Abstract: In recent years, solar energy has established itself as one of the main sources of renewable energy, gaining a large space in electricity generation around the world. However, due to the low performance of photovoltaic panels, technologies need to be sought to maximize the production of electricity. In this regard, the present study aims to develop a prototype of solar tracker for didactics applications, controlled with the Arduino® platform, that enables the movement of photovoltaic plates in relation to the sun positions throughout the day through an electromechanical system, optimizing, thus, the efficiency of solar photovoltaic generation and improvements for the photovoltaic effect. The solar tracking technology developed in this work was presented of the shape oral and practical in two middle schools in the municipality of Mossoró/RN, being one of the public network and other of the private network, always keeping the average age of the students, in the case, around 16 years, contemplating an average of 60 students in each of the visits. Thus, it is concluded that the present study contributed substantially to the dissemination of knowledge concerning the photovoltaic solar generation, as well as the study of solar trackers, thus arousing the interest and curiosity of the students regarding the thematic approached.
Abstract: Green IT is a term that refers to the collective strategic and tactical practices that unswervingly condense the carbon footprint to a diminished proportion in an establishment’s computing procedures. This concept has been tightly knit with IT related organizations; hence it has been precluded to be applied within non-IT organizations in Sri Lanka. With the turn of the century, computing technologies have taken over commonplace activities in every nook and corner in Sri Lanka, which is still on the verge of moving forth in its march towards being a developed country. Hence, it needs to be recursively proven that non-IT industries are well-bound to adhere to ‘Green IT’ practices as well, in order to reduce their carbon footprint and move towards considering the practicality of implementing Green-IT practices within their work-arounds. There are several spheres that need to be taken into account in creating awareness of ‘Green IT’, such as the economic breach, technologies available, legislative bounds, community mind-set and many more. This paper tends to reconnoiter causes that currently restrain non-IT organizations from considering Green IT concepts. By doing so, it is expected to prove the beneficial providence gained by implementing this concept within the organization. The ultimate goal is to propose feasible ‘Green IT’ practices that could be implemented within the context of Sri Lankan non-IT sectors in order to ensure that organization’s sustainable growth towards a long term existence.
Abstract: The objective of this research work is to identify and analyze the significant corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices with an aim to improve the supply chain performance of automobile industry located at National Capital Region (NCR) of India. To achieve the objective, 6 CSR practices have been considered and analyzed using expert’s preference rating (EPR) approach. The considered CSR practices are namely, Top management and employee awareness about CSR (P1), Employee involvement in social and environmental problems (P2), Protection of human rights (P3), Waste reduction, energy saving and water conservation (P4), Proper visibility of CSR guidelines (P5) and Broad perception towards CSR initiatives (P6). The outcomes of this research may help mangers in decision making processes and framing polices for SCP implementation under CSR context.
Abstract: Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) performance of
iron and nitrogen co-doped porous carbon nanoparticles (Fe-NPC)
with various physical and (electro) chemical properties have been
investigated. Fe-NPC nanoparticles are synthesized via a facile
soft-templating procedure by using Iron (III) chloride hexa-hydrate as
iron precursor and aminophenol-formaldehyde resin as both carbon
and nitrogen precursor. Fe-NPC nanoparticles shows high surface area
(443.83 m2g-1), high pore volume (0.52 m3g-1), narrow mesopore size
distribution (ca. 3.8 nm), high conductivity (IG/ID=1.04), high kinetic
limiting current (11.71 mAcm-2) and more positive onset potential
(-0.106 V) compared to metal-free NPC nanoparticles (-0.295V)
which make it high efficient ORR metal-free catalysts in alkaline
solution. This study may pave the way of feasibly designing iron and
nitrogen containing carbon materials (Fe-N-C) for highly efficient
oxygen reduction electro-catalysis.
Abstract: In the automotive industry test drives are being conducted
during the development of new vehicle models or as a part of
quality assurance of series-production vehicles. The communication
on the in-vehicle network, data from external sensors, or internal
data from the electronic control units is recorded by automotive
data loggers during the test drives. The recordings are used for fault
analysis. Since the resulting data volume is tremendous, manually
analysing each recording in great detail is not feasible.
This paper proposes to use machine learning to support domainexperts
by preventing them from contemplating irrelevant data and
rather pointing them to the relevant parts in the recordings. The
underlying idea is to learn the normal behaviour from available
recordings, i.e. a training set, and then to autonomously detect
unexpected deviations and report them as anomalies.
The one-class support vector machine “support vector data description”
is utilised to calculate distances of feature vectors. SVDDSUBSEQ
is proposed as a novel approach, allowing to classify subsequences
in multivariate time series data. The approach allows to
detect unexpected faults without modelling effort as is shown with
experimental results on recordings from test drives.
Abstract: In the present work homogeneous silica film on
silicon was fabricated by colloidal silica sol. The silica sol precursor
with uniformly granular particle was derived by the alkaline
hydrolysis of tetraethoxyorthosilicate (TEOS) in presence of glycerol
template. The film was prepared by dip coating process. The
templated hetero-structured silica film was annealed at elevated
temperatures to generate nano- and meso porosity in the film. The
film was subsequently annealed at different temperatures to make it
defect free and abrasion resistant. The sol and the film were
characterized by the measurement of particle size distribution,
scanning electron microscopy, XRD, FTIR spectroscopy,
transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy,
measurement of the refractive index, thermal conductivity and
abrasion resistance. The porosity of the films decreased whereas
refractive index and dielectric constant of it `increased with the
increase in the annealing temperature. The thermal conductivity of
the films increased with the increase in the film thickness. The
developed porous silica film holds strong potential for use in
different areas.
Abstract: More and more governments around the world are
introducing e-government as a means of reducing costs, improving
services, saving time and increasing effectiveness and efficiency in
the public sector Therefore e-government has been identified as one
of the top priorities for Saudi government and all its agencies.
However, the adoption of e-government is facing many challenges
and barriers such as technological, cultural, organizational, and social
issues which must be considered and treated carefully by any
government contemplating its adoption. This paper reports on a pilot
study amongst online (e-ready) citizens to identify the challenges and
barriers that affect the adoption of e-government services especially
from their perspective in Saudi society. Based on the analysis of data
collected from an online survey the researcher was able to identify
some of the important barriers and challenges from the e-ready
citizen perspective. As a result, this study has generated a list of
possible strategies to move towards successful adoption of egovernment
services in Saudi Arabia.
Abstract: Deoxygenation of beef fat for the production of hydrogenated biodiesel is investigated in a high pressure continuous flow fixed bed reactor over palladium-supported mesoporous titania catalyst synthesized via a combined single-step sol-gel process with surfactant-assisted templating method (SATM). The catalyst possessed a mesoporous charactheristic with high surface area and narrow pore size distribution. The main products of all Pd/TiO2 catalysts are n-heptadecane (n-C17) and n-pentadecane (n-C15) resulting from decarbonylation reaction. Pd/TiO2 catalyst synthesized via a combined single-step sol-gel process with SATM (SSSG) gave higher activity and selectivity to the desired products when compared to IWI/SG-TiO2 and IWI/P25-TiO2, respectively. SSSG catalyst gave the average conversion up to 80-90 % and 80 % for the selectivity in diesel range hydrocarbons. This result may cause by the higher surface area and the ability in dispersion of palladium ion in mesoporous of TiO2 during sol-gel process.