The process of soil stabilization is a fundamental requirement before road infrastructure development is possible. Different binding materials have been used worldwide as soil stabilizers. In this study, water treatment waste (i.e., alum sludge (AS)) was used as a soil stabilizer. Alum sludge can work not only as a low-cost soil stabilizer but also can solve the problem of waste management at a large scale. Utilization of alum waste can be a sustainable solution and environmentally friendly exercise. Thus, in consideration of the pozzolanic properties of alum, it was applied as a binder, similar to cement or lime, to stabilize the soil with the addition of 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, and 10% of dry soil by weight. To analyze the resulting improvement in soil strength, the California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test was conducted in addition to three other tests (i.e., particle size analysis, Atterberg’s limits test, and modified proctor test). The soil bearing ratio was significantly improved from 6.53% t... [more]

Methyl methacrylate (MMA) plays a vital role in national productions with broad application. Herein, the production of MMA is realized by the improved eco-friendly direct methylation method using Aspen Plus software. Three novel kinds of energy-saving measures were proposed in this study, including the recycle streams of an aqueous solution, methacrolein (MAL), and methanol, the deployment of double-effect distillation instead of a normal one, and the design of a promising heat-exchange network. Moreover, MMA with a purity of 99.9% is obtained via the design of a MAL absorber column with an optimal stage number of 11 and a facile chloroform recovery process by using the RadFrac model. Thus, the proposed green process with energy-conservation superiority is the vital clue for developing MMA, and provides a reference for the production of MMA-ramifications with excellent prospects.

In this work, oxidizing roasting was combined with leaching to separate copper, lead, and zinc from a concentrate obtained by bulk flotation of a low-grade ore sourced from the Jiama mining area of Tibet. The flotation concentrate contained 7.79% Cu, 22.00% Pb, 4.81% Zn, 8.24% S, and 12.15% CaO; copper sulfide accounted for 76.97% of the copper, lead sulfide for 25.55% of the lead, and zinc sulfide for 67.66% of the zinc. After oxidizing roasting of the flotation concentrate, the S content in the roasting slag decreased to 0.22%, indicating that most sulfide in the concentrate was transformed to oxide, which was beneficial to leaching. The calcine was subjected to sulfuric acid leaching for separation of copper, lead, and zinc; i.e., copper and zinc were leached, and lead was retained in the residue. The optimum parameters of the leaching process were: a leaching temperature of 55 °C; sulfuric acid added at 828 kg/t calcine; a liquid:solid ratio of 3:1; and a leaching time of 1.5 h. Un... [more]

This study attempted the lipid extraction process from the seeds of Madhuca ellitica, a lipid-rich plant, and conducted a lipidomic analysis on molecular species of the obtained product. Total lipids of the crude seeds were found to contain 11.2% of polar lipids. The major fatty acids (FAs) of the polar lipids were palmitic (16:0), stearic (18:0), oleic (18:1n-9), and linoleic (18:2n-6) acids, which amounted to 28.5, 12.5, 44.8, and 13.2% of total FAs, respectively. The content and chemical structures of individual molecular species of phosphatidylglycerol (PG), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylinositol (PI), phosphatidic acid (PA), and sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerol (SQDG) were determined by HPLC with a tandem high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). The major molecular species were 18:1/18:2 PE, 16:0/18:1 PC, 18:1/18:2 PC, 16:0/18:2 PG, 16:0/18:1 PG, 16:1/18:1 PI, 16:0/18:1 PI, 18:0/18:2 PI, 16:0/18:1 PA, 18:1/18:2 PA, 16:0/18:1 SQDG, and 18:0/18:1... [more]

The use of flotation for the treatment of wastewaters in general, but especially for the removal of oil, grease, general organic matter, and suspended solids, is well established as a low energy process. Polyelectrolytes (PEs) can enhance performance without adding to the solids load that occurs with inorganic additives such as alum. The bridging of pollutants and the attachment of the resulting aggregates to the air-water interface can be effectively carried out with most wastewaters. Hydrophobic modification of the PEs can be useful for difficult species. It should be applied to the flotation of polyfluoroalkyl substances, for example, as they are not amenable to economical conventional treatment. Similarly, the removal of microplastic particles from sewage effluents by flotation could be enhanced.

Waterflooding is less effective at expanding reservoir production due to interwell thief zones. The thief zones may form during high water cut periods in the case of interconnected injectors and producers or lead to a total loss of injector fluid. We propose to identify the thief zone by using a support vector machine method. Considering the geological factors and development factors of the formation of the thief zone, the signal-to-noise ratio and correlation analysis method were used to select the relevant evaluation indices of the thief zone. The selected evaluation indices of the thief zone were taken as the input of the support vector machine model, and the corresponding recognition results of the thief zone were taken as the output of the support vector machine model. Through the training and learning of sample sets, the response relationship between thief zone and evaluation indices was determined. This method was used to identify 82 well groups in M oilfield, and the identifica... [more]

Ventricular assist device (VAD) implantation is an effective treatment for patients with end-stage heart failure. However, patients who undergo long-term application of VADs experience a series of VAD-related adverse effects including pump thrombosis, which is induced by rotate impeller-caused blood cell injury and hemolysis. Blood cell trauma-related flow patterns are the key mechanism for understanding thrombus formation. In this study, we established a new method to evaluate the blood cell damage and investigate the real-time characteristics of blood flow patterns in vitro using rheometer and bionic microfluidic devices. The variation of plasma free hemoglobin (PFH) and lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) in the rheometer test showed that high shear stress was the main factor causing erythrocyte membrane injury, while the long-term exposure of high shear stress further aggravated this trauma. Following this rheometer test, the damaged erythrocytes were collected and injected into a bionic mi... [more]

Absorption heat transformers are effective systems for a wide variety of applications; however, their main purpose is to upgrade thermal energy from several sources at low-temperature up to a higher temperature level. In the literature, several advanced configurations for absorption heat transformers have been reported which are mainly focused on the improvement of the gross temperature lift by the use of a double absorption process; however, these systems usually offer a reduced coefficient of performance. The present study proposes a new advanced configuration of an absorption heat transformer that improves the coefficient of performance utilizing a double generation process. The operation of the new configuration was numerically modeled, and the main findings were discussed and presented emphasizing the effect of several parameters on the system performance. The highest coefficient of performance and gross temperature lift were 0.63 and 48 °C, respectively. From its comparison with... [more]

Effective use of energy storage systems (ESS) is important to reduce unnecessary power consumption. In this paper, a day-ahead two-stage ESS-scheduling model based on the use of a machine learning technique for load prediction has been proposed for minimizing the operating cost of the energy system. The proposed algorithm consists of two stages of ESS. In the first stage, ESS is used to minimize demand charges by reducing the peak load. Then, the remaining capacity is used to reduce energy charges through arbitrage trading, thereby minimizing the total operating cost. To achieve this purpose, accurate load prediction is required. Machine learning techniques are promising methods owing to the ability to improve forecasting performance. Among them, ensemble learning is a well-known machine learning method which helps to reduce variance and prevent overfitting of a model. To predict loads, we employed bootstrap aggregating (bagging) or random forest technique-based decision trees after Ho... [more]

The current article discussed the heat transfer and thermal radioactive of the thin liquid flow of Sisko fluid on unsteady stretching sheet with constant magnetic field (MHD). Here the thin liquid fluid flow is assumed in two dimensions. The governing time-dependent equations of Sisko fluid are modeled and reduced to Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) by use of Similarity transformation with unsteadiness non-dimensionless parameter S t . To solve the model problem, we used analytical and numerical techniques. The convergence of the problem has been shown numerically and graphically using Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM). The obtained numerical result shows that the HAM estimates of the structures is closed with this result. The Comparison of these two methods (HAM and numerical) has been shown graphically and numerically. The impact of the thermal radiation R d and unsteadiness parameter S t over thin liquid flow is discovered analytically. Moreover, to know th... [more]

The U.S. catfish industry is a major industry that has been declining over the years due to imports competition and growing operational costs. Catfish processing wastewater management and high energy requirement put a large financial burden on catfish processing facilities. Recovered protein-based solids have provided some value-added co-products, however, more co-products are needed to offset processing costs. Anaerobic digestion is a proven waste treatment method that produces methane, which is an energetic co-product that can be used within the processing facilities. This study was conducted to evaluate the potential of anaerobic digestion as an alternative to the currently used aerobic biotreatment of catfish processing wastewater. Initial assessments indicated the recalcitrance of the full-strength wastewater to anaerobic digestion, yielding only ~4 m3 per ton (U.S.) of input chemical oxygen demand (CODinput). Thus, several strategies were evaluated to improve the methane yield fr... [more]

The aim of this study was to characterize in detail 25 sour cherry cultivars and provide data on their industrial processing into high-quality sour cherry cloudy juices (ScCJ). Anthocyanin composition was identified and quantified by LC-PDA-ESI-MS QTof, UPLC-PDA. Kinetic degradation (k × 103, t1/2, D value) and color (CIE La*b*) were measured before and after 190 days of storage at 4 °C and 30 °C. A total of five anthocyanins, four cyanidins (-3-O-sophoroside, -3-O-glucosyl-rutinoside, -3-O-glucoside, and -3-O-rutinoside) and one peonidin-3-O-rutinoside were detected across all investigated juices. Total anthocyanin content ranged from ~590 to ~1160 mg/L of juice, with the highest levels in Skierka, Nagy Erdigymulscu, Wilena, Wiblek, and Safir cvs., and the lowest in Dradem and Nanaones. During 190 days of storage a significant change was observed in the content of anthocyanins. Their degradation depended rather on the storage conditions (time and temperature) than on the type of antho... [more]

Solvent-based post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) is a mature and essential technology to solve the global warming problem. The high energy consuming issue and the flexible operation required by the power plants inquire about the development of effective control systems for PCC plants. This study proposes the optimal-based control approach that utilizes optimal set-point values for the quality controllers. The five optimal-based control schemes studied all employed L/G (liquid to gas ratio in absorber) as one quality control variable. Performance comparisons with a typical conventional control scheme are conducted employing a rate-based dynamic model for the MEA (monoethanolamine) solvent PCC process developed on a commercial process simulator. Compared to the typical control scheme, the optimal-based control schemes provide faster responses to the disturbance changes from the flue gas conditions and the set-point change of the CO2 capture efficiency, as well as better results in term... [more]

Self-emulsifying pellets (SEPs) of Atorvastatin Calcium (AtrCa) were developed and processed into tablets (SETs). Self-emulsifying drug delivery system (SEDDS) composed of oleic acid, Tween 20, Span 80 and N-Methyl-2-pyrolidone gave great solubility improvement and was used as oil in water emulsion for the preparation of SEPs. Due to the high 60% w/w SEDDS content required to achieve a therapeutic dose in the final tablet form, sonication was necessary to improve fluidity and stability. Colloidal silicon dioxide (CSD) and microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) were the solids in the pellet formulation employed at a ratio 7:3, which enabled production of pellets with high SEDDS content and acceptable friability as well. Emulsions were characterized physico-chemically, SEPs for physical properties and reconstitution, and tablets of compressed pellets for mechanical strength, disintegration into pellets and drug release. SEPs compressed with 30% MCC at 60 MPa gave tablets of adequate strength t... [more]

The potential of carbon capture and storage to provide a low carbon fossil-fueled power generation sector that complements the continuously growing renewable sector is becoming ever more apparent. An optimization of a post combustion capture unit employing the solvent monoethanolamine (MEA) was carried out using a Taguchi design of experiment to mitigate the parasitic energy demands of the system. An equilibrium-based approach was employed in Aspen Plus to simulate 90% capture of the CO2 emitted from a 600 MW natural gas combined-cycle gas turbine power plant. The effects of varying the inlet flue gas temperature, absorber column operating pressure, amount of exhaust gas recycle, and amine concentration were evaluated using signal to noise ratios and analysis of variance. The optimum levels that minimized the specific energy requirements were a: flue gas temperature = 50 °C; absorber pressure = 1 bar; exhaust gas recirculation = 20% and; amine concentration = 35 wt%, with a relative im... [more]

In the present work, essential oils (EOs) extracted from different parts of sour orange Citrus aurantium (green leaves/twigs, small branches, wooden branches, and branch bark) were studied through gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Furthermore, the EOs in the amounts of 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 µL were studied for their antibacterial activity against three pathogenic bacteria, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Dickeya solani, and Erwinia amylovora. The main EO compounds in the leaves/twigs were 4-terpineol (22.59%), D-limonene (16.67%), 4-carvomenthenol (12.84%), and linalool (7.82%). In small green branches, they were D-limonene (71.57%), dodecane (4.80%), oleic acid (2.72%), and trans-palmitoleic acid (2.62%), while in branch bark were D-limonene (54.61%), γ-terpinene (6.68%), dodecane (5.73%), and dimethyl anthranilate (3.13%), and in branch wood were D-limonene (38.13%), dimethyl anthranilate (8.13%), (-)-β-fenchol (6.83%), and dodecane (5.31%). At 25 µL, the EO from... [more]

Differential Evolution (DE) is one of the prevailing search techniques in the present era to solve global optimization problems. However, it shows weakness in performing a localized search, since it is based on mutation strategies that take large steps while searching a local area. Thus, DE is not a good option for solving local optimization problems. On the other hand, there are traditional local search (LS) methods, such as Steepest Decent and Davidon−Fletcher−Powell (DFP) that are good at local searching, but poor in searching global regions. Hence, motivated by the short comings of existing search techniques, we propose a hybrid algorithm of a DE version, reflected adaptive differential evolution with two external archives (RJADE/TA) with DFP to benefit from both search techniques and to alleviate their search disadvantages. In the novel hybrid design, the initial population is explored by global optimizer, RJADE/TA, and then a few comparatively best solutions are shifted to the ar... [more]

A large space of chemicals with broad industrial and consumer applications could be synthesized by engineered microbial biocatalysts. However, the current strain optimization process is prohibitively laborious and costly to produce one target chemical and often requires new engineering efforts to produce new molecules. To tackle this challenge, modular cell design based on a chassis strain that can be combined with different product synthesis pathway modules has recently been proposed. This approach seeks to minimize unexpected failure and avoid task repetition, leading to a more robust and faster strain engineering process. In our previous study, we mathematically formulated the modular cell design problem based on the multi-objective optimization framework. In this study, we evaluated a library of state-of-the-art multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) to identify the most effective method to solve the modular cell design problem. Using the best MOEA, we found better solutio... [more]

The objective of this study was to evaluate effects of dark brown sugar on acrylamide and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) levels in brown sugar cookies. Dark brown sugar was used as a raw material instead of sucrose, and chitosan, chitooligosaccharides, or calcium carbonate were added to investigate their effect on acrylamide and HMF mitigation. The results demonstrated that the higher the content of acrylamide in the dark brown sugar, the higher the amount of acrylamide produced in baked brown sugar cookies. The addition of dark brown sugar significantly increased the diameter and decreased the thickness of cookies, which induced more acrylamide formation. Therefore, the sucrose control cookies were harder and thicker than dark brown sugar cookies. The addition of 1% chitosan, chitooligosaccharide, or calcium carbonate did not reduce the acrylamide formation of the brown sugar cookies. The content of acrylamide and HMF in the sucrose control group was lower than that in dark brown sugar... [more]

In this study, six macroporous resins were screened on their adsorption and de-adsorption characteristics for the amygdalin in the debitterizing wastewater concentrate (DWC). The results indicate that the XDA-1 resin exerts good adsorption and de-adsorption capacities on the amygdalin. In order to further confirm its feasibility, the factors affecting the capacity of adsorption and de-adsorption, and its adsorption mechanisms were also investigated. The results suggest that the optimum purification conditions were as follows: loading concentration of samples with 78.05 mg/mL, flow rate of 2 mL/min, and de-adsorption with 80% ethanol solution. The recovery rate was 88.75% and the relative content achieved 61.58% after purification by XDA-1 resin. The Freundlich model can be used to describe the entirety of the exothermic and physical adsorption processes. In summary, the conclusion which can be made from this research is that the wastewater generated from the debitterizing of apricot ke... [more]

Triphenyltin (TPT) has severely polluted the environment, and it often coexists with metal ions, such as Cu2+. This paper describes the cell’s molecular recognition of TPT, the interaction between TPT recognition and Cu2+ biosorption, and their effect on cell permeability. We studied the recognition of TPT by Bacillus thuringiensis cells and the effect of TPT recognition on Cu2+ biosorption by using atomic force microscopy to observe changes in cell surface mechanical properties and cellular morphology and by using flow cytometry to determine the cell growth status and cell permeability. The results show that B. thuringiensis can quickly recognize different media. The adhesion force of cells in contact with Tween 80 was significantly reduced to levels that were much lower than that of cells in contact with PBS. Conversely, the cell surface adhesion force increased as TPT became more degraded. B. thuringiensis cells maintained their original morphology after 48 h of TPT treatment. The a... [more]

Energy efficiency improvement and environmental impact reduction are emerging issues in the manufacturing industry. Aside from cutting, metal forming is also an important process in manufacturing. Metal forming is energy intensive because of the low energy efficiency of the used metal forming press. Although many literature reviews focused on the energy reduction and energy efficiency of machine tools, a comprehensive literature review of metal forming processes remains lacking because of the great difference between cutting machines and forming equipment. In addition, methods for energy efficiency and energy-saving still need to be promoted in metal forming. In this review, a novel hierarchy of the metal forming system was presented to describe the relationship among the equipment, process, and manufacturing system, providing a guideline of methods for energy efficiency and saving in metal forming. Then, existing energy consumption modeling and estimation theories and methods were dis... [more]

Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, is essential for both normal development and numerous pathologies. Systems biology has offered a unique approach to study angiogenesis by profiling tyrosine kinase receptors (RTKs) that regulate angiogenic processes and computationally modeling RTK signaling pathways. Historically, this systems biology approach has been applied on ex vivo angiogenesis assays, however, these assays are difficult to quantify and limited in their potential of temporal analysis. In this study, we adopted a simple two-dimensional angiogenesis assay comprised of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) and examined temporal dynamics of a panel of six RTKs and cell heterogeneity up to 17 days. We observed ~2700 VEGFR1 (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 1) per cell on 24-h-old cocultured HDF plasma membranes, which do not express VEGFR when cultured alone. We observed 4000−8100 VEGFR2 p... [more]

Active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) particle size distribution is important for both downstream processing operations and in vivo performance. Crystallization process parameters and reactor configuration are important in controlling API particle size distribution (PSD). Given the large number of parameters and the scale-dependence of many parameters, it can be difficult to design a scalable crystallization process that delivers a target PSD. Population balance modeling is a useful tool for understanding crystallization kinetics, which are primarily scale-independent, predicting PSD, and studying the impact of process parameters on PSD. Although population balance modeling (PBM) does have certain limitations, such as scale dependency of secondary nucleation, and is currently limited in commercial software packages to one particle dimension, which has difficulty in predicting PSD for high aspect ratio morphologies, there is still much to be gained from applying PBM in API crystallizat... [more]

A pump is one of the most important machines in the processes and flow systems. The operation of multistage centrifugal pumps could generate pressure fluctuations and instabilities that may be detrimental to the performance and integrity of the pump. In this paper, a numerical study of the influence of pressure fluctuations and unsteady flow patterns was undertaken in the pump flow channel of three configurations with different diffuser vane numbers. It was found that the amplitude of pressure fluctuation in the diffuser was increased gradually with the increase in number of diffuser vanes. The lower number of diffuser vanes was beneficial to obtain a weaker pressure fluctuation intensity. With the static pressure gradually increasing, the effects of impeller blade passing frequency attenuated gradually, and the effect of diffuser vanes was increased gradually.