an organic-inorganic hybrid material by solid state intercalation of 2-mercaptopyridine (2Mpy) into Na-, Co(II)- and Al(III)-montmorillonite has been studied using a variety of techniques. The extension ofd ₀₀₁from XRD proves that the intercalation of 2-mercaptopyridine into Na-, Co(II)- and Al(III)-mont occurs at ambient temperature in 5 mn. When the intercalated samples were heated at different temperatures, we found that the d₀₀₁ gave different values. For instance, for intercalated Al(III)- and Co(II)-, d₀₀₁ remained unchanged for a temperature under 500°C. However, for intercalated Na-mont, it shifted to 14 Å for a temperature of 300° C, the washing of different samples with a methanol solution shifted thed ₀₀₁of intercalated Na-mont to 14 Å. However, for intercalated Al(III) and Co(II), it did not change. This proves that in the case of Na-mont, the molecules of 2-mercaptopyridine interact with the clay through hydrogen bindings and physical interactions. However, for Al(III) and Co(II), it forms coordination linking and physical interaction.¹³C NMR and FTIR spectroscopy have been employed for the characterization of the intercalation compounds. Tautomeric equilibrium between thiol and thione species of 2-mercaptopyridine must be taken into account to explain the arrangement of molecular aggregates and their particular orientation in the interlayer space. The isotherm of adsorption-desorption of nitrogen and topographic AFM images prove that intercalation of 2Mpy is accompanied by a total blockage of clay porosity and an increase in roughness.