Unconfined fluid electrospun into high quality nanofibers from a plate edge

We demonstrate an easily-implemented, edge-plate geometry for electrospinning and produce high quality nanofibers from unconfined polymer fluids. We show that for electrospinning in general, the electric field gradient, not just the electric field amplitude, is a critical parameter for successful self-initiated jetting. Considering a single spinning site, the edge-plate configuration resulted in the same or a higher fabrication rate as traditional needle electrospinning, while producing nanofibers similar in quality (diameter, diameter distribution, and collected mat porosity); moreover, this novel configuration operates without the possibility of clogging and has high potential for scale-up. We analyze the fundamental physical processes which underlie edge-plate electrospinning, including electric field, working distance, and feed rate dependence and the resultant changes to the linear and whipping regions, and thus to the fiber diameter. We conclude that the edge-plate configuration functions in a remarkably similar manner to traditional needle electrospinning.     

Sea water — Basalt interactions and genesis of the coastal thermal waters of Maharashtra, India

The thermal waters close to the western coastal belt of India (in Maharashtra State) generally discharge Na-Ca-Cl and Ca-Na-Cl types of waters through the basic lava flows of late Cretaceous — early Tertiary age. Experimental work to study the reactions between the dilute sea water and basalt conducted in static autoclaves at selected elevated temperatures, indicates the possibility of producing chloride waters with relatively high calcium, similar to these thermal waters. In view of the increase in Ca in the resultant solutions during sea water — basalt reactions at elevated temperatures, the base temperatures computed by Na-K-Ca geothermometry would be far lower than the actual temperatures of the system. At lower temperatures (around 100°C) absorption of K by basalt is possible and, hence, alkali geothermometry also may not be reliable for such systems. Anhydrite saturation temperature seems to be a reliable geothermometer for such coastal thermal water systems involving a sea water component.The results of the computer processing of the chemistry of some of these thermal waters using “WATEQ” are discussed. Two of these waters are oversaturated with diopside, tremolite, calcite and aragonite, indicating a rather low temperature of origin. In two other cases, interaction with ultramafic rocks is indicated, as these waters are oversaturated with diopside, tremolite, talc, chrysotile, sepiolite and its precipitate.There is no clear evidence to show that the thermal waters of the west coast of India emerge directly from either marine evaporites or oil field waters. It is proposed that the majority of these thermal waters should have originated through interaction of an admixture of sea water and meteoric water with the local basalt flows at some elevated temperatures.     

X-ray diffraction and 27Al magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic studies on the evolution of synroc-B phases from the combustion residue (Ash)

Abstracts are not published in this journal This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Performance characteristics of CI engine using blends of waste cooking oil methyl ester,ethanol and diesel

ABSTRACT

The main emphasis of this work is to explore the biodiesel obtained from waste cooking oil and its utilisation in CI engine blended with ethanol and conventional diesel. Waste cooking oil methyl esters (WCOME) was prepared by transesterification with a heterogeneous catalyst such as CaO. Diesel and WCOME blends of five different proportions with 5% of ethanol uniformly added to them were used as a fuel in a variable compression ratio, constant speed, compression ignition engine. The performance, emission and combustion characteristics of the engine at part and full load conditions were compared with that of neat diesel, varying the compression ratio from 18 to 22. From the experimental results, the blend comprising 20% waste cooking oil, 5% ethanol and 75% mineral diesel showed ameliorated performance and emission characteristics, compared with all the other fuel blends at an optimum compression ratio of 21.     

Visibility improvement of underwater turbid image using hybrid restoration network with weighted filter

Due to the attenuation of light passes through water, the captured underwater images suffer from low-contrast, halo artifacts, etc. To address this issue, the hybrid network with a weighted filter is proposed to improve the visibility of the obscured (turbid) images. In the captured image, the brighter pixels (near-to-source) are called foreground regions and the darker pixels (far-from-source) are called background regions. In order to ensure the adaptability of the proposed algorithm, the considered datasets are collected on different atmospheric light such as pond, lake, and fisheries tank. The foreground area of an image can be enhanced using the thresholding and masking technique. The background hazy region can be recovered by a hybrid Dehazenet called Generative Adversarial Network and Convolutional Neural Network. With this, the transmission map with high accuracy and color deviation can be addressed. Then both the regions are blended and the Amended Unsharp Mask filter is used to toughen the distorted edges. Finally, the blended restored image is weighted with a contrast factor to obtain the visibility improved image. The subjective and objective evaluation is done on considering the standard non-reference metric called Underwater Image Quality Measure comprises measures of color, sharpness, and contrast for a variety of water types with different atmospheric light. It is observed that the proposed technique showed a metric improvement of 57% compared to other existing techniques in an average manner. Overall, it is inferred that the proposed technique produces better results in both subjective and objective evaluation, thus it outperforms other state-of-the-art techniques.

     

A comparative study on co-combustion performance of municipal solid waste and Indonesian coal with high ash Indian coal: A thermogravimetric analysis

In recent years there has been an increasing utilization of coal blends in the Indian power industry, with Indonesian coal, due to high ash content and shortages in domestic coal production. On the other hand, rapid economic growth is aggravating the municipal solid waste (MSW) related environmental problems. In this study, an attempt has been made to compare the co-combustion characteristics of hydrothermally treated MSW and Indonesian coal with high ash Indian coal, so as to replace the Indonesian coal with MSW. The effect of blending Indonesian coal and hydrothermally treated MSW with Indian coal on ignition behavior was studied. MSW blends of 10%, 20%, 30% and 50% (in wt.%), and an Indonesian blend of 10% with Indian coal were tested in a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) in the temperature from ambient to 700 °C with a temperature increase of 10 °C/min. From the results, at 10% of blend, ignition and carbon burnout were similar for Indonesian and MSW blend, analogous to coal combustion and even better than the Indonesian coal blend, which indicated the feasibility for replacing Indonesian coal with hydrothermally treated MSW. Further, the results show a scope to increase the MSW blend in Indian coal up to 20%, as the constituents behave as a single fuel.     

Transport of cationic dye by supported liquid membrane using D2EHPA as the carrier

The transport of cationic dye from an aqueous feed solution through a flat‐type supported liquid membrane containing di‐(2‐ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid as a carrier was studied. The influence of pH on the source phase, the effect of the concentration of the receiving phase, the stirring speed, the effect of the initial dye concentration, the feed‐to‐strip ratio and the influence of the support characteristics were studied. A polytetrafluoroethylene membrane with a 1.0‐μm pore size was found to have more permeability than that with a pore size of 0.5 μm. The results indicated that the aqueous feed solution at an alkaline pH has high permeability. The initial feed phase dye can be completely extracted and stripped with a stripping solution within 7 h.     

Energy conscious deterministic self-healing new generation wireless sensor network: smart WSN using the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Aatral</Emphasis> framework

It is expected that in the next year, over a billion wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes will be deployed throughout the world, constituting a wide variety of sensor applications. In such a domain, management of the randomly distributed sensor networks is complicated by issues such as knowledge of energy consumption and coverage, extended lifetimes and demands for improved quality of service parameters. Several researchers have addressed these issues through their own innovations and discoveries of different schemes, methods, techniques or mathematical models and architectures or applications, using a variety of node designs. This in turn, has lead to multiple different choices of hardware and software options. However, this has not simplified the process of setting up application testbeds considering energy consumption. There is no readily available solution for setting up a WSN with user selected profiles and parameters. Multiple communication protocols, routing protocols, signal calibration and propagation methods, data aggregation schemes, clustering formations with multiple variations have been proposed for different research objectives. This paper proposes a method for consolidating all the initiatives and integrating these in a service panel framework that helps manage the desired WSN with options to set up an individual WSN profile and supporting the energy engineering processes involved in the WSN.     

Use of bulk liquid membrane for the removal of Cibacron Red FN-R from aqueous solution using TBAB as a carrier

The transport of Cibacron Red FN-R anionic dye through a methylene chloride bulk liquid membrane (BLM) containing a tetra butyl ammonium bromide (TBAB) as an excellent carrier was studied. The extracted dye simultaneously stripped into aqueous stripping solution. The basic fundamental parameters were determined. These include pH of the feed, nitric acid concentration in the strip solution, TBAB concentration in the membrane phase, initial dye concentration in the feed phase and rate of stirring. The transport efficiency of dye increased with increasing carrier concentration from 6.06 ± 0.1 × 10^?6 to 3.85 ± 0.1 × 10^?4 M. The transport study was highly selective for anionic dye and efficiency of transport was not affected by the presence of electrolytes such as sodium chloride and sodium sulphates in feed solution. The percentage of dye transported across the liquid membrane after 70 min, was 95 ± 0.1%. When the optimum parameters were used for real textile dyeing effluent for recovery of dyes, the results were found to be satisfactory.