In recent years, magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have been widely used as a new material in biomedicine and other fields due to their broad versatility, and the quantitative detection method of MNPs is significantly important due to its advantages in immunoassay and single-molecule detection. In this study, a method and device for detecting the number of MNPs based on weak magnetic signal were proposed and machine learning methods were applied to the design of MNPs number detection method and optimization of detection device. Genetic Algorithm was used to optimize the MNPs detection platform and Simulated Annealing Neural Network was used to explore the relationship between different positions of magnetic signals and the number of MNPs so as to obtain the optimal measurement position of MNPs. Finally, Radial Basis Function Neural Network, Simulated Annealing Neural Network, and partial least squares multivariate regression analysis were used to establish the MNPs number detection model,... [more]

Argon stirring is one of the most widely used metallurgical methods in the secondary refining process as it is economical and easy, and also an important refining method in clean steel production. Aiming at the issue of poor homogeneity of composition and temperature of a bottom argon blowing ladle molten steel in a Chinese steel mill, a 1:5 water model for 110 t ladle was established, and the mixing time and interface slag entrainment under the different conditions of injection modes, flow rates and top slag thicknesses were investigated. The flow dynamics of argon plume in steel ladle was also discussed. The results show that, as the bottom blowing argon flow rate increases, the mixing time of ladle decreases; the depth of slag entrapment increases with the argon flow rate and slag thickness; the area of slag eyes decreases with the decrease of the argon flow rate and increase of slag thickness. The optimum argon flow rate is between 36−42 m3/h, and the double porous plugs injection... [more]

Coal gangue can cause significant heavy metal pollution in mining areas, which would have a negative impact on the environment and human health. The objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between expansive soil amount and the leaching behavior of Chromium from coal gangue and the engineering properties of coal gangue used as building materials. The leaching behavior of Chromium from coal gangue was observed using atomic absorption spectrometry. A column leaching experiment was conducted to examine the impact of leaching time and heavy metal concentration. Furthermore, the unconfined compressive strength test was employed to evaluate the engineering properties of coal gangue with expansive soil. The results of the study demonstrate that pH of leachate solutions, leaching time, and expansive soil amounts in mixtures have important influence on Chromium concentration. The leachate solutions, which behave like alkaline, provide a positive environment for adsorbing Cr... [more]

The complicated coupling of component design together with energy management has brought a significant challenge to the design, optimization, and control of plug-in hybrid electric buses (PHEBs). This paper proposes an integrated optimization methodology to ensure the optimum performance of a PHEB with a view toward designing and applications. First, a novel co-optimization method is proposed for redesigning the driveline parameters offline, which combines a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) with dynamic programming to eliminate the impact of the coupling between the component design and energy management. Within the new method, the driveline parameters are optimally designed based on a global optimal energy management strategy, and fuel consumption and acceleration time can be respectively reduced by 4.71% and 4.59%. Second, a model-free adaptive control (MFAC) method is employed to realize the online optimal control of energy management on the basis of Pontryagin’s... [more]

Recombinant proteins have been produced for over 30 years. Applications range from enzymes used in laundry detergents to antigen-detecting antibodies in cancer therapy. Despite similarities in manufacturing, drastic differences in retail pricing between recombinant proteins used for industrial (non-medical) versus pharmaceutical purposes exist. Industrial proteins often have a retail price in the tens of dollars per kilogram while recombinant proteins for medical use may cost billions of dollars per kilogram. This manuscript will briefly review manufacturing techniques and contrast the differences between industrial versus pharmaceutical production. Maximizing manufacturing technologies to reduce cost-of-goods (CoG) is desirable. However, the major reason for the very high pricing of pharma protein products does not reflect CoG, but the financial obligations of clinical trials, research and development, patent constraints, marketing, and return on investment.

Nigeria, being the world’s largest importer of diesel-powered gen-sets, is expected to invest in bio-fuels in the future. Hence, it is important to examine the thermal properties and synergy of wastes for potential downstream resource utilization. In this study, thermal conversion as a route to reduce the exploding volume of wastes from sachet-water plastic (SWP) and oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) biomass was studied. Thermogravimetric (TGA) and subsequent differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) was used for the analysis. The effect of heating rate at 20 °C min−1 causes the increase of activation energy of the decomposition in the first-stage across all the blends (0.96 and 16.29 kJ mol−1). A similar phenomenon was seen when the heating rate was increased from 10 to 20 °C min−1 in the second-stage of decomposition. Overall, based on this study on the synergistic effects during the process, it can be deduced that co-pyrolysis can be an effective waste for energy platform.

Carbon emissions and environmental protection issues have become the pressure from the international community during the current transitional stage of China’s energy transformation. China has set a macro carbon emission target, which will reduce carbon emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 40% in 2020 and 60−65% in 2030 than that in 2005. To achieve the emission reduction target, the industrial structure must be adjusted and upgraded. Furthermore, it must start from a high-pollution and high-emission industry. Therefore, it is of practical significance to construct a low-carbon sustainability and green operation benefits of power generation enterprises to save energy and reduce emissions. In this paper, an intuitionistic fuzzy comprehensive analytic hierarchy process based on improved dynamic hesitation degree (D-IFAHP) and an improved extreme learning machine algorithm optimized by RBF kernel function (RELM) are proposed. Firstly, we construct the evaluation indicator... [more]

Accurately predicting the reheater steam temperature over both short and medium time periods is crucial for the efficiency and safety of operations. With regard to the diverse temporal effects of influential factors, the accurate identification of delay orders allows effective temperature predictions for the reheater system. In this paper, a deep neural network (DNN) and a genetic algorithm (GA)-based optimal multi-step temporal feature selection model for reheater temperature is proposed. In the proposed model, DNN is used to establish a steam temperature predictor for future time steps, and GA is used to find the optimal delay orders, while fully considering the balance between modeling accuracy and computational complexity. The experimental results for two ultra-super-critical 1000 MW power plants show that the optimal delay orders calculated using this method achieve high forecasting accuracy and low computational overhead. Moreover, it is argued that the similarities of the two re... [more]

The almond cake is a protein- and oil-rich by-product of the mechanical expression of almond oil that has the potential to be used as a source of valuable proteins and lipids for food applications. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the individual and combined effects of solids-to-liquid ratio (SLR), reaction time, and enzyme use on oil and protein extraction yields from almond cake. A central composite rotatable design was employed to maximize the overall extractability and distribution of extracted components among the fractions generated by the aqueous (AEP) and enzyme-assisted aqueous extraction process (EAEP). Simultaneous extraction of oil and protein by the AEP was favored by the use of low SLR (1:12.82) and longer reaction times (2 h), where extraction yields of 48.2% and 70% were achieved, respectively. Increased use of enzyme (0.85%) in the EAEP resulted in higher oil (50%) and protein (75%) extraction yields in a shorter reaction time (1 h), compared with the AEP... [more]

Ionic liquids (ILs) have garnered great attention as alternative solvents in many biological reactions and applications. However, its unknown toxicity is in line with the challenges to use it for biological applications. In this study, three choline based Ionic Liquids—choline saccharinate (CS), choline dihydrogen phosphate (CDHP), and choline tryptophanate (CT) were assessed for their suitability on the growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The ILs were incorporated into the growth media of S. cerevisiae (defined as synthetic media) to access its potential as a substitute to conventional media. The compatibility of the synthetic media was evaluated based on the toxicity (EC50), growth curve, and glucose profile. The results showed that the incorporation of CDHP and CS did promote the growth of S. cerevisiae with a rapid glucose consumption rate. The growth of S. cerevisiae with the media composition of yeast extract, peptone, and CS showed improvement of 13%. We believe that these obser... [more]

The processing of crude oil often requires the extraction of a large amount of water. Frequently, crude oil is mixed with water to form water-in-crude oil emulsions as the result of factors such as high shear at the production wellhead and surface-active substances that are naturally present in crude oil. These emulsions are undesirable and require demulsification to remove the dispersed water and associated inorganic salts in order to meet production and transportation specifications. Additionally, the demulsification of these crude oil emulsions mitigates corrosion and catalyst poisoning and invariably maximizes the overall profitability of crude oil production. Recently, there has been growing research interest in developing workable solutions to the difficulties associated with transporting and refining crude oil emulsions and the restrictions on produced water discharge. Therefore, this paper reviews the recent research efforts on state-of-the-art demulsification techniques. First... [more]

The peels of Citrus reticulata Blanco mandarin cultivars of different Croatian varieties (Zorica rana, Chahara, Okitsu, Kuno) were extracted using 15 different choline chloride-based deep eutectic solvents (DESs) at 50 °C for 30 min and with 20% water addition. The extracts were analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) to determine the most suitable DES for the extraction of hesperidin in the samples. The screening results indicated that choline chloride: acetamide (1:2) provided the most efficient hesperidin extraction (112.14 mg/g of plant), while choline chloride:citric acid (1:1) solvent showed the lowest hesperidin yield (1.44 mg/g of plant). The Box−Behnken design was employed to optimize extraction parameters for each variety of mandarin peel, including extraction time, temperature and water content on hesperidin extraction. The results indicated that hesperidin content in mandarin peels was completely variety-dependent. Being a no... [more]

In this study, the extraction of anthocyanin colorant from karanda fruit (Carissa carandas L.) was carried out and optimized with multiple single factor assays. Selected conditions for yield maximization consisted of ripen fruits with black-purple color, material size of thin slices (1.0−1.5 mm), solvent of EtOH 50%, material/ solvent ratio of 1:3, temperature of 50 °C, extraction time of 45 min, and two extraction cycles. The anthocyanin content in the extract was 277.2 mg/L, which is equivalent to 9.33 mg anthocyanin per gram of dry material. Aqueous solutions of the extract and dried extracts from Carissa carandas fruit were evaluated for stability at two temperature conditions, namely room temperature (30 ± 2 °C) and 45 °C. The temperature exerted great impact on color change, anthocyanin content and the degree of polymerization of anthocyanin. Aqueous solutions of extract with citric acid (3.0−5.0 g/L) were generally more color stable and less anthocyanin degradable than those wit... [more]

Air-conditionings have energy storage functions. Through reasonable aggregation control, the output tracking can be implemented for wind power with stronger fluctuation to enhance its utilization rate. Cloud technology and intelligent appliances enable the appliance vendor to implement information interaction with the air-conditioning through cloud platforms to realize flexible regulation. In this paper, a management and control method of air-conditioning based on cloud platform is established. Based on this structure, the air-conditionings are divided into several aggregation groups according to the similarity of parameters, and each group completes the consumption task collaboratively. The consumption evaluation model of the air-conditioning group is established. On this basis, the allocation problem on consumption task for the aggregated group is constructed to implement the optimal solution under the condition of guaranteeing the degree of completion and user comfort. Each group im... [more]

In the food industry, the pulsed electric field (PEF) technique is used to support the process of extraction of various substances. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of a number of PEF pulses applied to peppermint and caraway on both the content of essential oils (EO) and their spectroscopic properties. The examined herb species were placed in a special vessel in the working chamber of the device between two electrodes providing high voltage electric pulses. The pulses were delivered 0, 150, 250, and 350 times per a studied sample of each herb. Essential oils were then obtained by way of hydrodistillation. The infrared spectra for all samples were measured using an FTIR spectrometer in the spectral range of 3700−730 cm−1. The applied electric field of a predetermined number of pulses had no significant effect on the amount of distilled essential oil from caraway fruit, while in the case of peppermint, it caused a slight decrease in relation to the raw material not subject... [more]

This study shows that by-products obtained after cold-pressing oil production (flex oil cake, hemp oil cake, hull-less pumpkin oil cake) could be used as substrates for the sustainable and cost-effective production of lipase when cultivating Thermomyces lanuginosus under solid-state conditions (T = 45 °C, t = 9 days). Lipase showed optimum activity at T = 40 °C. The produced lipase extract was purified 17.03-folds with a recovery of 1% after gel chromatography. Three different batch experiments were performed in order to test the possibility of using the lipase in biodiesel production. Experiments were performed with a commercial, unpurified enzyme, and partially purified lipase with sunflower oil and methanol as substrates in a batch reactor at 40 °C. During the experiments, the operational stability of the enzyme was studied. The obtained results clearly showed that produced crude and purified lipase can be used for biodiesel production, but the process needs some additional optimiza... [more]

In order to solve the problem of the inaccuracy of the traditional online operation risk assessment model based on a physical mechanism and the inability to adapt to the actual operation of massive online operation monitoring data, this paper proposes an online operation risk assessment of the wind power system of the convolution neural network (CNN) considering multiple random factors. This paper analyzes multiple random factors of the wind power system, including uncertain wind power output, load fluctuations, frequent changes in operation patterns, and the electrical equipment failure rate, and generates the sample data based on multi-random factors. It uses the CNN algorithm network, offline training to obtain the risk assessment model, and online application to obtain the real-time online operation risk state of the wind power system. Finally, the online operation risk assessment model is verified by simulation using the standard network of 39 nodes of 10 machines New England syst... [more]

Anthraquinones are compounds of high medicinal value in many plants. Based on their good protein binding affinity, foam fractionation was attempted to separate them using proteins in the aqueous extract of Semen Cassiae as collectors. Firstly, the interaction between anthraquinones and Semen Cassiae proteins has been analyzed by the Stem−Volmer equation with physcion as a standard. The results show that physcion had good interaction with the proteins via hydrophobic forces. More importantly, the proteins effectively assisted the foam fractionation of several anthraquinones including aurantio-obtusifolin, aloe-emodin, rhein, emodin, chrysophanol, and physcion. On this basis, a two-stage foam fractionation technology was developed for process intensification using a foam fractionation with vertical sieve trays (VSTs). VSTs, initial feed concentration of total anthraquinones, temperature, volumetric air flow rate and pore diameter of gas distributor had significant effects on enrichment r... [more]

A topological index of a graph is a single numeric quantity which relates the chemical structure with its underlying physical and chemical properties. Topological indices of a nanosheet can help us to understand the properties of the material better. This study deals with computation of degree-dependent topological indices like the Randic index, first Zagreb index, second Zagreb index, geometric arithmetic index, atom bond connectivity index, sum connectivity index and hyper Zagreb index of nanosheet covered by C3 and C6. Furthermore, M-polynomial of the nanosheet is also computed, which provides an alternate way to express the topological indices.

As a founder of the Process Systems Engineering (PSE) discipline, Professor Roger W.H. Sargent had set ambitious goals for a systematic new generation of a process design paradigm based on optimization techniques with the consideration of future uncertainties and operational decisions. In this paper, we present a historical perspective on the milestones in model-based design optimization techniques and the developed tools to solve the resulting complex problems. We examine the progress spanning more than five decades, from the early flexibility analysis and optimal process design under uncertainty to more recent developments on the simultaneous consideration of process design, scheduling, and control. This formidable target towards the grand unification poses unique challenges due to multiple time scales and conflicting objectives. Here, we review the recent progress and propose future research directions.

Bottom-up systems biology entails the construction of kinetic models of cellular pathways by collecting kinetic information on the pathway components (e.g., enzymes) and collating this into a kinetic model, based for example on ordinary differential equations. This requires integration and data transfer between a variety of tools, ranging from data acquisition in kinetics experiments, to fitting and parameter estimation, to model construction, evaluation and validation. Here, we present a workflow that uses the Python programming language, specifically the modules from the SciPy stack, to facilitate this task. Starting from raw kinetics data, acquired either from spectrophotometric assays with microtitre plates or from Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy time-courses, we demonstrate the fitting and construction of a kinetic model using scientific Python tools. The analysis takes place in a Jupyter notebook, which keeps all information related to a particular experiment togeth... [more]

Pyridine is a toxic component in industrial wastewater, which is difficult to remove using conventional methods. In this study, the cost-effective coke powder was used to remove pyridine from a pyridine simulation wastewater. The removal efficiency and adsorption capacity of pyridine reached up to 67.32% and 0.4488 mg/g, respectively, at a coke powder concentration of 60 mg/L and an adsorption time of 30 min. The pyridine removal efficiency and adsorption capacity of coke powder reached saturation when the initial concentration was 40 mg/L. The pH of 2−12 in the solution was found to have little effect on the pyridine adsorption process of coke powder, while the coke powder with lower ash content was of better adsorbability for pyridine. The coke powder was regenerated by heat treatment, and reused for pyridine adsorption. It was found that the pyridine removal efficiency slightly decreased after nine times of reuse, in addition to a small cumulative weight loss rate of coke powder. Ad... [more]

This study aims at reviewing the alternative techniques for bioethanol recovery, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages, and to investigate the technical challenges facing these alternatives to be widely used. The findings showed that the integration of these techniques with the fermentation process did not meet a large acceptance in the industrial sector. The majority of conducted studies were mainly focusing on ethanol recovery from aqueous standard solution rather than the investigation of these techniques performance in fermentation-separation coupled system. In this context, pervaporation has received more attention as a promising alternative to distillation. However, some challenges are facing the integration of these techniques in the industrial scale as the fouling problem in pervaporation, the toxicity of solvent in liquid extraction, energy consumption in vacuum fermentation. It was also found that there is a lack of the technical economic analysis for these techniques... [more]

The difficulty in precisely detecting and locating an ear within an image is the first step to tackle in an ear-based biometric recognition system, a challenge which increases in difficulty when working with variable photographic conditions. This is in part due to the irregular shapes of human ears, but also because of variable lighting conditions and the ever changing profile shape of an ear’s projection when photographed. An ear detection system involving multiple convolutional neural networks and a detection grouping algorithm is proposed to identify the presence and location of an ear in a given input image. The proposed method matches the performance of other methods when analyzed against clean and purpose-shot photographs, reaching an accuracy of upwards of 98%, but clearly outperforms them with a rate of over 86% when the system is subjected to non-cooperative natural images where the subject appears in challenging orientations and photographic conditions.

The present study aimed to extract seed oils and characterize the chemical composition, including fatty acid profiles, tocopherols, sterols, and total phenolics of oils and extracts from five Fabaceae seeds: Glycine soja, Vigna angularis, Phaseolus lunatus, Phaseolus vulgarisand, and Phaseolus coccineus. The composition and content of all substance layers in total lipids of the extracted seed oils from five Fabaceae species contain: polar lipid (PL), sterol (ST), diacylglycerol (DG), triacylglycerol (TG), free fatty acid (FFA), and hydrocarbon and wax (HC + W). Antioxidant activity determined by the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) method was also estimated. Among these examined samples, Phaseolus vulgarisand and Phaseolus coccineus seed oils showed high content of α-linolenic acid (59.39% and 49.38%, respectively). Linoleic acid was abundantly found in Vigna angularis (49.01%). Ferunic and caffeic acid, γ-tocopherol, and β-sistosterol were the main ingredients present in the speci... [more]