Abstract: Thermochemical conversion of non-edible biomass offers an efficient and economically process to provide valuable fuels and prepare chemicals derived from biomass in the context of developing countries. Pyrolysis has advantages over other thermochemical conversion techniques because it can convert biomass directly into solid, liquid and gaseous products by thermal decomposition of biomass in the absence of oxygen. The present paper aims to focus on the slow thermochemical conversion processes for non-edible Jatropha curcus seed cake. The present discussion focuses on the effect of nitrogen gas flow rate on products composition (wt %). In addition, comparative analysis has been performed for different mesh size for product composition. Result shows that, slow pyrolysis experiments of Jatropha curcus seed cake in fixed bed reactor yield the bio-oil 18.42 wt % at a pyrolysis temperature of 500°C, particle size of -6+8 mesh number and nitrogen gas flow rate of 150 ml/min.
Abstract: Conventional coagulation, advance oxidation process (AOPs), and the combined process were evaluated and compared for its suitability to treat the stabilized cutting-oil wastewater. The 90% efficiency was obtained from the coagulation at Al2(SO4)3 dosage of 150 mg/L and pH 7. On the other hands, efficiencies of AOPs for 30 minutes oxidation time were 10% for acoustic oxidation, 12% for acoustic oxidation with hydrogen peroxide, 76% for Fenton, and 92% sono-Fenton processes. The highest efficiency for effective oil removal of AOPs required large amount of chemical. Therefore, AOPs were studied as a post-treatment after conventional separation process. The efficiency was considerable as the effluent COD can pass the standard required for industrial wastewater discharge with less chemical and energy consumption.
Abstract: The kinetics of Cu(II) transport through a bulk liquid membrane with different membrane materials was investigated in this work. Three types of membrane materials were used: fresh cooking oil, waste cooking oil and kerosene, each of which was mixed with di-2-ethylhexylphosphoric acid (carrier) and tributylphosphate (modifier). Kinetic models derived from the kinetic laws of two consecutive irreversible first-order reactions were used to study the facilitated transport of Cu(II) across the source, membrane and receiving phases of bulk liquid membrane. It was found that the transport kinetics of Cu(II) across the source phase was not affected by different types of membrane materials but decreased considerably when the membrane materials changed from kerosene, waste cooking oil to fresh cooking oil. The rate constants of Cu(II) removal and recovery processes through the bulk liquid membrane were also determined.
Abstract: The paper aims at evaluating the effects of heavy groundwater withdrawal and artificial groundwater recharge of an ex-mining pond to the aquifer system of the Langat Basin through the three-dimensional (3D) numerical modeling. Many mining sites have been left behind from the massive mining exploitations in Malaysia during the England colonization era and from the last few decades. These sites are able to accommodate more than a million cubic meters of water from precipitation, runoff, groundwater, and river. Most of the time, the mining sites are turned into ponds for recreational activities. In the current study, an artificial groundwater recharge from an ex-mining pond in the Langat Basin was proposed due to its capacity to store >50 million m3 of water. The location of the pond is near the Langat River and opposite a steel company where >4 million gallons of groundwater is withdrawn on a daily basis. The 3D numerical simulation was developed using the Groundwater Modeling System (GMS). The calibrated model (error about 0.7 m) was utilized to simulate two scenarios (1) Case 1: artificial recharge pond with no pumping and (2) Case 2: artificial pond with pumping. The results showed that in Case 1, the pond played a very important role in supplying additional water to the aquifer and river. About 90,916 m3/d of water from the pond, 1,173 m3/d from the Langat River, and 67,424 m3/d from the direct recharge of precipitation infiltrated into the aquifer system. In Case 2, due to the abstraction of groundwater from a company, it caused a steep depression around the wells, river, and pond. The result of the water budget showed an increase rate of inflow in the pond and river with 92,493m3/d and 3,881m3/d respectively. The outcome of the current study provides useful information of the aquifer behavior of the Langat Basin.
Abstract: Evaluating and measuring the performance parameters of wheels and tillage equipments under controlled conditions obligates the use of soil bin facility. In this research designing, constructing and evaluating a single-wheel tester has been studied inside a soil bin. The tested wheel was directly driven by the electric motor. Vertical load was applied by a power bolt on wheel. This tester can measure required draft force, the depth of tire sinkage, contact area between wheel and soil, and soil stress at different depths and in the both alongside and perpendicular to the direction of traversing. In order to evaluate the system preparation, traction force was measured by the connected S-shaped load cell as arms between the wheel-tester and carriage. Treatments of forward speed, slip, and vertical load at a constant pressure were investigated in a complete randomized block design. The results indicated that the traction force increased at constant wheel load. The results revealed that the maximum traction force was observed within the %15 of slip.
Abstract: The suitability of Newsprint and Kraft papers for the production of cement bonded ceiling board was investigated. Sample boards were produced from newsprint paper (100%), mixture of newsprint and Kraft paper (50:50) and Kraft paper (100%) at 1:1, 2:1 and 3:1 cement/paper mixing ratio respectively with 3% additive concentration of calcium chloride (CaCl2). Density, flexural and thickness swelling properties of the boards were investigated. The effects of paper type and mixing ratio on the physical and mechanical properties were also examined. The bending properties of the board which include Modulus of Elasticity (MOE) and Modulus of Rupture (MOR) increased linearly with increase in density. Modulus of rupture of boards increased as the density and mixing ratio increased. The thickness swelling property for the two paper types decreased as the board density and mixing ratio increased. Boards made from Kraft paper recorded higher strength values than the ones made from recycled newsprint paper while the mixture of kraft and newsprint papers had the best surface finish. The result of the study will help in managing the large quality of waste from paper converting/carton industry and that the ceiling boards produced could be installed with clout nails or used with suspended ceiling fittings.
Abstract: Reformulating the user query is a technique that aims to improve the performance of an Information Retrieval System (IRS) in terms of precision and recall. This paper tries to evaluate the technique of query reformulation guided by an external resource for Arabic texts. To do this, various precision and recall measures were conducted and two corpora with different external resources like Arabic WordNet (AWN) and the Arabic Dictionary (thesaurus) of Meaning (ADM) were used. Examination of the obtained results will allow us to measure the real contribution of this reformulation technique in improving the IRS performance.
Abstract: By hand pollination was conducted to evaluated different pollen sources and their affects on fruit set and quality of wax apple. The following parameters were recorded: fruit set, seed set, fruit characteristics. Results showed that fruit set percentage with seed were significantly high in ‘Long Red B’ when ‘Black’, ‘Thyto’ were used as pollen parents. Pollen of ‘Black’, ‘Thyto’ resulted in high fruit weight, fruit diameter, fruit length, bigger flesh thickness, better total soluble solids as compared with other pollens. The observation of pollen-growth in vitro revealed that pollen germination at 15% sucrose concentration are required for optimum pollen germination with the high pollen germination were found in ‘Black’, ‘Thyto’. From the result, we concluded that ‘Black’, ‘Thyto’ were proved to be good pollinizers in ‘Long Red B’. Therefore, artificial cross-pollination using ‘Black’, ‘Thyto’ as pollinizers were strongly recommended for ‘Long Red B’ cultivar in wax apple orchard.
Abstract: Recently many cases of missing children between ages 14 and 17 years are reported. Parents always worry about the possibility of kidnapping of their children. This paper proposes an Android based solution to aid parents to track their children in real time. Nowadays, most mobile phones are equipped with location services capabilities allowing us to get the device’s geographic position in real time. The proposed solution takes the advantage of the location services provided by mobile phone since most of kids carry mobile phones. The mobile application use the GPS and SMS services found in Android mobile phones. It allows the parent to get their child’s location on a real time map. The system consists of two sides, child side and parent side. A parent’s device main duty is to send a request location SMS to the child’s device to get the location of the child. On the other hand, the child’s device main responsibility is to reply the GPS position to the parent’s device upon request.
Abstract: Breast region segmentation is an essential prerequisite in computerized analysis of mammograms. It aims at separating the breast tissue from the background of the mammogram and it includes two independent segmentations. The first segments the background region which usually contains annotations, labels and frames from the whole breast region, while the second removes the pectoral muscle portion (present in Medio Lateral Oblique (MLO) views) from the rest of the breast tissue. In this paper we propose hybridization of Connected Component Labeling (CCL), Fuzzy, and Straight line methods. Our proposed methods worked good for separating pectoral region. After removal pectoral muscle from the mammogram, further processing is confined to the breast region alone. To demonstrate the validity of our segmentation algorithm, it is extensively tested using over 322 mammographic images from the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database. The segmentation results were evaluated using a Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Hausdroff Distance (HD), Probabilistic Rand Index (PRI), Local Consistency Error (LCE) and Tanimoto Coefficient (TC). The hybridization of fuzzy with straight line method is given more than 96% of the curve segmentations to be adequate or better. In addition a comparison with similar approaches from the state of the art has been given, obtaining slightly improved results. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Abstract: Magnesium chloride, though cost wise roughly same as of ferrous sulphate, is less commonly used coagulant in comparison to the ferrous sulphate for the treatment of wastewater. The present study was conducted to investigate the comparative effectiveness of ferrous sulphate (FeSO4.7H2O) as iron based salt and magnesium chloride (MgCl2) as magnesium based salt in terms of decolorization and chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction efficiency of textile wastewater. The coagulants were evaluated for synthetic textile wastewater containing two diazo dyes namely Reactive Black 5 (RB5) and Congo Red (CR) and one anthraquinone dye as Disperse Blue 3 (DB3), in seven possible equi-ratio combinations. Other chemical constituents that are normally released from different textile processing units were also added to replicate a practical scenario. From this study, MgCl2/Lime was found to be a superior coagulant system as compared to FeSO4.7H2O/Lime, FeSO4.7H2O/NaOH and MgCl2/NaOH.
Abstract: In the present study, effect of critical medium components (a total of fifteen components) on ethanol production from waste cashew apple juice (CAJ) using yeast Saccharomyces diasticus was studied. A statistical response surface methodology
(RSM) based Plackett-Burman Design (PBD) was used for the design of experiments. The design contains a total of 32 experimental trails. The effect of medium components on ethanol was studied at two different levels such as low concentration level (-) and high concentration levels (+). The dependent variables selected in this study were ethanol concentration (g/L) and cellmass concentration (g/L). Data obtained from RSM on ethanol production were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). In general, initial substrate concentration significantly influenced the microbial growth and product formation. Of the medium components evaluated, CAJ concentration, yeast extract, (NH4)2SO4, and malt extract showed significant effect on ethanol fermentation. A second-order polynomial model was used to predict the experimental data and the model fitted the data with a high correlation coefficient (R2 > 0.98).
Maximum ethanol (15.3 g/L) and biomass (6.4 g/L) concentrations
were obtained at the optimum medium composition and at optimum
condition (temperature-30°C; initial pH-6.8) after 72 h fermentation
using S.diasticus.
Abstract: The effect of viscosity ratio (λ, defined as viscosity of surrounding medium/viscosity of fluid jet) on stability of axisymmetric (m=0) and asymmetric (m=1) modes of perturbation on a liquid-liquid jet in presence of radial electric field (E0 ), is studied using linear stability analysis. The viscosity ratio is shown to have a damping effect on both the modes of perturbation. However
the effect was found more pronounced for the m=1 mode as compared to m=1 mode. Investigating the effect of both E0 and λ
simultaneously, an operating diagram is generated, which clearly shows the regions of dominance of the two modes for a range of
electric field and viscosity ratio values.
Abstract: In this paper, a new CMOS current-mode single input and multi-outputs (SIMO) universal filter and quadrature oscillator with a similar circuit are proposed. The circuits only consist of three Current differencing transconductance amplifiers (CDTA) and two grounded capacitors, which are resistorless, and they are suitable for monolithic integration. The universal filter uses minimum CDTAs and passive elements to realize SIMO type low-pass (LP), high-pass (HP), band-pass (BP) band-stop (BS) and all-pass (AP) filter functions simultaneously without any component matching conditions. The angular frequency (ω0) and the quality factor (Q) of the proposed filter can be electronically controlled and tuned orthogonal. By some modifications of the filter, a new current-mode four-phase quadrature oscillator (QO) can be obtained easily. The condition of oscillation (CO) and frequency of oscillation (FO) of the QO can be controlled electronically and independently through the bias current of the CDTAs, and it is suitable for variable frequency oscillator. Moreover, all the passive and active sensitivities of the circuits are low. SPICE simulation results are included to confirm the theory.
Abstract: Feature selection is a process to select features which are more informative. It is one of the important steps in knowledge discovery. The problem is that all genes are not important in gene expression data. Some of the genes may be redundant, and others may be irrelevant and noisy. Here a novel approach is proposed Hybrid K-Mean-Quick Reduct (KMQR) algorithm for gene selection from gene expression data. In this study, the entire dataset is divided into clusters by applying K-Means algorithm. Each cluster contains similar genes. The high class discriminated genes has been selected based on their degree of dependence by applying Quick Reduct algorithm to all the clusters. Average Correlation Value (ACV) is calculated for the high class discriminated genes. The clusters which have the ACV value as 1 is determined as significant clusters, whose classification accuracy will be equal or high when comparing to the accuracy of the entire dataset. The proposed algorithm is evaluated using WEKA classifiers and compared. The proposed work shows that the high classification accuracy.
Abstract: This paper describes important features of JAPROSIM, a free and open source simulation library implemented in Java programming language. It provides a framework for building discrete event simulation models. The process interaction world view adopted by JAPROSIM is discussed. We present the architecture and major components of the simulation library. A pedagogical example is given in order to illustrate how to use JAPROSIM for building discrete event simulation models. Further motivations are discussed and suggestions for improving our work are given.
Abstract: Restructuring of Electricity supply industry introduced many issues such as transmission pricing, transmission loss allocation and congestion management. Many methodologies and algorithms were proposed for addressing these issues. In this paper a power flow tracing based method is proposed which involves Matrices methodology for the transmission usage and loss allocation for generators and demands. This method provides loss allocation in a direct way because all the computation is previously done for usage allocation. The proposed method is simple and easy to implement in a large power system. Further it is less computational because it requires matrix inversion only a single time. After usage and loss allocation cooperative game theory is applied to results for finding efficient economic signals. Nucleolus and Shapely value approach is used for optimal allocation of results. Results are shown for the IEEE 6 bus system and IEEE 14 bus system.
Abstract: With the ever-increasing need for wireless communication and the emergence of many systems, it is important to design broadband antennas to cover a wide frequency range. The aim of this paper is to design a broadband patch antenna, employing the three techniques of slotting, adding directly coupled parasitic elements, and fractal EBG structures. The bandwidth is improved from 9.32% to 23.77%. A wideband ranging from 4.15 GHz to 5.27 GHz is obtained. Also a comparative analysis of embedding EBG structures at different heights is also done. The composite effect of integrating these techniques in the design provides a simple and efficient method for obtaining low profile, broadband, high gain antenna. By the addition of parasitic elements the bandwidth was increased to only 18.04%. Later on by embedding EBG structures the bandwidth was increased up to 23.77%. The design is suitable for variety of wireless applications like WLAN and Radar Applications.
Abstract: In mobile communication systems, performance and capacity are affected by multi-path fading, delay spread and Co-Channel Interference (CCI). For this reason Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and adaptive antenna array are used is required. The goal of the OFDM is to improve the system performance against Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI). An array of adaptive antennas has been employed to suppress CCI by spatial technique. To suppress CCI in OFDM systems two main schemes the pre-FFT and the post-FFT have been proposed. In this paper, through a system level simulation, the behavior of the pre-FFT and post-FFT beamformers for OFDM system has been investigated based on two algorithms namely, Least Mean Squares (LMS) and Recursive Least Squares (RLS). The performance of the system is also discussed in multipath fading channel system specified by 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE).
Abstract: The linear stability of nanofluid convection in a horizontal porous layer is examined theoretically when the walls of the porous layer are subjected to time-periodic temperature modulation. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermopherosis, while the Darcy model is used for the porous medium. The analysis revels that for a typical nanofluid (with large Lewis number) the prime effect of the nanofluids is via a buoyancy effect coupled with the conservation of nanoparticles. The contribution of nanoparticles to the thermal energy equation being a second-order effect. It is found that the critical thermal Rayleigh number can be found reduced or decreased by a substantial amount, depending on whether the basic nanoparticle distribution is top-heavy or bottom-heavy. Oscillatory instability is possible in the case of a bottom-heavy nanoparticle distribution, phase angle and frequency of modulation.