This paper addresses the preparation of electrically conductive electrospun mats on a base of styrene-isoprene-styrene copolymer (SIS) and multiwall carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and their application as active sensing elements for the detection of vegetable oil impurities dispersed within water. The most uniform mats without beads were prepared using tetrahydrofuran (THF)/dimethyl formamide (DMF) 80:20 (v/v) as the solvent and 13 wt.% of SIS. The CNT content was 10 wt.%, which had the most pronounced changes in electrical resistivity upon sorption of the oil component. The sensors were prepared by deposition of the SIS/CNT layer onto gold electrodes through electrospinning and applied for sensing of oil dispersed in water for 50, 100, and 1000 ppm.

Fenton reactions that involve nano zero-valent iron (nZVI) have shown high promise in the removal of organic pollutants. In this work, nZVI stabilized with carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) was evaluated for drimaren red X-6BN (DRX-6BN, 10 mg/L) and bisphenol-a (BPA, 800 mg/L) removal. Oxidation reactions were conducted for removal of both compounds by varying nZVI/CMC concentration (0.01−5 g/L), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2, 0.01−0.1 g/L), and pH (3−9). DRX-6BN degradation rate was the highest (kinetic constant (kobs) = 4.622 h−1) when working at pH 3 and 3 g/L of nZVI/CMC. Increasing H2O2 concentration could not improve the reaction. For BPA, all the conditions tested showed removals of more than 96% with 0.02 g/L of H2O2. This result was compared with the activity of nZVI loaded in hydrophilic PVDF (Polyvinylidene fluoride) membranes by polyacrylic acid (PAA) to entrap nanoparticles to the membrane surface. As expected, the attachment of nZVI onto the membranes diminished nanoparticles’ acti... [more]

The Cu(II) adsorption from aqueous solutions by magnetic biochar obtained from pine needles has been studied by means of batch-type experiments. The biochar fibers have been magnetized prior (pncm: carbonized-magnetized pine needles) and after oxidation (pncom: carbonized-oxidized-magnetized pine needles) and have been used as adsorbents to study the presence of carboxylic moieties on the magnetization and following adsorption process. The effect of pH (2−10), initial metal concentration (10−5−9·10−3 mol·L−1) and contact time (0−60 min) has been studied by varying the respective parameter, and the adsorbents have been characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements prior and after Cu(II)-adsorption. FTIR measurements were performed to investigate the formation of surface species and XRD measurements to record possible solid phase formation and characterize formed solids, including the evaluation of their average crystal size. The data obtaine... [more]

Due to growing concerns of global warming, reducing carbon emissions has become one of the major tasks for developing countries to meet the national demand for energy policies. The objective of this study is to measure the energy consumption, carbon emission and economic-environmental efficiency in terms of the environmental performance of the top 20 industrial countries by employing a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model from 2013 to 2017. This study used the trilemma of energy efficiency, CO2 emission efficiency, and environmental efficiency, and also the contribution included the quantitative analysis of 20 industrial countries The results show that the energy efficiency of Australia, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Poland are the best performing countries, whereas Mexico, Indonesia, Russia, and Brazil are identified as least efficient among all 20 countries. Furthermore, Russia’s energy intensity has a maximum score while Poland has a minimum score. Additionally, in the case of CO... [more]

Aspergillus niger is a common contaminant in food industry, laboratories, and also a potential threat to biological works of art in museums. Cotton textiles have frequently been used in museums for canvas paintings. In the present project, the effect of Aspergillus niger on fluid flow rate of nanowollastonite-impregnated cotton textile specimens was investigated. Cotton specimens were impregnated with nanowollastonite (NW) suspension at four concentrations of 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% to be further compared with control specimens. Results showed that fluid flow in cotton textile was as high as 361.3 cm3·s−1 due to its high porous structure and very low compactness of fibers (low density). Impregnation with NW did not have a significant effect on fluid flow in cotton textile. Exposure to Aspergillus niger increased fluid flow in control specimens as a result of deterioration of cotton fibers. Exposure of NW-impregnated specimens at concentrations more than 20% to Aspergillus niger did not... [more]

Large-scale wind power integrated into power grids brings serious uncertainties and risks for power system safe operation, and it is imperative to evaluate power system security risk pertinent to high-level of uncertainties. In this paper, a comprehensive source−network−load probabilistic model, representing the typical uncertainties penetrated in power generation transmission consumption portion, is firstly set for power system operation. Afterwards an integrated LHS−CD approach based on the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) and Cholesky decomposition (CD) is tailored to effectively conduct the security risk assessment, in which the LHS is utilized to stratified sample the uncertainties of wind power and thermal power, transmission line outage, and load demands, while the CD part is adopted to address the correlations of uncertainties by rearranging the sampled matrix generated by LHS. Moreover, static voltage risk and transmission line overloaded risk index are properly defined for quan... [more]

Relay protection equipment is important to ensure the safe and stable operation of power systems. The risks should be evaluated, which are caused by the failure of relay protection. At present, the fault data and the fault status monitoring information are used to evaluate the failure risks of relay protection. However, there is a lack of attention to the information value of monitoring information in the normal operation condition. In order to comprehensively improve monitoring information accuracy and reduce, a generalized proportional hazard model (GPHM) is established to fully exploit the whole monitoring condition information during the whole operation process, not just the monitoring fault condition data, with the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) used to estimate the parameters of the GPHM. For solving the nonlinear equation in the process of parameter estimations, the adaptive homotopy algorithm is adopted, which could ensure the reversibility of the Jacobi matrix. Three test... [more]

Ice slurry is a potential secondary refrigerant for commercial refrigeration systems because of its remarkable thermal properties. It is necessary to optimize the heat transfer process of ice slurry to reduce the energy consumption of the refrigeration system. Thus, this study investigates the heat transfer performance of single-phase (aqueous solution) and two-phase (ice slurry) refrigerants in a straight horizontal tube. The numerical simulations for ice slurry were performed with ice mass fraction ranging from 5% to 20%. The effects of flow velocity and ice concentration on the heat transfer coefficient were examined. The results showed that heat transfer coefficient of ice slurry is considerably higher than those of single-phase flow, particularly at high flow velocity and ice content, where increase in heat transfer with a factor of two was observed. The present results confirmed that ice slurry heat transfer ability is considerably affected by flow velocity and ice concentration... [more]

Membrane technology has been widely applied for water treatment, while membrane fouling still remains a big challenge. The polysaccharides in extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) have been known as a significant type of foulant due to their high fouling propensity. However, polysaccharides have many varieties which definitely behave differently in membrane filtration. Therefore, in this study, different polysaccharides alginate sodium and xanthan gum were chosen to study their effects on membrane fouling in a wide concentration range. The results demonstrated that the filtration behaviors of alginate sodium and xanthan gum were completely different, which was due to their different molecular structures. Alginate had a small molecular weight and it was easy for alginate to penetrate membrane pores resulting in pore blocking. A series of concentrations of alginate including 5 mg/L, 10 mg/L, 20 mg/L, 30 mg/L, 40 mg/L, and 50 mg/L were examined and it was found that the permeate flux d... [more]

Repositories of historical tungsten mining tailings pose environmental risks, but are also potential resources for valuable metals. They still contain large tonnages of useful minerals and metals, reflecting the inefficient extraction methods and/or low metal prices at the time they were mined. The focus of this study is to evaluate the technical viability of reprocessing the tailings to recover some of the contained valuable minerals and metals, as well as reducing the negative environmental impact associated with the tailings. Geometallurgical studies were conducted on drill core samples taken from the Smaltjärnen tailings repository of the closed Yxsjöberg tungsten mine, Sweden. The collected samples were characterized physically, chemically, and mineralogically. Knelson concentrator dry low- and high-intensity magnetic separation methods were tested as potential beneficiation methods. The tailings are dominated by the −600 to +149 µm particles. The highest concentration of tungsten... [more]

The volatility of a new energy output leads to bidding bias when participating in the power market competition. A pumped storage power station is an ideal method of stabilizing new energy volatility. Therefore, wind power suppliers and pumped storage power stations first form wind storage joint ventures to participate in power market competition. At the same time, middlemen are introduced, constructing an upper-level game model (considering power producers and wind storage joint ventures) that forms equilibrium results of bidding competition in the wholesale and power distribution markets. Based on the equilibrium result of the upper-level model, a lower model is constructed to distribute the profits from wind storage joint ventures. The profits of each wind storage joint venture, wind power supplier, and pumped storage power station are obtained by the Nash negotiation and the Shapely value method. Finally, a case study is conducted. The results show that the wind storage joint ventur... [more]

Aiming at addressing the problem that the faults in axial piston pumps are complex and difficult to effectively diagnose, an axial piston pump fault diagnosis method that is based on the combination of Mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) and the extreme learning machine (ELM) is proposed. Firstly, a sound sensor is used to realize contactless sound signal acquisition of the axial piston pump. The wavelet packet default threshold denoises the original acquired sound signals. Afterwards, windowing and framing are added to the de-noised sound signals. The MFCC voiceprint characteristics of the processed sound signals are extracted. The voiceprint characteristics are divided into a training sample set and test sample set. ELM models with different numbers of neurons in the hidden layers are established for training and testing. The relationship between the number of neurons in the hidden layer and the recognition accuracy rate is obtained. The ELM model with the optimal number of hi... [more]

Online prediction of key parameters (e.g., process indices) is essential in many industrial processes because online measurement is not available. Data-based modeling is widely used for parameter prediction. However, model mismatch usually occurs owing to the variation of the feed properties, which changes the process dynamics. The current neural network online prediction models usually use fixed activation functions, and it is not easy to perform dynamic modification. Therefore, a few methods are proposed here. Firstly, an extreme learning machine (ELM)-based single-layer feedforward neural network with activation-function learning (AFL−SLFN) is proposed. The activation functions of the ELM are adjusted to enhance the ELM network structure and accuracy. Then, a hybrid model with adaptive weights is established by using the AFL−SLFN as a sub-model, which improves the prediction accuracy. To track the process dynamics and maintain the generalization ability of the model, a multiscale mo... [more]

COREX is one of the commercialized smelting reduction ironmaking processes. It mainly includes two reactors, i.e., a (reduction) shaft furnace (SF) and a melter gasifier (MG). In comparison with the conventional blast furnace (BF), the COREX MG is not only equipped with a more complicated top charging system consisting of one gimbal distributor for coal and eight flap distributors for direct reduction iron (DRI), but also the growth mechanism of its burden pile is in a developing phase, rather than that in a fully-developed phase in a BF. Since the distribution of charged burden plays a crucial role in determining the gas flow and thus in achieving a stable operation, it is of considerable importance to investigate the burden distribution influenced by the charging system of COREX MG. In the present work, a mathematical model is developed for predicting the burden distribution in terms of burden layer structure and radial ore/coal ratio within the COREX MG. Based on the burden pile wid... [more]

Improperly treated or directly discharged into the environment, wastewater containing dyes can destroy the quality of water bodies and pollute the ecological environment. The removal of dye wastewater is urgent and essential. In this study, corn stalk was pyrolyzed to pristine biochar (CSBC) in a limited oxygen atmosphere and modified using KOH and H3PO4 (KOH-CSBC, H3PO4-CSBC, respectively). The biochars were characterized by surface area and pore size, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), as well as their behavior in adsorbing methylene blue (MB). Results indicated that the pore structure of CSBC became more developed after modification by KOH. Meanwhile, H3PO4-CSBC contained more functional groups after activation treatment. The pseudo-second-order kinetic and the Langmuir adsorption isotherm represented the adsorption process well. The maximum MB adsorption capacity of CSBC, KOH-CSBC, and H3PO4-CSBC was 43.1... [more]

This study systematically investigates the pressure fluctuation in the riser of a dual interconnected circulating fluidized bed (CFB) representing a 10 kWth cold-flow model (CFM) of a chemical-looping combustion (CLC) system. Specifically, a single-species system (SSS) and a binary-mixtures system (BMS) of particles with different sizes and densities were utilized. The pressure fluctuation was analyzed using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) method. The effect of introducing a second particle, changing the inventory, composition (i.e., 5, 10 to 20 wt.%), particle size ratio, and fluidization velocity were investigated. For typical SSS experiments, the results were similar to those scarcely reported in the literature, where the pressure fluctuation intensity was influenced by varying the initial operating conditions. The pressure fluctuations of BMS were investigated in detail and compared with those obtained from SSS experiments. BMS exhibited different behaviour; it had intense pressur... [more]

Semicontinuous distillation is a new separation technology for distilling multicomponent mixtures. This process was designed using design methodologies with heuristic components that evolved over twenty years. However, the fundamental philosophy of these design methodologies, which involves guessing, checking and then using a black-box optimization procedure to find the values of the design variables to meet some performance criteria, has not changed. Mainly, to address the problem of having a heuristic simulation termination criterion in the black-box optimization phase, the single shooting method for semicontinuous distillation design was proposed in this study. We envision that this is a first step in the transformation of the semicontinuous distillation design process for obtaining optimal designs. We demonstrate the application of this method using two case studies, which involve the separation of hexane, heptane and octane.

Two advanced removal methods (adsorption and photocatalysis) were compared for the elimination of an ethoxylated alkylphenol (nonylphenol polyethylene glycol, NPEG). For the adsorption process, zeolites were used in their natural state, and the process was characterized by DRX (X-ray diffraction) and SEM−EDS (Scanning electron microscopy). The analysis of the results of the adsorption kinetics was carried out using different isotherms to interpret the removal capacity of zeolites. The Temkin kinetic model better predicted the experimental data and was satisfactorily adjusted to models of pseudo-second order (PSO). On the other hand, for photocatalysis, nano-particles of Ag (silver) were deposited on titanium oxide (TiO2) Degussa-P25 by photo-deposition, and the catalyst was characterized by diffuse reflectance and SEM−EDS. The data obtained using the two removal techniques were analyzed by UV−Vis (ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry) and total organic carbon (TOC). The kinetic data w... [more]

A sequential scheduling method for multi-objective, flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) work calendars is proposed. Firstly, the sequential scheduling problem for the multi-objective FJSP under mixed work calendars was described. Secondly, two key technologies to solve such a problem were proposed: one was a time-reckoning technology based on the machine’s work calendar, the other was a sequential scheduling technology. Then, a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm with an elite strategy (NSGA-II) was designed to solve the problem. In the algorithm, a two-segment encoding method was used to encode the chromosome. A two-segment crossover and mutation operator were used with an improved strategy of genetic operators therein to ensure feasibility of the chromosomes. Time-reckoning technology was used to calculate start and end time of each process. The sequential scheduling technology was used to implement sequential scheduling. The case study shows that the proposed method can... [more]

Herpes simplex viruses (HSVs) are common human pathogens belonging to the subfamily alpha-herpesvirinae that trigger severe infections in neonates and immunocompromised patients. After primary infection, the HSVs establish a lifelong latent infection in the vegetative neural ganglia of their hosts. HSV infections contribute to substantial disease burden in humans as well as in newborns. Despite a fair number of drugs being available for the treatment of HSV infections, new, effective, and safe antiviral agents, exerting different mechanisms of action, are urgently required, mainly due to the increasing number of resistant strains. Accumulating pieces of evidence have suggested that structurally diverse compounds from marine algae possess promising anti-HSV potentials. Several studies have documented a variety of algal polysaccharides possessing anti-HSV activity, including carrageenan and fucan. This review aimed to compile previous anti-HSV studies on marine algae−derived compounds, e... [more]

The objective of this paper was to study the transport and deposition of non-spherical oblate and prolate shaped particles for the flow in a tube with a radial suction velocity field, with an application to experiments related to composite manufacturing. The transport of the non- spherical particles is governed by a convective diffusion equation for the probability density function, also called the Fokker−Planck equation, which is a function of the position and orientation angles. The flow is governed by the Stokes equation with an additional radial flow field. The concentration of particles is assumed to be dilute. In the solution of the Fokker−Planck equation, an expansion for small rotational Peclet numbers and large translational Peclet numbers is considered. The solution can be divided into an outer region and two boundary layer regions. The outer boundary layer region is governed by an angle-averaged convective-diffusion equation. The solution in the innermost boundary layer regi... [more]

In this research, structural, magnetic properties and photocatalytic activity of cobalt ferrite spinel (CoFe2O4) nanoparticles were studied. The samples were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electronic microscopy (TEM), Brunauer−Emmett−Teller (BET), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and UV-visible diffused reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) analysis. The XRD analysis revealed the formation of the single-phase CoFe2O4 with a cubic structure that is annealed at 500−700 °C in 3 h. The optical band gap energy for CoFe2O4 was determined to be in the range of 1.57−2.03 eV. The effect on the magnetic properties of cobalt ferrites was analyzed by using a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The particle size and the saturation magnetization of cobalt ferrite nanoparticles increased with increasing annealing temperature. The photocatalytic activity of CoFe2O4 nanoparticles was investigated... [more]

The secondary settling tank is an essential unit for the biochemical treatment of domestic sewage, and its operational effect influences the quality of effluent. Under the influence of the confluence of rainwater and sewage, wastewater use habits, etc., the inflow of the secondary sedimentation tank changes over time. In this paper, OpenFOAM, an open-source computational fluid dynamics package, was used to study the dynamic behaviors of solid−liquid two-phase flow in the tank under influent flow rate variations. A coupled method including a mixture model, drift equation and a dynamic boundary method is proposed. Numerical investigations were carried out for a 2D axisymmetric sedimentation tank using 12 cases. With increasing influent flow rate, sludge accumulates continuously in the bottom left side of the tank, sludge hopper, and inlet; the sludge blanket thickness near the right end of the tank increases continuously; and the sludge concentration in the tank approximately linearly in... [more]

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been firmly established as a fundamental discipline to advancing research on energy engineering. The major progresses achieved during the last two decades both on software modelling capabilities and hardware computing power have resulted in considerable and widespread CFD interest among scientist and engineers. Numerical modelling and simulation developments are increasingly contributing to the current state of the art in many energy engineering aspects, such as power generation, combustion, wind energy, concentrated solar power, hydro power, gas and steam turbines, fuel cells, and many others. This review intends to provide an overview of the CFD applications in energy and thermal engineering, as a presentation and background for the Special Issue “CFD Applications in Energy Engineering Research and Simulation” published by Processes in 2020. A brief introduction to the most significant reviews that have been published on the particular topics is... [more]

Including ecologic and environmental aspects in chemical engineering requires new methods for process design and optimization. In this work, a hydroformylation process of long-chain olefines is investigated. A thermomorphic multiphase system is employed that is homogeneous at reaction conditions and biphasic at lower temperatures for catalyst recycling. In an attempt to replace the toxic polar solvent N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF), ecologically benign alternatives are selected using a screening approach. Economic process optimization is conducted for DMF and two candidate solvents. It is found that one of the green candidates performs similarly well as the standard benchmark solvent DMF, without being toxic. Therefore, the candidate has the potential to replace it.