The bubble bursting process existing in the particle flow is a complex gas-liquid-solid three-phase coupling dynamic problem. The bubble bursting mechanism, including dynamic characteristics and wall effects, is not clear. To address the above matters, we present a modeling method for the piecewise linear interface calculation-volume of fluid (PLIC-VOF) based bubble burst. The bubble bursting process near or on the wall is analyzed to reveal the dynamic characteristics of bubble bursting and obtain the effect of a bubble bursting on the surrounding flow field. Then a particle image velocimetry (PIV) based self-developed experimental observation platform is established, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified. Research results indicate that, in the high-speed turbulent environment, a large pressure difference existed in the bubble tail, which induces the bubble burst to occur; the distance between the wall and the bubble decreases; the higher the flow velocity is, the l... [more]

Avocado seeds are an agroindustrial residue widely produced in Mexico that are causing various environmental problems due to their accumulation. The evaluation of avocado residues to recover biopolymers by microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and the characterization of avocado starch properties were studied in the present work. A central-composite design was used to optimize the MAE process. Moreover, a comparison was performed between MAE non-isothermal mode (NO−ISO) and conventional extraction. Starch optimization by MAE was obtained at 161.09 °C for 56.23 min with an extraction yield of 49.52% ± 0.69%, while with NO−ISO at 161 °C was obtained 45.75% ± 2.18%. Conventional extraction was 39.04% ± 2.22%. Compared with conventional starch, MAE starch showed similar proprieties and molecular spectra. In contrast, MAE starch showed high solubility, low water absorption capacity, a non-granular structure with small particle size (<2 µm) and polydispersity of fragments at different sizes... [more]

A comprehensive energy and exergoeconomic analysis of a novel transcritical refrigeration cycle (NTRC) is presented. A second ejector is introduced into the conventional refrigeration system for the utilization of the gas-cooler waste heat. The thermodynamic properties of the working fluid are estimated by the database of REFPROP 9, and a FORTRAN program is used to solve the system governing equations. Exergy, energy, and exergoeconomic analyses of the two cycles are carried out to predict the exergetic destruction rate and efficiency of the systems. The optimum gas cooler working pressure will be determined for both cycles. A comprehensive comparison is made between the obtained results of the conventional and the new cycles. An enhancement of approximately 30% in the coefficient of performance (COP) of the new cycle was found in comparison to the value of the conventional cycle. In addition, the results of the analysis indicated a reduction in the overall exergy destruction rate and... [more]

The current research work is an endeavor to study the chemical profiling and enzyme-inhibition potential of different polarity solvent (n-hexane, dichloromethane—DCM and methanol—MeOH) extracts from the aerial and stem parts of Buxus papillosa C.K. Schneid. All the extracts were analyzed for HPLC-PDA phenolic quantification, while both (aerial and stem) DCM extracts were studied for UHPLC-MS phytochemical composition. The inhibitory activity against the clinically important enzymes having crucial role in different pathologies like skin diseases (tyrosinase), inflammatory problems (lipoxygenase—LOX) and diabetes mellitus (α-amylase) were studied using standard in vitro bioassays. The DCM extracts upon UHPLC-MS analysis conducted in both negative and positive ionization modes has led to the tentative identification of 52 important secondary metabolites. Most of these belonged to the alkaloid, flavonoid, phenolic and triterpenoid classes. The HPLC-PDA polyphenolic quantification identifie... [more]

Various studies to improve the thermal performance of flat plate solar collector (FPSC) solar water heater have been conducted, and more are currently in progress. This study aims to review existing methods on thermal performance enhancement for FPSC and discuss on heat-transfer enhancement using vibration and its potential application for FPSC. Ten methods for improving thermal performance are identified, which include applications of nanofluids, absorber coatings, phase change materials (PCM), thermal performance enhancers, FPSC design modifications, polymer materials, heat loss reduction, mini and micro channel and heat-transfer enhancement using vibration. An examination of heat-transfer enhancement using vibration in low frequency ranges for an evacuated-tube solar collector (ETSC) solar water heater system showed that it can potentially achieve heat-transfer enhancement of up to 78%. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of research on the applications of heat-transfer enhancement... [more]

The basic principles of geological risk calculation through probability of success (PoS) are mostly applied to numerical estimation of additional hydrocarbon existence in proven reservoirs or potential hydrocarbon discoveries in selected geological regional subsurface volumes. It can be adapted and validated for a comprehensive input dataset collected in the selected petroleum province, by dividing up geological events into several probability categories and classes. Such methodology has been widely developed in the last decades in the Croatian subsurface—mostly in the Croatian Pannonian Basin System (CPBS). Through the adaptation of geological categories, it was also applied in hybrid, i.e., stochastic, models developed in the CPBS (Drava Depression), mostly for inclusion of porosity values. As the robustness of this methodology is very high, it was also modified to estimate the influence of water-flooding in increasing oil recovery in some proven Neogene sandstone reservoirs in the C... [more]

The fluid dynamic and thermal performance of three nanofluids containing aluminum oxide, copper oxide, and silicon dioxide nanoparticles dispersed in 60:40 ethylene glycol and water base fluid as a coolant in a microchannel heatsink are compared here by two methods. The first is a simple analytical analysis, which is acceptable for very low nanoparticle volumetric concentration (1−2%). The second method is a rigorous three-dimensional finite volume conjugate heat transfer and fluid dynamic model based upon a constant heat flux boundary condition, which is applicable for cooling electronic chips. The fluids’ thermophysical properties employed in the modeling are based on empirically derived, temperature dependent correlations from the literature. The analytical and computational results for pressure drop and Nusselt number were in good agreement with the nanofluids showing a maximum difference of 4.1% and 2.9%, respectively. Computations cover the practical range of Reynolds number from... [more]

In this study, electro-oxidation (EOx) and in situ generation of ferrate ions [Fe(VI)] were tested to treat water contaminated with Blue BR dye (BBR) using a boron-doped diamond (BDD) anode. Two electrolytic media (0.1 M HClO4 and 0.05 M Na2SO4) were evaluated for the BDD, which simultaneously produced oxygen radicals (•OH) and [Fe(VI)]. The generation of [Fe(VI)] was characterized by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and the effect of different current intensity values (e.g., 7 mA cm−2, 15 mA cm−2, and 30 mA cm−2) was assessed during BBR degradation tests. The discoloration of BBR was followed by UV-Vis spectrophotometry. When the EOx process was used alone, only 78% BBR discoloration was achieved. The best electrochemical discoloration conditions were found using 0.05 M Na2SO4 and 30 mA cm−2. Using these conditions, overall BBR discoloration values up to 98%, 95%, and 87% with 12 mM, 6 mM, and 1 mM of FeSO4, respectively, were achieved. In the case of chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction, th... [more]

In this study, we show the successful application of different model-based approaches for the maximizing of macrolactin D production by Paenibacillus polymyxa. After four initial cultivations, a family of nonlinear dynamic biological models was determined automatically and ranked by their respective Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). The best models were then used in a multi-model setup for robust product maximization. The experimental validation shows the highest product yield attained compared with the identification runs so far. In subsequent fermentations, the online measurements of CO2 concentration, base consumption, and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) were used for model improvement. After model extension using expert knowledge, a single superior model could be identified. Model-based state estimation with a sigma-point Kalman filter (SPKF) was based on online measurement data, and this improved model enabled nonlinear real-time product maximization. The optimization increased... [more]

Companies accumulate a large amount of production process data during product manufacturing. Sequence data from the mining production process can enable a company to evaluate the manufacturing process, to find the key factors affecting product quality, and to improve product quality. However, the production process mainly exists in the form of text. To solve this problem, we propose a novel frequent pattern mining algorithm (EABMC) based on the text context semantics and rules of the manufacturing process to remove redundant sequences and to obtain good mining results. In this algorithm, first, we use embeddings from language models (ELMo ) to improve the process of text similarity matching and to classify similar semantic processes into one class. Then, the manufacturing process unit (MPU) is proposed by extracting the characteristics of manufacturing process data according to the constraints of the manufacturing process and other conditions. The above two steps cause the complex manu... [more]

Steelmaking involves high-temperature processing. At high temperatures mass transport is usually the rate limiting step. In steelmaking there are several mass transport phenomena occurring simultaneously such as melting and dissolution of additions, decarburization, refining (De-P and De-S), etc. In ladle metallurgy, refining is one of the most important operations. To improve the rate of mass transfer bottom gas injection is applied. In the past, most relationships between the mass transfer coefficient (mtc) and gas injection have been associated with stirring energy as the dominant variable. The current review analyzes a broad range of physical and mathematical modeling investigations to expose that a large number of variables contribute to define the final value of the mtc. Since bottom gas injection attempts to improve mixing phenomena in the whole slag/steel system, our current knowledge shows limitations to improve mixing conditions in both phases simultaneously. Nevertheless, so... [more]

Modelling techniques allow certain processes to be characterized and optimized without the need for experimentation. One of the crucial steps in vinegar production is the biotransformation of ethanol into acetic acid by acetic bacteria. This step has been extensively studied by using two predictive models: first-principles models and black-box models. The fact that first-principles models are less accurate than black-box models under extreme bacterial growth conditions suggests that the kinetic equations used by the former, and hence their goodness of fit, can be further improved. By contrast, black-box models predict acetic acid production accurately enough under virtually any operating conditions. In this work, we trained black-box models based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) of the multilayer perceptron (MLP) type and containing a single hidden layer to model acetification. The small number of data typically available for a bioprocess makes it rather difficult to identify the m... [more]

The drive at the center of gravity (DCG) principle has been adopted in computer numerical control (CNC) machines and industrial robots that require heavy-duty and quick feeds. Using this principle requires accurate corrections of positioning errors. Conventional error compensation methods may cause vibrations and unstable control performances due to the delay between compensation and motor motion. This paper proposes a new method to reduce the positioning errors of the dual-driving gantry-type machine tool (DDGTMT), namely, a typical DCG-principle-based machine tool. An error prediction method is proposed to characterize errors online. An algorithm is proposed to quickly and accurately compensate the errors of the DDGTMT. Experiment results verify that the non-delay error compensation method proposed in this paper can effectively improve the accuracy of the DDGTMT.

The global burden of cancer is on the rise, and as a result, the number of therapeutics administered for chemotherapy is increasing. The occupational exposure, recalcitrant nature and ecotoxicological toxicity of these therapeutics, referred to as antineoplastic (ANP) drugs, have raised concerns about their safe remediation. This review provides an overview of the environmental source of ANPs agents, with emphasis on the currently used remediation approaches. Outpatient excreta, hospital effluents, and waste from pharmaceutical industries are the primary source of ANP waste. The current review describes various biotic and abiotic methods used in the remediation of ANP drugs in the environment. Abiotic methods often generate transformation products (TPs) of unknown toxicity. In this light, obtaining data on the environmental toxicity of ANPs and its TPs is crucial to determine their toxic effect on the ecosystem. We also discuss the biodegradation of ANP drugs using monoculture of funga... [more]