Temperature and pressure effects on supercritical CO2 extraction of tomato seed oil

Tomato seed oil was extracted with supercritical carbon dioxide in a semibatch-flow extractor within the temperature range 313–343 K and the pressure range 10.8–24.5MPa. The extraction rates increased with pressure, but decreased with temperature increase because of the variation in solvent density and resultant differences in oil solubility. The fatty acid composition of the extracted oil was similar to that of soybean oil.     

A kinetic study of methane hydrate formation

The kinetics of methane hydrate formation, after commencement of nucleation, were studied using a semibatch stirred tank reactor. The temperatures studied in the experiments were from 274 to 284 K over a pressure range of 3–10 MPa. The results of the experiments revealed that the formation kinetics were dependent on the interfacial area, pressure, temperature and degree of supercooling. The history of water sample affected the induction delay times for nuclei formation, but it had no observable effects on the overall kinetics of hydrate formation after the nucleation had commenced. A consistent semi-empirical model was formulated to correlate the experimental kinetic data.     

Kinetics of methane hydrate formation in aqueous electrolyte solutions

Experimental data on the kinetics of methane hydrate formation in aqueous electrolyte solutions are reported. The experiments were carried out in a semi-batch stirred tank reactor in three NaCl and two KCl solutions as well as in a solution containing a mixture of NaCl and KCl at three different nominal temperatures from 270 to 274 K and at pressures ranging from 3.78 to 7.08 MPa. The kinetic model developed by Englezos et al. (1987a) was adapted to predict the growth of hydrates. The model is based on the crystallisation theory coupled with the two-film theory for gas absorption in the liquid phase. The kinetic rate constant which appears in the model was that obtained earlier for methane hydrate formation in pure water. The effect of the electrolytes was taken into account through the computation of the three-phase equilibrium conditions and the corresponding fugacities. Overall, the model predictions match the experimental data very well with the largest prediction error being less than 10%.     

The application of the characteristic method to shock tube data that simulate a gas pipeline rupture

A numerical procedure is described to solve the equations for single phase, one dimensional, unsteady, compressible, frictional flow with heat transfer. The procedure is based on Hartree's ‘hybrid’ method for solving the governing hyperbolic partial differential equations. Computations for flows in a shock tube are presented which show good agreement with experimental data available for methane and argon.     

Prediction of carbon dioxide gas hydrate formation conditions in aqueous electrolyte solutions

A methodology for predicting the incipient equilibrium conditions for carbon dioxide gas hydrates in the presence of electrolytes such as NaCl, KCl and CaCl₂ is presented. The method utilizes the statistical thermodynamics model of van der Waals and Platteeuw (1959) to describe the solid hydrate phase. Three different models were examined for the representation of the liquid phase: Chen and Evans (1986), Zuo and Guo (1991), and Aasberg-Petersen et al. (1991). It was found that the model of Zuo and Guo (1991) gave the best results for predicting incipient CO₂ gas hydrate conditions in aqueous single salt solutions. The model was then extended for prediction of CO₂ gas hydrates in mixed salts solutions. The predictions agree very well with experimental data.     

Studying nucleation and growth kinetics of alite hydration using μic

This paper investigates the applicability of nucleation and growth mechanisms to the hydration of alite. Various possible mechanisms of nucleation and growth were simulated using the recently-developed microstructural modelling platform μic. Comparison with the Avrami equation and the boundary nucleation model demonstrate the limitations of these equations. Experimental measurements of the rates of hydration of alite powders with different particle size distributions were then simulated with a boundary nucleation and growth model in μic. The results show that while the nucleation and growth of C–S–H having bulk densities in the currently accepted range can explain the acceleration during the first few hours of hydration, it cannot explain the later deceleration. It was also found that the resistance to flow of ions offered by the layer of hydrates forming over the surface of the alite particles (diffusion control) cannot explain the deceleration. The deceleration could be reproduced when C–S–H was assumed to be loosely packed in the beginning with its density of packing increasing with hydration. It is proposed that during the early hours of hydration a loosely-packed C–S–H fills a large fraction of the microstructure and the further development of its microstructure occurs due to an increase in its packing.     

An Improved Mechanical Material Model for Ballistic Soda-Lime Glass

In our recent work (Grujicic et al., Int. J. Impact Eng., 2008), various open-literature experimental findings pertaining to the ballistic behavior of soda-lime glass were used to construct a simple, physically based, high strain rate, high-pressure, large-strain mechanical model for this material. The model was structured in such a way that it is suitable for direct incorporation into standard commercial transient non-linear dynamics finite element-based software packages like ANSYS/Autodyn (Century Dynamics Inc., 2007) or ABAQUS/Explicit (Dessault Systems, 2007). To validate the material model, a set of finite element analyses of the edge-on-impact tests was conducted and the results compared with their experimental counterparts obtained in the recent work of Strassburger et al. (Proceedings of the 23rd International Symposium on Ballistics, Spain, April 2007; Proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium on Ballistics, November 2005, Vancouver, Canada). In general, a good agreement was found between the computational and the experimental results relative to: (a) the front shapes and the propagation velocities of the longitudinal and transverse waves generated in the target during impact and (b) the front shapes and propagation velocities of a coherent-damage zone (a zone surrounding the projectile/target contact surface which contains numerous micron and submicron-size cracks). However, substantial computational analysis/experiment disagreements were found relative to the formation of crack centers, i.e. relative to the presence and distribution of isolated millimeter-size cracks nucleated ahead of the advancing coherent-damage zone front. In the present work, it was shown that these disagreements can be substantially reduced if the glass model (Grujicic et al., Int. J. Impact Eng., 2008) is advanced to include a simple macrocracking algorithm based on the linear elastic fracture mechanics.     

Modeling of transient natural convection heat transfer in electric ovens

Prediction of transient natural convection heat transfer in vented enclosures has multiple applications such as understanding of cooking environment in ovens and heat sink performance in electronic packaging industry. The thermal field within an oven has significant impact on quality of cooked food and reliable predictions are important for robust design and performance evaluation of an oven. The CFD modeling of electric oven involves three-dimensional, unsteady, natural convective flow-thermal field coupled with radiative heat transfer. However, numerical solution of natural convection in enclosures with openings at top and bottom (ovens) can often lead to non-physical solutions such as reverse flow at the top vent, partly a function of initialization and sometimes dependent on boundary conditions. In this paper, development of a physics based robust CFD methodology is discussed. This model has been developed with rigorous experimental support and transient validation of this model with experiments show less than 3% discrepancy for a bake cycle. There is greater challenge in simulating a broil cycle, where the fluid inside the cavity is stably stratified and is also highlighted. A comparative analyses of bake and broil cycle thermal fields inside the oven are also presented.     

Ag and O ion irradiation induced improvement in dielectric properties of the Ba(Co1/3Nb2/3)O3 thin films

We present the preliminary results of temperature and frequency dependent dielectric measurements on Ba(Co_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃ (BCN) thin films. These films were prepared on indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass substrates by the pulse laser deposition (PLD) technique. It exhibits single-phase hexagonal symmetry. These films were irradiated with Ag¹⁵⁺ (200 MeV) and O⁷⁺ (100 MeV) beams at the fluence 1 × 10¹¹, 1 × 10¹², and 1 × 10¹³ ions/cm². On irradiating these films, its dielectric constant (?′) and dielectric loss (tan δ) parameters improve compared to un-irradiated film. Compared to O⁷⁺ irradiation induced point/cluster defects Ag¹⁵⁺ induced columnar defects are more effective in reducing/pinning trapped charges within grains. The present paper highlights the role of swift heavy ion irradiation in engineering the dielectric properties of conductive samples to enable them to be useful for microwave device applications.     

A systematic approach for the efficient estimation of interaction parameters in equations of state using binary vle data

A systematic and computationally efficient approach for the estimation of the interaction parameters in equations of state using binary vapor liquid equilibrium (VLE) data is presented. Initially, the best set of interaction parameters is estimated by implicit least squares. Subsequently, the VLE calculations are performed using these parameters. Based on the quality of the fit it is decided whether these estimates suffice or implicit maximum likelihood estimation should be performed to obtain the statistically best values. Estimation subject to the liquid phase stability constraint is performed when erroneous phase behavior is computed. The approach is illustrated with typical examples.