Preparation of electrospun nanofibers based on wheat gluten containing azathioprine for biomedical application

In this study, wheat gluten fibers loaded by the azathioprine were fabricated and their physicochemical properties were studied. The nanofibers were characterized by using the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transformed-infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffractometry, thermogravimetric, and differential thermal analysis. The SEM images showed that the addition of polyvinyl alcohol decreased the fibers’ diameters. The diameters of 77.14?±?14.11?nm were obtained for the wheat gluten–polyvinyl alcohol loaded drug fibers. In addition, the cell viability evaluation conducted by the MTT assay proved no cytotoxicity of the prepared nonofibers at concentrations up to 4?mg/mL to human umbilical vein endothelial cell.     

Fluidized bed coating and granulation: influence of process-related variables and physicochemical properties on the growth kinetics

This study, which deals with the coating and granulation of solid particles by aqueous solutions of polymers or inorganic salts, aims to understand the effect of:

process-related variables such as the excess gas velocity, atomizer location, liquid flow rate and concentration, and atomizing air flow rate,

physicochemical-related variables such as the viscosity of solutions, wettability of the granulating liquid on solid particle surfaces, initial particle mean size, and porosity of the particles on the agglomeration kinetics of solid particles in a fluidized bed.

The results showed that for a given particle size, the fluidizing air velocity was the most important factor affecting the growth kinetics and the stability of the operation. An increase of the relative humidity, depending on the liquid flow rate as well as the air flow rate, favor agglomeration mechanism especially for values greater than 0.4. An increase in the particle initial size leads to an enhancement of the layering mechanism, especially for values greater than 300 μm.

The effect of the interfacial tension is investigated by adding different concentrations of a non-ionic surfactant to the binding solution. The effect of the contact angle is then studied using non-hydrophobic, partly hydrophobic, or totally hydrophobic particles. The growth of agglomerates appears to be favoured when the interfacial tension increases and the contact angle decreases. The viscosity of the solution has less effect than the interfacial parameters. The results show that the dominant forces in the granulation process are the capillary forces.     

Experimental study and modeling of fluidized bed coating and agglomeration

This work deals with the fluidized bed coating and agglomeration of solid particles. The effect of particle size on coating criteria was investigated using sand particles as the coating support and aqueous solutions containing NaCl as coating liquid. The results showed that both growth rate and efficiency increase with decreasing the particle size. The growth was mainly governed by layering for particles larger than 200 μm, whereas for finer particles it occurred by agglomeration. As the particle size became less than 90 μm, the coating operation led to uncontrolled growth and bed quenching. However, the coating of the same particles was successfully achieved by adding some coarser particles. In addition, a mathematical model based on the population balance concept, taking into account the simultaneous growth by layering and agglomeration, was established to predict the time evolution of the particle size distribution. The comparison between experimental and calculated data permitted the establishment of a law for the size dependency of the agglomeration kernel.     

Kinetic Study and Modeling of the Degradation of the Maize Kernels Quality During Drying in Fluidized Bed

Only a few kinetic studies have been reported in the literature on the evolution of comercial quality of maize during drying and to the best of our knowledge no model allows to predict the dynamic coupling of drying and product quality evolution. The aim of this work is to present new information on the effects of the operating conditions (harvest year, weight of maize to be dried, initial moisture content of the grain and air temperature) on the evolution of maize saline-soluble protein denaturation and the wet-milling quality during drying of maize in a batch floatation fluidized bed dryer. Also, kinetic laws are proposed for the quality criteria that will be combined with drying model already derived [1, 2].

The experimental results show that the degradation of the main components of maize (starch and proteins) is considerably affected by the temperature level and to a lesser extent by the initial moisture content of grains. Beyond 70°C, the denaturation of saline-soluble proteins occurs rapidly in the heat-up period of the grains. As for the wet-milling quality degradation, it starts only above 90°C.

Kinetic laws derived from this study express the variation of the degradation rate of proteic and wet milling quality as functions of the solubility of saline-soluble proteins or the starch-gluten separation index, the grain moisture content and temperature.     

Étude hydrodynamique des lits fluidisés sous vide et sous haute température

After having analyzed the few literature results concerning fluidized beds hydrodynamics under reduced pressure, new theoretical elements are proposed which provide an estimation of the beginning and finishing fluidization velocities. Numerous experimental results(U_mfapp, U_mb, U_mp, ?_mf, ?_mb, ?_mp), obtained at 20 and 500°C, are then presented for several sub-atmospheric pressures. Finally, f& the first time, at leastto our knowledge, by high frequency recording pressure drops through the bed, the influence of pressure decreases on the hydrodynamics is accurately analyzed.     

Numerical modeling of natural convection in an open cavity with two vertical thin heat sources subjected to a nanofluid

This paper presents a numerical study of natural convection cooling of two heat sources vertically attached to horizontal walls of a cavity. The right opening boundary is subjected to the copper–water nanofluid at constant low temperature and pressure, while the other boundaries are assumed to be adiabatic. The governing equations have been solved using the finite volume approach, using SIMPLE algorithm on the collocated arrangement. The study has been carried out for the Rayleigh number in the range 10⁴ ≤ Ra ≤ 10⁷, and for solid volume fraction 0 ≤ φ ≤ 0.05. In order to investigate the effect of heat source location, three different placement configurations of heat sources are considered. The effects of both Rayleigh numbers and heat source locations on the streamlines, isotherms, Nusselt number are investigated. The results indicate that the flow field and temperature distributions inside the cavity are strongly dependent on the Rayleigh numbers and the position of the heat sources. The results also indicate that the Nusselt number is an increasing function of the Rayleigh number, the distance between two heat sources, and distance from the wall. In addition it is observed that the average Nusselt number increases linearly with the increase in the solid volume fraction of nanoparticles.     

Influence des principaux paramètres opératoires sur le dépôt de silicium à partir de silane par CVD en lit fluidisé en vue de limiter les problèmes d'agglomération

Chemical vapour deposition of silicon from silane on fluidized powders is an efficient and flexible surface modification technology; however, its main drawback is the agglomeration of the fluidized particles beyond a critical initial concentration of silane. To clarify this phenomenon, we have studied the influence of operating conditions covering temperatures lower than 550°C, both experimentally and theoretically using the simulation model of Kato and Wen (1969). The influence of the main operating parameters has been accurately determined not only on the process throughput but also on the thermal behaviour of the bed, which is directly linked to the solid phase motion and then to the possible agglomeration of particles.     

Structured singular value of a repeated complex full-block uncertainty

The structured singular value (SSV), or $\mu$, is used to assess the robust stability and performance of an uncertain linear time-invariant system. Existing algorithms compute upper and lower bounds on the SSV for structured uncertainties that contain repeated (real or complex) scalars and/or nonrepeated complex full-blocks. This paper presents algorithms to compute bounds on the SSV for the case of repeated complex full-blocks. This specific class of uncertainty is relevant for the input-output analysis of many convective systems, such as fluid flows. Specifically, we present a power iteration to compute the SSV lower bound for the case of repeated complex full-blocks. This generalizes existing power iterations for repeated complex scalars and nonrepeated complex full-blocks. The upper bound can be formulated as a semi-definite program (SDP), which we solve using a standard interior-point method to compute optimal scaling matrices associated with the repeated full-blocks. Our implementation of the method only requires gradient information, which improves the computational efficiency of the method. Finally, we test our proposed algorithms on an example model of incompressible fluid flow. The proposed methods provide less conservative bounds as compared to prior results, which ignore the repeated full-block structure.