In modern high-volume industries, the serial production line (SPL) is of growing importance due to the inexorable increase in the complexity of manufacturing systems and the associated production costs. Optimal decisions regarding buffer size and the selection of components when designing and implementing an SPL can be difficult, often requiring complex analytical models, which can be difficult to conceive and construct. Here, we propose a model to evaluate and optimize the design of an SPL, integrating numerical simulation with artificial intelligence (AI). Numerous studies relating to the design of SPL systems have been published, but few have considered the simultaneous consideration of a number of decision variables. Indeed, the authors have been unable to locate in the published literature even one work that integrated the selection of components with the optimization of buffer sizes into a single framework. In this research, a System of Integrated Agents Numerical Optimization (S... [more]

Because of the existence of composite faults, which consist of both short-out and eccentricity faults, the characteristics of the output voltage and internal magnetic field of aviation generators are less different than those of single short-out faults; this causes the eccentricity fault to be difficult to identify. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a fault diagnosis method using an enhanced fireworks algorithm (EnFWA) to optimize a deep belief network (DBN). The aviation generator model is built according to the finite element method (FEM), whereas the output of different combinations of composite faults are obtained using simulations. The EnFWA algorithm is used to train and optimize the DBN network to obtain the best structure. Meanwhile, an extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier performs fault diagnosis and classification on the test data. The diagnosis results show that a pinpoint accuracy can be achieved using the proposed method in the diagnosis of composite... [more]

The yields of chemical reactions are highly dependent on the mixing pattern between reactants. Herein, we report the modification of a meso-micromixing interaction reaction model which is applied in batch reactors by leveraging the flow characteristics in the continuous reactors. Both experimental and model-predicted yields were compared using the classical Villermaux−Dushman method in a self-designed split and recombination reactor. This modified model significantly reduced the error in predicted product yields from approximately 15% to within 3%, compared to a model containing the micromixing term only. The effects of flow rates and reactor structure parameters on mixing performance were analyzed. We found that increasing flow rates and the degree of twist in the mixing element’s grooves, as well as decreasing the cross-sectional area of grooves, improved mixing performance. The optimization of reactor flow rates and structural parameters was achieved by combining Gaussian process re... [more]

The empirical formula is one of the traditional methods used for predicting ground deformation settlement caused by tunnel excavation. Due to its rationality and simplicity, the Peck formula is widely used for predicting surface subsidence. However, due to its limitations, it is necessary to modify it when predicting surface settlement caused by tunnel excavation in different strata. In this paper, a correction formula for the width coefficient of a tunnel surface settlement slot is derived from the Peck formula by taking into account the theory of strata slip cracks. Values are calculated using the correction formula and compared with measured data to verify the effectiveness of the correction formula. The main conclusions are: (1) The position corresponding to the width of the settlement in the Peck curve is the point where the formation is most prone to slip cracking. (2) In the general shallow buried case, the settlement groove width coefficient K and the internal friction angle φ... [more]

The pressure drop and conveying stability caused by the bend significantly affect the pneumatic conveying process of stiff shotcrete, which is the key to solving the problem of long-distance transportation. In this paper, the effects of different air velocities (32 m/s, 36 m/s, 40 m/s), water-cement ratios (0.1, 0.2, and 0.3), and bending-diameter ratios (4, 12, and 20) on the pressure drop of the elbow R1 and conveying stability R2 are studied using the response surface method. The conveying stability is characterized by the pressure variation coefficient (C.V). The response surface graph aids in the intuitive analysis of the effects of these variables. The results show that the impact of air velocity on R1 and R2 is exceptionally significant, and the interaction of each factor on the response value is analyzed. The response value and the quadratic polynomial regression equation between the various factors are obtained in addition to the flow characteristics of stiff shotcrete under d... [more]

Composting has been recognized as a sustainable technology to treat and manage organic waste [...]

The objective of this study is to analyze feeder loss minimization and load balance under given constrains. Effective methods are required for feeder switching/reconfiguration. Feeder switching is a mixed-integer large-scale combinatorial problem for optimization, not easily solvable with classical optimization techniques, especially involving a great number of switches. This paper proposes a fuzzy indexing algorithm for feeder switching, with membership functions defined for switches such as thermometers or indices. The optimal switches can be determined through fuzzy index operations. With membership functions defined, the developed method used numerical operations for indices instead of the “set” operation or the min-max operations of traditional fuzzy algorithms. The optimization problem becomes a simple numeric calculation instead of a large-scale sorting problem and is much faster than most algorithms. It greatly reduces the computation time and enhances efficiency, which is suit... [more]

Diethyldithiocarbamate (DDTC) is employed in the sulfide ore flotation process due to its excellent collection performance. Herein, we investigated the interfacial adsorption behavior of DDTC on the four main mineral phases of high-sulfur residue: sulfur, pyrite, sphalerite, and lead sulfate. The adsorption behavior of DDTC and H2O, namely, the adsorption structure and the energy and electron localization function cross section, were explored using density function theory calculation. The results were helpful in constructing a coadsorption model of DDTC and H2O, which was validated by pure mineral flotation and characterization of Fourier transform infrared spectra. The coadsorption model indicated that the adsorption of DDTC on sulfur, sphalerite, and lead sulfate was weak with physical bonding, while its adsorption on pyrite was strong with chemical bonding. Practical bench-scale high-sulfur residue flotation was performed, and the result was different from that obtained from pure mi... [more]

The evaluation of flotation reagents performs an important role in the selection and green application of reagents. The green indexes and effect indexes of flotation collectors were selected by data literature method, system analysis method, mathematical model method, and qualitative and quantitative analysis method, and the green evaluation system of flotation collectors, flotation effect evaluation system, and comprehensive evaluation system of flotation collectors were established. The normalization method and expert evaluation methods were adopted to obtain the grade classification of quantitative and qualitative indicators, respectively. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to determine the weight of secondary indicators and tertiary indicators of the evaluation system and the weight of indicators at a lower level. Applying the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE), the trapezoidal function is selected to determine the index affiliation, the index system score is calculate... [more]

This study was conducted in order to study the effect of different concentrations of lead pollution on the photosynthetic characteristics and growth of Miscanthus floridulus, and to reveal its photosynthetic adaptability to lead stress. The differences of gas exchange parameters, chlorophyll fluorescence characteristics and photosynthetic pigment of two Miscanthus floridulus populations, one population from Boluo an uncontaminated site, and another population from Dabaoshan, a mine site, were compared and studied through nutrient solution culture experiments treated with heavy metal lead (Pb) in green house. The results showed that (1) under Pb stress, the net photosynthetic rate (Pn), transpiration rate (Tr), stomatal conductance (Gs), intercellular carbon dioxide concentration (Ci), and chlorophyll content (Chl) of the leaves of the two populations decreased in different amplitude. Under moderate and severe Pb stress (80 mg·L−1, 120 mg·L−1, 240 mg·L−1), the plant biomass of non-minin... [more]

A landslide is a type of natural disaster that has the highest frequency, the widest distribution and the heaviest losses worldwide; landslides seriously threaten human life and property and major engineering facilities. Therefore, it is important to improve landslide displacement prediction technology to avoid and mitigate landslide disasters. A landslide displacement prediction method based on a chaotic Gaussian mutation sparrow search algorithm-optimised BP neural network (CG-SSA-BP) is proposed to address the problems of the traditional sparrow search algorithm (SSA)-optimised BP (SSA-BP) neural network; it tends to fall into local optima, and it has slow convergence and a low prediction accuracy for landslide displacement prediction. This paper takes the Baishui River landslide in the Three Gorges reservoir area as the research object, and the double exponential smoothing (DES) method is used to decompose the landslide displacement into a trend term and a periodic term to solve th... [more]

The traditional charging pile management system usually only focuses on the basic charging function, which has problems such as single system function, poor user experience, and inconvenient management. In this paper, the battery energy storage technology is applied to the traditional EV (electric vehicle) charging piles to build a new EV charging pile with integrated charging, discharging, and storage; Multisim software is used to build an EV charging model in order to simulate the charge control guidance module. On this basis, combined with the research of new technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, embedded systems, mobile Internet, and big data, new design and construction methods of the energy storage charging pile management system for EV are explored. Moreover, K-Means clustering analysis method is used to analyze the charging habit. The functions such as energy storage, user management, equipment management, transaction management, and big data analysis ca... [more]

Containers are used by an increasing number of Internet service providers to deploy their applications in multi-access edge computing (MEC) systems. Although container-based virtualization technologies significantly increase application availability, they may suffer expensive communication overhead and resource use imbalances. However, so far there has been a scarcity of studies to conquer these difficulties. In this paper, we design a workflow-based mathematical model for applications built upon interdependent multitasking composition, formulate a multi-objective combinatorial optimization problem composed of two subproblems—graph partitioning and multi-choice vector bin packing, and propose several joint task-containerization-and -container-placement methods to reduce communication overhead and balance multi-type computing resource utilization. The performance superiority of the proposed algorithms is demonstrated by comparison with the state-of-the-art task and container scheduling... [more]

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) provides internet connectivity for instruments, digital machines, and any other manufactured object to enable intelligent industrial operations to achieve high productivity. Securing communications between IIoT devices remains a critical and challenging issue due to the resource-constrained and processing capabilities of sensing devices. Moreover, the traditional group shared key might implement complex mathematical operations that are not suitable for the limited recourse capability of the IIoT device. Furthermore, the standard Diffie−Hellman (DH) and elliptic curve Diffie−Hellman (ECDH), which are the most suited for tiny devices, only work between a pair of IIoT devices, while they are not designed to work among a group of IIoT devices. This paper proposes an authenticated group shared key (AGSK) mechanism that allows a set of industrial objects to establish a common session key over the IIoT. The proposed AGSK utilizes the combiner for the h... [more]

The effluents generated by the tannery industry have a high content of chromium and other toxic elements, representing a potential threat to ecosystems. An eco-friendly alternative to treat these effluents is the use of microorganisms, such as fungi, with the capacity to biosorb heavy metals. The present work aims to determine the effect of the molasses concentration, pH variation, and time on the removal of total chromium using the filamentous fungus Trichoderma spp. An experimental design was adopted using pH (4 and 6), concentrations of molasses (0.5 and 1%), and time (8 and 12 days) as independent variables. The Trichoderma inoculum was constant in all the treatments. The different treatments were evaluated after 0, 8, and 12 days by taking 50 mL of sample from each bioreactor. The chromium concentration was subsequently determined in each sample. The results show that treatment 3 (1% molasses and pH 4) showed higher chromium removal after both 8 and 12 days. The concentrations of... [more]

Crude oil, Bitcoin, and carbon dioxide emissions are major issues that are significantly impacting the global economy and environment. These three issues are complexly interlinked, with profound economic and environmental implications. In this study, we explore the correlation among these three issues and attempt to understand the influence of crude oil and Bitcoin on carbon dioxide emissions. We created a novel approach, named quantile mediation analysis, which blends mediation regression with quantile regression, enabling us to explore the influence of Brent crude oil on carbon dioxide emissions by considering the mediating impact of Bitcoin. According to the findings from using our new approach, the impact of Brent crude oil on carbon dioxide emissions is partly mediated by Bitcoin, and the association between Brent crude oil and carbon dioxide emissions involves both direct and indirect effects. Since the carbon dioxide generated by the extraction of crude oil and Bitcoin has a gre... [more]

Rapeseed meal (RM) is produced in large quantities as a byproduct of oil extraction from rapeseeds. However, the efficient utilization of RM as animal feed is limited by its low metabolizable energy, poor palatability, and high levels of fiber and anti-nutritional components. Here, we investigate the potential of enriching RM with single-cell protein through fermentation with conventional and unconventional yeasts. The process of simultaneous saccharification and fermentation improved the parameters of the waste biomass, especially the protein content, while reducing the amount of crude fiber and enhancing the biotransformation of isoflavone compounds present in the waste. Fermentation yielded the highest protein gain for the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Ethanol Red strain (ΔN = 2.38%) at a biomass load of 12.5 g and for Scheffersomyces stipitis (ΔN = 2.34%) at an enzyme dose of 0.125 mL/10 g DM. The crude fiber content (CF) was reduced by 2.55−7.18%. The simultaneous saccharification and... [more]

Most of the traditional hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) choose to optimize the transmission ratio parameters, and the parameter changes of the whole vehicle and other components are only calculated as fixed values. It is difficult to give consideration to the optimization of the economy and power of hybrid vehicles. Therefore, the research proposes to build the transmission ratio, the required power of the vehicle’s working mode, and other models through the dynamic analysis. The parameters of the whole vehicle are optimized on the basis of parameter matching. At the same time, this paper chooses to adopt a hybrid optimization algorithm, combining particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA). The weighted average method and constraint method are used to design the fitness function. The simulation experiment is carried out by Cruise software and MATLAB. Compare the iterative fitness of the PSO-GA algorithm with the traditional PSO and GA algorithm. It can be concluded th... [more]

The problem of CO2 waste in the atmosphere is a major concern, and methods of CO2 utilization are being currently developed. In the present work, a plasma-catalytic process is applied for CO2 dissociation. A series of MgO and CeO2-containing catalysts were synthesized, and the samples were characterized by: a low-temperature N2 adsorption-desorption analysis, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, temperature-programmed desorption of CO2, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. It was stated that under dielectric barrier discharge conditions, the catalyst surface, composition, and phase content remain unchanged. The superior catalytic activity of the MgCe-Al sample is attributed to the combination of weak basic sites and oxygen vacancies on the catalyst surface.

In tidal two-way contra-rotating units, significant differences in performance often occur when arranging the front and rear impellers, which requires an optimized design of the impellers. To solve this problem, by reducing the blade inlet and outlet angles, the impact of different blade angles on the performance of two-way pump−turbines and the internal flow was explored, and the effects of the blade inlet angle of the impellers on the performance of the counter-rotating pump were obtained. Afterward, the streamline and vorticity of the two-stage impeller at different angles were analyzed. The results show that different blade angles will have a certain impact on the internal flow of the two-way pump−turbine. Different blade outlet angles have a significant impact. The variation in different inlet blade angles is not significant for the vorticity changes in the front impeller and rear impeller. In addition, changes in the outlet blade angle will have an impact on the location of LE im... [more]

Multivariate analysis can be used to study industrial process data exhibiting collinearity between variables. Such data can often be collected into conceptually meaningful groups or blocks. While data blocks may appear intuitive (e.g., raw material properties vs. process parameters), such blocking is sometimes much more subjective. The novelty of this work lies in the investigation of the impact of data blocking on the subsequent analysis. To our knowledge, no such investigation can be found in the literature. To fill this gap, we analyze the impact of grouping data from 10 Canadian concrete plants in which multiple blocking alternatives are considered. The analysis is performed via principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the matrix and also via consensus principal component analysis (CPCA). The data grouping options are as follows: (1) all data combined into a single block, (2) grouped according to the factory, (3) grouped according to parameter type, and (4... [more]

Expansive soil swells with water and shrinks with water loss, causing serious safety problems for construction projects. This study emphasizes alkali-activated binder (NaOH excited fly ash) stabilized expansive soil. We found that swelling decreased with an increase in the amount of NaOH in alkali-activated binder. It was found that the alkali-activated binder stabilized expansive soils (AABS) had higher shear strength than untreated expansive soils (US), manifested by increased cohesion and friction angle. In AABS, the highest cohesion and the highest shear strength were found when the NaOH mass was 6% of the fly ash mass. The strength of AABS was similar to that of US without curing. AABS had higher strength than US after 7 and 14 days of curing. The unconfined compressive strength increased with extension of curing time. Combined with XRD and SEM analysis, it was shown that the mechanism of AABS was the formation of C−S−H and (C,N)−A−S−H and the change in the internal structure of e... [more]

Biomass treatment for energy production is a promising way for achieving fossil fuel replacement and environmental relief. Thermochemical processes are a common way of processing biomass, but their potential economic benefits are not always clear to investors. In this work, three basic thermochemical processes (combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis) are examined in terms of their theoretical yields and their products, as well as their economic viability. The goal of this analysis was to look into the total amount of available biomass streams and compare business plans in terms of sustainability from a technical and economic perspective. The estimation of the fixed capital investment was based on ready−made solutions that are already available on the market. The analysis showed that the gasification unit has the optimum sustainability results since the total amount of gross income was EUR 0.13/kg of biomass while the treatment cost was estimated at EUR 0.09/kg of biomass. The internal... [more]

This paper presents the mathematical modeling and control design procedure of the compressor motor of an air conditioner using the energy from a photovoltaic system combined with the power grid in a DC microgrid. A comprehensive model considers the interconnection of the photovoltaic cells with their associated DC/DC converter, the DC bus, the three-phase squirrel-cage induction motor with its driver, the bidirectional DC/AC converter, the output filter, and the power grid. The state-of-the-art showed that a complete mathematical model of the proposed system is unavailable. Therefore, the mathematical model of the system is compared and validated in simulation with a block diagram in the Matlab/Simulink environment. In addition, several control approaches are used in the whole system to track the maximum power point of the photovoltaic cells, obtain a soft start on the machine, control the velocity using the variable frequency drive, regulate the DC bus voltage, and manage the power fl... [more]

The transition to a green economy for any country is crucial for the sustainability development of the economy, environment, society, and governance (EESG). A green economy is a sustainable approach to combating climate change and promoting sustainable development through the adoption of sustainable energy. This research utilizes the Delphi and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methodologies to assess and rank the EESG criteria and policy options for transitions to a green economy. The factors and policy choices are identified using the Delphi approach for further analysis. These factors and policy alternatives for switching to a green economy for sustainable development are determined using the fuzzy AHP technique. According to the fuzzy AHP approach, environmental, social, and economic factors are best suited for green economy transitions. The findings also show that the most crucial policy options for the switch to a green economy are research and development, carbon pricing,... [more]