This study investigates the feasibility of rice straw for energy production in Cambodia. The potential areas for a 10 MW biomass-fired power plant installation are estimated based on rice straw availability displayed in a graphic information system (GIS). The discounted cash flow (DCF) method on the profitability index (PI) was executed by Mathlab software, which was used to determine the period of the power plant profitability. The reduction of CO and CO2 emissions from the proposed rice straw biomass-fired power plant with 10 MW capacity was calculated and compared with the coal-fired power plant and open field burning. Prey Veng, Takeo, and Battambang are potential provinces that have an estimated rice straw source of 804,796 t/annum, 720,040 t/annum, and 603,273 t/annum, respectively. Within a 20-year project, the biomass-fired power plant can reach profitability between six and ten years with the operation of the rice-straw price of 20 USD/t to 40 USD/t. The total energy produced... [more]

Renewable energy solutions are appropriate for on-grid and off-grid applications, acting as a supporter for the utility network or rural locations without the need to develop or extend costly and difficult grid infrastructure. As a result, hybrid renewable energy sources have become a popular option for grid-connected or standalone systems. This paper examines hybrid renewable energy power production systems with a focus on energy sustainability, reliability due to irregularities, techno-economic feasibility, and being environmentally friendly. In attaining a reliable, clean, and cost-effective system, sizing optimal hybrid renewable energy sources (HRES) is a crucial challenge. The presenters went further to outline the best sizing approach that can be used in HRES, taking into consideration the key components, parameters, methods, and data. Moreover, the goal functions, constraints from design, system components, optimization software tools, and meta-heuristic algorithm methodologies... [more]

The cable plays a vital role in roadway support. As the last barrier to prevent roof collapse and impact disaster accidents, it is of great significance to study stress characteristics of cables under impact dynamic load to guide the rock burst roadway support. With high-strength cables of Φ21.6 and Φ21.8 mm and low-resistance high-extension cables of Φ21.5 mm as examples, this paper studied the instantaneous mechanical state and energy dissipation characteristics of different types of cables under impact loads by using impact testing machines and high-frequency data acquisition system. The results show that the impact process can strengthen the strength of the cable. The strength and elongation of anchor cables are a pair of characteristic indexes with an inverse relationship. Simply increasing one index cannot improve the overall impact resistance of the cable. To quantitatively characterize the impact resistance and energy absorption effect of cables, the impact resistance index k w... [more]

Techno-economic studies by various research institutions on the costs for the production of biomass to liquid (BtL) fuels using the bioliq® process were analyzed and evaluated. The bioliq® process consists of decentralized pretreatment by fast pyrolysis plants for biomass energy densification, and of a central gasification and synthesis step for synthesis of gas and synthetic fuel production. For comparison, specific material and energy flows were worked out for both process steps, and conversion efficiencies were calculated for the conversion of straw to diesel fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. A significant variation of the overall process efficiency in the range of 33−46% was mainly a result of the different assumptions made for electricity generation at the central location. After breaking down the individual cost items to either fixed or variable costs, it turned out that the largest cost items in the production of BtL fuels were attributable to feedstock and capital costs.... [more]

Increasing global competition, volatile markets and the demand for individual products challenge companies in almost all business sectors and require innovative solutions. In the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, these include modular design, the integration of several unit operations in one apparatus and the development of small-scale, versatile multipurpose plants. An example for such a modular, integrated and small-scale system is the belt crystallizer. This device combines the process steps cooling crystallization, solid-liquid separation and contact drying in a single plant. The basis of the apparatus is a belt filter in which the vacuum trays below the filter medium are replaced by temperature control and filtration units. Due to identical dimensions, it is possible to arrange the individual functional units in any order, which in turn allows a high degree of flexibility and rapid adaptation to customer requirements. Within the scope of the publication, the commissioning of... [more]

In modern power systems, power transformers are considered vital components that can ensure the grid’s continuous operation. In this regard, studying the breakdown in the transformer becomes necessary, especially its insulating system. Hence, in this study, Box−Behnken design (BBD) was used to introduce a prediction model of the breakdown voltage (VBD) for the transformer insulating oil in the presence of different barrier effects for point/plane gap arrangement with alternating current (AC) voltage. Interestingly, the BBD reduces the required number of experiments and their costs to examine the barrier parameter effect on the existing insulating oil VBD. The investigated variables were the barrier location in the gap space (a/d)%, the relative permittivity of the barrier materials (εr), the hole radius in the barrier (hr), the barrier thickness (th), and the barrier inclined angle (θ). Then, only 46 experiment runs are required to build the BBD model for the five barrier variables. Th... [more]

Different to conventional reinforced concrete or steel material, a new type of concrete-filled steel box slab has been proposed by effectively integrating the combined benefits of both steel and concrete. By filling concrete, this type of slab could avoid the local bucking of steel plate and then could provide a high moment capacity. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the flexural behavior of concrete-filled steel box slabs through testing seven specimens and characterize their failure characteristics, stress distribution and ultimate moment capacity. A comprehensive parametric study focuses on the influence of the steel plate thickness, the stud and stiffening plate on the slab flexural behavior. The results show that concrete-filled steel box slabs had a high moment capacity and good ductility. The thickness of the steel plate had a significant influence on the moment capacity of the specimen. The stud led to the reduction of the moment capacity of the slab. The stiffening pla... [more]

Ultrasonic cleaning is a developed and widespread technology used in the cleaning industry. The key to its success over other cleaning methods lies in its capacity to penetrate seemingly inaccessible, hard-to-reach corners, cleaning them successfully. However, its major drawback is the need to immerse the product into a tank, making it impossible to work with large or anchored elements. With the aim of revealing the scope of the technology, this paper will attempt to describe a more innovative approach to cleaning large area surfaces (walls, floors, façades, etc.) which involves applying ultrasonic cavitation onto a thin film of water, which is then deposited onto a dirty surface. Ultrasonic cleaning is an example of the proliferation of green technology, requiring 15 times less water and 115 times less power than conventional high-pressurized waterjet cleaning mechanisms. This paper will account for the physical phenomena that govern this new cleaning mechanism and the competition it... [more]

Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in water have detrimental effects on human health, and the removal rate of these compounds by conventional water treatment processes is low. Given that the levels of PFCs have been regulated in many regions, a granular activated carbon (GAC) adsorption process has been used in drinking water treatment plants to maintain concentrations of PFCs, perfluorohexyl sulfonate (PFHxS), and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), below 70 ng/L. However, it was found that these concentrations in the final product water in local water utilities unexpectedly increased because of inappropriate operation and maintenance methods of GAC, such as its inefficient regeneration and replacement cycle. In this study, the changes in PFC concentration were monitored and analyzed in raw and final water of two large-scale water treatment plants for eight months. Additionally, the correlation of the GAC replacement cycle with the removal efficiency of PFHxS and PFOA was investigated in a to... [more]

The use of extended standard functional analysis of maintenance in the design phase of vehicle structure analysis is presented for the first time, where a matrix of the degree of importance of modules or parts, a matrix size between costs and benefits (costs−benefits), and a logistic support matrix (support index and repair time) are used. The use of these methods allows a designer to be able to determine, in the very early phase of the construction process, the important factors (structure, component price, reliability, repair costs, response time, logistic supportability) that have a major impact on vehicle maintenance. Extended functional analysis also allows us to define critical structures in the project specification of vehicles. A crucial issue in functional analysis is the very extensive implementation of research, drawing conclusions and findings with the basic goal of determining a set of indicators for the verification of assumptions and hypotheses.

For a long time, determining the factors influencing the cleaning of technical surfaces in the food and beverage industry has been of significant interest. In this study, an innovative test setup with a newly designed parallel plate flow cell was implemented to assess the cleaning of soluble molecular fouling materials, which allows for the independent variation of flow parameters, such as the Reynolds number, velocity, and wall shear stress. The test setup used fluorescence spectroscopy; it was found to produce reliable measurements of cleaning, and the results were confirmed with the help of another fluorescent tracer. A comparison of cleaning times for both equipment revealed that the cleaning times tend to have a geometrically independent power-law relationship with the wall shear stress and velocity, and they were used to directly correlate the cleaning times of the used soluble fouling material. However, the Reynolds number showed a geometric dependence on cleaning times. Neverth... [more]

Taylor flow is a strategy-aimed flow to transfer conventional single-phase into a more efficient two-phase flow resulting in an enhanced momentum/heat/mass transfer rate, as well as a multitude of other advantages. To date, Taylor flow has focused on the processes involving gas−liquid and liquid−liquid two-phase systems in microchannels over a wide range of applications in biomedical, pharmaceutical, industrial, and commercial sectors. Appropriately micro-structured design is, therefore, a key consideration for equipment dealing with transport phenomena. This review paper highlights the hydrodynamic aspects of gas−liquid and liquid−liquid two-phase flows in microchannels. It covers state-of-the-art experimental and numerical methods in the literature for analyzing and simulating slug flows in circular and non-circular microchannels. The review’s main objective is to identify the considerable opportunity for further development of microflows and provide suggestions for researchers in th... [more]

Confined plunging jets are investigated as potential outfalls for the discharge of desalination brine. Compared to offshore submerged outfalls that rely on momentum to induce mixing, plunging jets released above the water surface utilize both momentum and negative buoyancy. Plunging jets also introduce air into the water column, which can reduce the possibility of hypoxic zones. In contrast to unconfined plunging jets, confined plunging jets include a confining tube, or downcomer, around the jet, which increases the penetration depth of the bubbles and can provide better aeration. However, the presence of this downcomer can hinder mixing with surrounding water. Therefore, laboratory measurements of dilution are reported here and compared to the dilution of unconfined plunging jets. In addition, qualitative observations of bubble penetration depth are also used to discuss aeration potential. For designs that increase the bubble penetration depth as compared to unconfined plunging jets,... [more]

As one of the typical negative factors affecting the vortex structure and flow characteristics of hydraulic machinery, the TLV has a non-negligible impact on the energy performance. In order to improve the utilization efficiency of hydraulic machinery in marine energy, the parallel grooves structure is proposed and applied to the NACA0009 hydrofoil. Subsequently, an exhaustive numerical analysis is carried out adopting the SST k-ω turbulence model, and the effects of the position and spacing on the suppression effect and flow characteristics are investigated. The presence of the parallel grooves leads to a decrease in the lift-to-drag ratio of the hydrofoil within 5%, but it can effectively suppress the development of TLV and reduce the area of TLV. The parallel grooves destroy the structure of PTLV and STLV, and the spacing and position have a greater influence on the flow characteristics of the hydrofoil. In order to take the TLV suppression effect and the energy performance of the h... [more]

The solid−liquid equilibrium (SLE) behavior and liquid−liquid extraction (LLX) abilities of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) containing (a) thymol and L-menthol, and (b) trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) and L-menthol were evaluated. The distribution coefficients (KD) were determined for the solutes relevant for two biorefinery cases, including formic acid, levulinic acid, furfural, acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, and L-lactic acid. Overall, for both cases, an increasing KD was observed for both DESs for acids increasing in size and thus hydrophobicity. Furfural, being the most hydrophobic, was seen to extract the highest KD (for DES (a) 14.2 ± 2.2 and (b) 4.1 ± 0.3), and the KD of lactic acid was small, independent of the DESs (DES (a) 0.5 ± 0.07 and DES (b) 0.4 ± 0.05). The KD of the acids for the TOPO and L-menthol DES were in similar ranges as for traditional TOPO-containing composite solvents, while for the thymol/L-menthol DES, in the absence of the Lewis base functionality,... [more]

The sustainable design of separation and polymer synthesis processes is of great importance. Therefore, an energy-efficient process for the purification of tetrahydrofuran (THF)−water (H2O) solvent mixtures from an upstream polymer synthesis process in pilot scale was developed with the aim to obtain high purity separation products. The advantages and limitations of a hybrid process in the pilot scale were studied utilizing an Aspen Plus Dynamics® simulation at different pressures to prove the feasibility and energy efficiency. For the rough separation of the two components, distillation was chosen as the first process step. In this way, a separation of a water stream of sufficient quality for further precipitations after polymer synthesis could be achieved. In order to overcome the limitations of the distillation process posed by the azeotropic point of the mixture, a vapor permeation is used, which takes advantage of the heat of evaporation already used in the distillation column. Fo... [more]

The current research concerns the group acceptance sampling plan in the case where (i) the lifetime of the items follows the Marshall−Olkin Kumaraswamy exponential distribution (MOKw-E) and (ii) a large number of items, considered as a group, can be tested at the same time. When the consumer’s risk and the test terminsation period are defined, the key design parameters are extracted. The values of the operating characteristic function are determined for different quality levels. At the specified producer’s risk, the minimum ratios of the true average life to the specified average life are also calculated. The results of the present study will set the platform for future research on various nano quality level topics when the items follow different probability distributions under the Marshall−Olkin Kumaraswamy scheme. Real-world data are used to explain the technique.

Cooling is an important process during the production of pellets (as post-treatment). The pellet cooling process significantly impacts the quality of the pellets produced and the systematic use of energy. However, the cooling systems currently in use sometimes encounter technical problems, such as clogging of the perforated grids (sieves), the discharge hopper, or pellet degradation may occur. Therefore, a prototype of a new pellet cooling system using a vibrating feeder was tested. The aim of the study is to present a new variation of pellet cooling system using spiral vibration cooler as a possible solution next to a counterflow cooler. The presented system was tested (critically evaluated and discussed) in two design variants. The first variant consists in cooling by chaotic movement of the pellets. The second is then in combination with the chaotic movement of the pellets together with the action of intense air flow using specially placed air hoses. All tests involved pelletization... [more]

In recent years, synthetic gene circuits for adding new cell features have become one of the most powerful tools in biological and pharmaceutical research and development. However, because of the inherent non-linearity and noisy experimental data, the experiment-based model calibration of these synthetic parts is perceived as a laborious and time-consuming procedure. Although the optimal experimental design (OED) based on the Fisher information matrix (FIM) has been proved to be an effective means to improve the calibration efficiency, the required calculation increases dramatically with the model size (parameter number). To reduce the OED complexity without losing the calibration accuracy, this paper proposes two OED approaches with different parameter clustering methods and validates the accuracy of calibrated models with in-silico experiments. A model of an inducible synthetic promoter in S. cerevisiae is adopted for bench-marking. The comparison with the traditional off-line OED ap... [more]

The ambitious CO2 emission reduction targets for the transport sector set in the Paris Climate Agreement require low-carbon energy solutions that can be commissioned rapidly. The production of gasoline, kerosene, and diesel from renewable methanol using methanol-to-olefins (MTO) and Mobil’s Olefins to Gasoline and Distillate (MOGD) syntheses was investigated in this study via process simulation and economic analysis. The current work presents a process simulation model comprising liquid fuel production and heat integration. According to the economic analysis, the total cost of production was found to be 3409 €/tfuels (273 €/MWhLHV), corresponding to a renewable methanol price of 963 €/t (174 €/MWhLHV). The calculated fuel price is considerably higher than the current cost of fossil fuels and biofuel blending components. The price of renewable methanol, which is largely dictated by the cost of electrolytic hydrogen and renewable electricity, was found to be the most significant factor a... [more]

This paper focuses on the best way to produce methanol by Coke Oven Gas (COG) conversion and by carbon dioxide capture. The COG, produced in steelworks and coking plants, is an interesting source of hydrogen that can be used to hydrogenate carbon dioxide, recovered from flue gases, into methanol. The architecture of the reuse process is developed and the different process units are compared by considering a hierarchical decomposition. Two case studies are selected, process units are modelled, and flowsheets are simulated using computer-aided design software. A factorial techno-economic analysis is performed together with a preliminary carbon balance to evaluate the economic reliability and the environmental sustainability of the proposed solutions. The production costs of methanol are equal to 228 and 268 €/ton for process configurations involving, respectively, a combined methane reforming of COG and a direct COG separation to recover hydrogen. This cost is slightly higher than the cu... [more]

The internal flow is very complex in the multiphase pump, especially in the static impeller, where the flow is more disorganized than that in the impeller wheel, and it will cause greater hydraulic losses. In order to investigate deeply the flow rules within the static impeller, all kinds of the flow losses are analyzed quantificationally in the multiphase pump. Based on the standard SST k-ω turbulence model, selected the helical axial flow multiphase pump as the research object, used the three-dimensional modeling software for the three-dimensional modeling of the flow through parts of the multiphase pump, such as impeller wheel, the static impeller, the suction chamber, and the extrusion chamber. The ANSYS software is used to simulate the three-dimensional flow in static impeller, and the ICEM software was used to divide the mesh of suction chamber, press outlet chamber, moving impeller and static impeller respectively. The results show that the flow within the impeller wheel is more... [more]

In order to study the wear characteristic of a centrifugal pump at different mass concentrations, simulation and experimental research were carried out. The simulation was based on the DPM (discrete phase model) to complete the coupling of particles and the flow field. The experimental research included a performance test and a wear test. Through the comparison of the simulation and experimental research results, the relationship between the particle movement and the wear was analyzed, and the flow field was analyzed through the energy gradient theory. The energy gradient and the particle movement were combined to explain the wear characteristics. When the particles entered the impeller flow area, they directly hit the leading edge of the blade and the hub wall. The particles were sinking due to the flow field, which caused the particles to accumulate near the hub and the pressure surface. These places were at the most severely worn wall. The farther away from the axis the position was... [more]

The dissolution behavior of dye in supercritical carbon dioxide influences the overall mass transfer that controls a supercritical dyeing process. Increasing the dissolution rate of the dye leads to shortening of the dyeing process time and can improve the efficiency of the process. Controlling the properties of the carbon dioxide flow is a good method to improve the dissolution rate of dyes. In this study, a dissolution kinetic model was designed by quantitatively analyzing and formulating the dissolution phenomenon of dyes using an in situ UV/Vis spectrometer. Through this model, the dissolution rate was compared by varying the geometric shape of the column containing the dye and the flow rate of carbon dioxide. Moreover, the correlation equation between the Reynolds number and Sherwood number was obtained through mass transfer coefficients derived under various conditions. In order to verify the utility of this equation, it was applied to a scaled-up device and the precise result co... [more]

The MixAlco process is a patented biomass conversion technology used to produce valuable chemicals. The basis of this design relies on the use of fermentation, where acidophiles utilize their own enzymatic pathways to convert a variety of biomass, such as organic wastes, into carboxylic acid salts. Unlike previous MixAlco designs in which carboxylate salts are processed further into hydrocarbon fuels, this proposed design simulates the optimization and commercialization of mixed carboxylic acid salts as the final product. Sensitivity analyses identified four critical input factors of the base case process—biomass feed rate, selling price, distribution cost, and biomass composition. Increasing the biomass feed rate or population size has the most pronounced effect on process economics. Overall, the sensitivity analyses of all four critical input factors support that the new design is flexible in its ability to support populations of varying sizes, as well as different biomass feed rates... [more]