Seismic safety of lifelines—an optimum design method

Lifeline systems are vulnerable to two types of hazards arising from potential earthquake sources. These are the hazard of a fault-rupture strike on elements of a lifeline system and the hazard of overstress induced in different elements of the system because of the ground vibration. An optimum design method is presented in this paper for the design of a lifeline system for a maximum accepted probability of failure because of any of the two modes of failure. The method may be used to determine an optimum path between a number of fixed points which represent supply or demand stations in the system.     

Sustainable Basin-Scale Water Allocation with Hydrologic State-Dependent Multi-Reservoir Operation Rules

This study extends the PSO-MODSIM model, integrating particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and MODISM river basin decision support system (DSS) to determine optimal basin-scale water allocation, in two aspects. The first is deriving hydrologic state-dependent (conditional) operating rules to better account for drought and high-flow periods, and the second is direct, explicit consideration of sustainability criteria in the model’s formulation to have a better efficiency in basin-scale water allocation. Under conditional operating rules, the operational parameters of reservoir target storage levels and their priority rankings were conditioned on the hydrologic state of the system in a priority-based water allocation scheme. The role of conditional operating rules and policies were evaluated by comparing water shortages associated with objective function values under unconditional and conditional operating rules. Optimal basin-scale water allocation was then evaluated by incorporating reliability, vulnerability, reversibility and equity sustainability indices into the PSO objective function. The extended model was applied for water allocation in the Atrak River Basin, Iran. Results indicated improved distribution of water shortages by about 7.5% using conditional operating rules distinguishing dry, normal and wet hydrologic states. Alternative solutions with nearly identical objective function values were found with sustainability indices included in the model.     

Treatability of Alternative Fuel Oxygenates Using Advanced Oxidation, Air Stripping, and Carbon Adsorption

Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) is a gasoline oxygenate that has become a significant threat to groundwater supplies across the United States. Due to its physiochemical properties it has proven difficult and costly to remove from contaminated sites. This study was conducted to determine whether the alternative oxygenates (AO)—diisopropyl ether (DIPE), ethyltert-butyl ether (ETBE), tert-amyl methyl ether (TAME), tert-butyl alcohol (TBA), and ethanol (EtOH)—present a more efficient and less costly option from a remediation standpoint. Air stripping, carbon adsorption, and ultraviolet/H2O2 and O3/H2O2 advanced oxidation processes were examined at pilot scale to develop design parameters from which technical and economic comparisons were made for each alternative oxygenate versus MTBE. The experimental results showed that the ether AOs—DIPE, TAME, and ETBE—were each more efficiently and more economically treated than MTBE. The alternative alcohol oxygenates—TBA and EtOH—were less efficiently and less economically treated by the processes studied. The paper details the effects of primary process parameters and properties of individual oxygenates on process efficiency.     

Gas holdup in two phase gas–liquid and three phase gas–liquid–solid production and transportation

The gas holdup is an important parameter that is needed for design and development of surface facilities and transportation pipelines in the field of petroleum engineering. There is no general model for prediction of this parameter in different systems and under different conditions. As a result, development of accurate and general models for prediction of this parameter in various situations is of great importance. This study presents new experimental gas holdup data in the kerosene+CO₂ and kerosene+N₂ systems. The experimental data were measured by using a bubble column setup. Moreover, a computer-based model namely PSO-ANFIS model is also developed for prediction of the gas holdup in different systems. A total of 818 experimental gas holdup data in various systems were utilized including the newly measured experimental data in the present work as well as experimental data from several published works in the literature. Results showed that the developed PSO-ANFIS model is accurate for prediction of experimental data with an R² value of 0.998 and average absolute relative deviation (AARD%) of 3.4%.     

User-sensor mutual authenticated key establishment scheme for critical applications in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Networks - Authenticated key establishment schemes allow the participants to authenticate each other and establish a secure session key among them. These schemes play an important role in...     

Multi-objective Phasor Measurement Unit Placement in Electric Power Networks: Integer Linear Programming Formulation

A multi-objective optimal phasor measurement unit placement model using integer linear programming is presented in this article. The proposed model simultaneously optimizes two objectives, i.e., minimization of phasor measurement unit numbers and maximization of measurement redundancy. To calculate the redundancy criteria, the single-line outage and the phasor measurement unit loss are considered simultaneously. A linear formulation is presented for both objective functions. Also herein, to address conflicting attributes and identify Pareto optimal solutions of the multi-objective optimal phasor measurement unit placement problem, a new multi-objective mathematical programming method is proposed. Finally, a new index, i.e., minimum distance to utopia point, is implemented to select the most preferred solution among the available Pareto front based options on the goal to achieve judicious decision makers. Two test systems, i.e., a modified 9-bus and an IEEE 118-bus test systems, are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.     

Enzyme-assisted extraction of chicken skin protein hydrolysates and fat: Degree of hydrolysis affects the physicochemical and functional properties

Enzyme-assisted extraction (EAE) of oils/fats involves the disruption of the cell wall of source material using enzymes to facilitate the release of oil. When proteases are used as the enzyme, EAE ends in the extracted oil as well as the protein hydrolysates. Herein, the EAE (using a commercial protease, Alcalase) was exploited to obtain fat and protein hydrolysates from chicken skin. Degree of hydrolysis (DH, the percentage ratio of cleaved peptide bonds), which showed a logarithmic correlation with the reaction time, was found to affect the properties of the products. As the DH increased, the peptide chain length of protein hydrolysates decreased which was confirmed by SDS-PAGE analysis. With the increase of DH, the emulsifying activity index, foaming capacity, and oil holding capacity of the hydrolysates decreased but the solubility and emulsion stability index increased (p < 0.05). The DPPH free radical scavenging activity of the hydrolysates increased with the DH up to DH = 39.62% but decreased thereafter (p < 0.05). EAE resulted in a rise in fat yield and the fat contained a higher amount of unsaponifiables and lower free fatty acids (FFA) content, as compared to the control treatment (No enzyme, 80°C, 2 h, p < 0.05). DH affected the fat yield and the unsaponifiables content of the fat, positively (p < 0.05). However, it did not affect the fat FFA content and iodine value (p > 0.05). Results obtained here showed DH can be used as an effective measure for controlling the physicochemical and functional properties of chicken skin protein hydrolysates and fat in the EAE process.     

Recent Developments in Predicting Impact and Shock Sensitivities of Energetic Materials （英）

Empirical, quantum mechanical and artificial neural network methods are three usual methods in recent years that were used to predict sensitivity of different classes of high explosives. Some recent developments in predicting sensitivity by various methods are reviewed and discussed for various classes of energetic materials.     

Mixing parameters for an airlift bioreactor considering constant cross sectional area of riser to downcomer: Effect of sparging gas location

The effect of mode of sparging gas on the mixing parameters of an internal loop airlift bioreactor was investigated. Two bioreactors of identical volume of 14×10³ cm³ and the optimum riser to downcomer cross sectional area ratio of 0.6 were studied. In one bioreactor a gas sparger was located in the draft tube and in the annulus in another. Liquid mixing characteristics, i.e., mixing time and circulation time, were employed to describe the performance of the bioreactors. The tracer injection method was used to determine the mixing parameters. A mathematical modeling based on the tanks-in-series model was employed to characterize the hydrodynamics behavior of the bioreactors. Matlab 7.1 software was used to solve the model equations in the Laplace domain and determine the model parameter, the number of stages. A comparison between the simulation results and experimental data showed that the applied model can accurately describe the behavior of the bioreactors. The results showed that when the gas sparger was located in the draft tube, the liquid mixing time, circulation time, and the number of stage were less than while the gas sparger was located in annulus. This is due to more wall effects, more energy losses and pressure drop in the case of gas injection in the annulus.