With the increasing availability of large amounts of data, methods that fall under the term data science are becoming important assets for chemical engineers to use. Methods, broadly speaking, are needed to carry out three tasks, namely data management, statistical and machine learning and data visualization. While claims have been made that data science is essentially statistics, consideration of the three tasks previously mentioned make it clear that it is really broader than just statistics alone and furthermore, statistical methods from a data-poor era are likely insufficient. While there have been many successful applications of data science methodologies, there are still many challenges that must be addressed. For example, just because a dataset is large, does not necessarily mean it is meaningful or information rich. From an organizational point of view, a lack of domain knowledge and a lack of a trained workforce among other issues are cited as barriers for the successful imple... [more]

The sleeve regulating valve is widely used in the pipeline systems of process industries to control fluid flow. When flowing through the sleeve regulating valve, the water is easy to reach cavitation because of the pressure drop in the partial region, which may cause serious damage to pipeline system. In this paper, the pressure drop and cavitation characteristics in the sleeve regulating valve for different pressure differences and valve core displacements are investigated using a multiphase cavitation model. The pressure drop, velocity and vapor volume distribution in the regulating valves are obtained and analyzed. The total vapor volumes are also predicted and compared. The results show that the decrease of the valve core displacement induces the enlargement of the vapor distribution region and the increase of the vapor density. The increase of the pressure difference induces a more serious cavitation. The pressure difference has a slight influence on the cavitation intensity and d... [more]

The aerobic denitrifying phosphate accumulating bacteria (ADPB) use NO3− as an electron acceptor and remove nitrate by denitrification and concomitant uptake of excessive phosphorus in aerobic conditions. Activated sludge was collected from the A2O aerobic biological pool of the sewage treatment plant at Hezuo Town, Chengdu City. The candidate ADPB strains were obtained by cultivation in the enriched denitrification media, followed by repeated isolation and purification on bromothymol blue (BTB) solid plates. The obtained candidates were further screened for ADPB strains by phosphorus uptake experiment, nitrate reduction test, metachromatic granules staining, and poly-β-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) staining. The 16 sedimentation ribosome deoxyribonucleic acid (16 S rDNA) molecular technique was used to determine their taxonomy. Further, the denitrification and dephosphorization capacities of ADPB strains were ascertained through their growth characteristics in nitrogen-phosphorus-rich liquid... [more]

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is one of the most effective technologies to reduce CO2 emissions and has attracted wide attention all over the world. This paper proposes a real option model to analyze the investment decisions of a coal-fired power plant on CCUS technologies under imperfect carbon emission trading schemes in China. Considering multiple uncertainties, which include carbon trading price volatility, carbon utilization revenue fluctuation, and changes in carbon transport and storage cost, the least squares Monte Carlo simulation method is used to solve the problems of path dependence. The research results show that the independent effects of carbon trading mechanisms on investment stimulation and emission reduction are limited. The utilization ratio of captured CO2 has significant impacts on the net present value and investment value of the CCUS project. Moreover, the investment threshold is highly sensitive to the utilization proportion of food grade CO2 w... [more]

Infections after bone reconstructive surgery become an authentic therapeutic and economic issue when it comes to a modern health care system. In general; infected bone defects are regarded as contraindications for bone grafting. Since the pathogens develop a biofilm on the inner surface of the bone; local delivery of antibiotics becomes more important. The present work focuses on the synthesis of Mesoporous Hydroxyapatite (MPHAP) loaded with drug Vancomycin (Van) and to investigate its loading and leaching ability in phosphate buffer solution (PBS), to be used for post-operative infections. The effect of pore size on MPHAP was analyzed using different fatty acids as organic modifiers. The impacts of various fatty acids chain length on the morphology and pore size were studied. A simple impregnation technique with optimized conditions ensured a high antibiotic loading (up to 0.476 + 0.0135 mg/mL), with a complete in vitro release obtained within 50 h.

The present research work deals with prediction of hydrogen consumption of a fuel cell in an energy storage system. Due to the fact that these kind of systems have a very nonlinear behaviour, the use of traditional techniques based on parametric models and other more sophisticated techniques such as soft computing methods, seems not to be accurate enough to generate good models of the system under study. Due to that, a hybrid intelligent system, based on clustering and regression techniques, has been developed and implemented to predict the necessary variation of the hydrogen flow consumption to satisfy the variation of demanded power to the fuel cell. In this research, a hybrid intelligent model was created and validated over a dataset from a fuel cell energy storage system. Obtained results validate the proposal, achieving better performance than other well-known classical regression methods, allowing us to predict the hydrogen consumption with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 3.73... [more]

There are many interference components in Fourier amplitude spectrum of a contaminated fault signal, and thus the segment obtained based on the spectrum can lead to serious over-decomposition of empirical wavelet transform (EWT). Aiming to resolve the above problems, a novel method named improved empirical wavelet transform (IEWT) is proposed. Because the power spectrum is less sensitive to the contaminated interference and manifests the presence of fault feature information, IEWT replaces the Fourier amplitude spectrum of EWT with power spectrum in segment acquirement, and threshold processing is also introduced to eliminate the bad influence on the acquirement, and thus the best decomposition result of IEWT can be obtained based on feature energy ratio (FER). The loose slipper fault signal of hydraulic pump is tested and verified. The result demonstrates that the proposed method is superior and can extract the fault feature information accurately.

We characterize the long-term development of high-viscosity gas−liquid intermittent flows by means of a detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). To this end, the pressures measured at different locations along an ad hoc experimental flow line are compared. We then analyze the relevant time-series to determine the evolution of the various kinds of intermittent flow patterns associated with the mixtures under consideration. Although no pattern transitions are observed in the presence of high-viscosity mixtures, we show that the dynamical attributes of each kind of intermittence evolves from one point to another within the transport system. The analysis indicates that the loss of a long-range correlation between the pressure responses are due to the discharge processes.

The dimensionless productivity index is an important indicator for measuring the oil production capacity of oilfields. The traditional calculation method of the dimensionless productivity index is not suitable for the continuous multiple development phases of oilfields. In this study, based on Darcy’s Law and the theory of non-piston leading edge propulsion, we considered the influence of capillary pressure and derived a differential equation for leading edge propulsion distance. We established a calculation model of the dimensionless productivity index that is suitable for the multiple development phases of oilfields, including water flooding, polymer flooding, and binary compound flooding. The model was applied to the W block of the JZ9-3 oilfield, and the calculation results of the model were compared with the actual statistical results. The results show that the calculation error rates of the dimensionless productivity index in three phases of oilfield development are 4.67%, 17.65%... [more]

Ionic liquids, which are classified as new solvents, have been identified to be potential solvents in the application of CO2 capture. In this work, six ammonium-based protic ionic liquids, containing ethanolammonium [EtOHA], tributylammonium [TBA], bis(2-ethylhexyl)ammonium [BEHA] cations, and acetate [AC] and butyrate [BA] anions, were synthesized and characterized. The thermophysical properties of the ammonium-based protic ionic liquids were measured. Density, ρ, and dynamic viscosity, η, were determined at temperatures between 293.15 K and 363.15 K. The density and viscosity values were correlated using empirical correlations and the thermal coefficient expansion, αp, and molecular volume, Vm, were estimated using density values. The thermal stability of the ammonium-based protic ionic liquids was investigated using thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) at a heating rate of 10 °C·min‒1. The CO2 absorption of the ammonium-based ionic liquids were measured up to 20 bar at 298.15 K. From th... [more]

Gas turbine converts chemical energy into mechanical energy and provide energy for aircraft, ships, etc. The performance diagnosis of rotating components of gas turbine are essential in terms of the high failure rate of these parts. A problem that the sudden changing of operation state of turbines may lead to the misdiagnosis due to the defect of gas turbine’s model. This paper constructs the strong tracking filter based on the unscented Kalman filter to achieve accurate estimation of gas turbine’s measured parameters when the state changes suddenly. In the strong tracking filter, a parameter optimization method based on the residual similarity of measured parameters is proposed. Next, adopt the measured parameters filtered by the strong tracking filter to construct the health parameters estimation algorithm based on the particle filter. The particle weight is optimized by the mean adjustment method. Performance diagnosis is realized by checking the changes of health parameters output... [more]

High fluctuation in cyclic variations influences engine combustion negatively, leading to higher fuel consumption, lower performance, and drivability problems. This paper examines the impacts of injection strategies (injection pressure, injection timing and injection duration) on the cyclic variation of gasoline spark ignition (SI) optical engine under clean and fouled injectors. The principal oscillatory modes of the cycle to cycle variation have been identified, and the engine cycles over which these modes may persist are described. Through the wavelet power spectrum, the presence of short, intermediate and long-term periodicities in the pressure signal have been detected. It was noticed that depending on the clean and fouled injector, the long and intermediate-term periodicities may span many cycles, whereas the short-period oscillations tend to appear intermittently. Information of these periodicities could be helpful to promote efficient control strategies for better combustion. T... [more]

Carbon emissions are inevitably linked to lifestyle and consumption behaviours, and the concept of “carbon footprinting” is now well-recognised beyond academia. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the primary tools for assessing carbon footprints. The aim of this paper is to present a systematic review of literatures focusing on carbon footprint calculated with life cycle assessment. We used CiteSpace software to draw the knowledge map of related research to identify and trace the knowledge base and frontier terminology. It was found that the LCA application in respects of carbon footprint studies was completed mainly for the following aspect: beef production and dairy industry, seafood and fishery, nutrition, urban structure and energy use. The CiteSpace analysis showed the development path of the above aspects, for example, beef production and dairy industry has been a long-term topic in this kind of research, while the topic of nutrition appeared in recent years. There was also a... [more]

This paper studies manufacturing processes in a wooden furniture manufacturing company. The company suffers from long manufacturing lead times and an unbalanced production line. To identify sources of waste and delay value stream mapping (VSM) and a discrete event simulation model is implemented. VSM is used to visualize and analyze the major processes of the company and provide quantifiable KPIs; the manufacturing lead-time and then Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) settings. A discrete event simulation model is then built to analyze the company on a wider scale and provide the data required to identify bottlenecks. Building on the data gathered from the production lines and the simulation model, two-bottleneck detection methods are used, the utilization method, and the waiting time method. Then based on the comparison of the two methods a third bottleneck detection is utilized; the scenario-based method, to identify the primary and secondary bottlenecks. After the bottlenecks are... [more]

The emergence of digital technology is a paradigmatic historical change. As a process of transforming social engineering structures, digitization has had a ubiquitous impact on the organization of structures and business logic, as well as on economic principles and rules. The fertile ground for digital technology applications is logistics management, which manifests itself in the dynamic development of logistics 4.0. Increasingly, it is pointed out that digital technology has some distinct features that have fundamental implications for innovation. The aim of the present study is to determine the impact of the risk of implementing digital technologies for logistics management. The study was conducted using the standardized questionnaire interview method with representatives of the management of enterprises. The attempt was random. The sampling was made up of micro, small, medium, and large enterprises from the production and services sectors, having a logistics unit or a logistics divi... [more]

To ensure the stability of park power supply systems and to promote the consumption of wind/photovoltaic generation, this paper proposes a dispatching optimization model for the park power supply system with power-to-gas (P2G) and peak regulation via gas-fired generators. Firstly, the structure of a park power system with P2G was built. Secondly, a dispatching optimization model for the park power supply system was constructed with a peak regulation compensation mechanism. Finally, the effectiveness of the model was verified by a case study. The case results show that with the integration of P2G and the marketized peak regulation compensation mechanism, preferential power energy storage followed by gas storage had the best effect on the park power supply system, which minimized the clean energy curtailment to 11.18% and the total cost by approximately $120.190 and maximized the net profit by approximately $152.005.

The blank’s dimensions are an important focus of blank design as they largely determine the energy consumption and cost of manufacturing and further processing the blank. To achieve energy saving and low cost during the optimization of blank dimensions design, we established energy consumption and cost objectives in the manufacturing and further processing of blanks by optimizing the parameters. As objectives, we selected the blank’s production and further processing parameters as optimization variables to minimize energy consumption and cost, then set up a multi-objective optimization model. The optimal blank dimension was back calculated using the parameters of the minimum processing energy consumption and minimum cost state, and the model was optimized using the non-dominated genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II). The effect of designing blank dimension in saving energy and costs is obvious compared with the existing methods.

Recovery oils, obtained from the hydro-distillation of the fresh flowers of Matricaria chamomilla, as well as essential oils, were studied for their environmental purposes in cultural heritage. These oils were assayed for their antifungal activity against the growth of four molds isolated from archaeological manuscripts (Aspergillus niger), museum gypsum board Antique (A. flavus), museum archaeological tissue (A. terreus), and museum organic materials (Fusarium culmorum) of cultural heritage objects. Oils were applied to inhibit the growth of fungi at amounts of 25, 50, 75 and, 100 µL/mL, and compared with negative controls (0 µL/mL) or positive controls (Sertaconazol 3g/L). Using GC/MS analysis, the main chemical compounds identified in the essential oil were (Z)-β-farnesene (27%), D-limonene (15.25%), and α-bisabolol oxide A (14.9%), while the compounds identified in the recovery oil were α-bisabolol oxide A (18.6%), d-limonene (8.82%), and α-bisabolol oxide B (7.13%). A low amount o... [more]

The impact of solar radiation on spacecraft can increase the cooling load, degrade the material properties of the structure and possibly lead to catastrophic failure of their missions. In this paper, we develop a computational model to investigate the effect of the exposure to solar radiation on the thermal distribution of a spacecraft with a cylindrical shape which is traveling in low earth orbit environment. This is obtained by the energy conservation between the heat conduction among the spacecraft, the heating from the solar radiation, and the radiative heat dissipation into the surroundings while accounting for the dynamics of the space vehicle (rotational motion). The model is solved numerically using the meshless collocation point method to evaluate the temperature variations under different operating conditions. The meshless method is based on approximating the unknown field function and their space derivatives, by using a set of nodes, sprinkled over the spatial domain of the... [more]

Current diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is based on assessment of behavioral symptoms, although there is strong evidence that ASD affects multiple organ systems including the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This study used Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) to evaluate plasma metabolites from 18 children with ASD and chronic GI problems (ASD + GI cohort) and 20 typically developing (TD) children without GI problems (TD − GI cohort). Using three plasma metabolites that may represent three general groups of metabolic abnormalities, it was possible to distinguish the ASD + GI cohort from the TD − GI cohort with 94% sensitivity and 100% specificity after leave-one-out cross-validation. After the ASD + GI participants underwent Microbiota Transfer Therapy with significant improvement in GI and ASD-related symptoms, their metabolic profiles shifted significantly to become more similar to the TD − GI group, indicating potential utility of this combination of plasma metabolites as a b... [more]

As a promising candidate for expanding the capacity of drug loading in silica nanoplatforms, hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (HMSNs) are gaining increasing attention. In this study, porous nanosilica (PNS) and HMSNs were prepared by the sol-gel method and template assisted method, then further used for Rhodamine (RhB) loading. To characterize the as-synthesized nanocarriers, a number of techniques, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), nitrogen absorption-desorption isotherms, dynamic light scattering (DLS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were employed. The size of HMSN nanoparticles in aqueous solution averaged 134.0 ± 0.3 nm, which could be adjusted by minor changes during synthesis, whereas that of PNS nanoparticles was 63.4 ± 0.6 nm. In addition, the encapsulation of RhB into HMSN nanoparticles to form RhB-loaded nanocarriers (RhB/HMSN) was successful, achieving high loading efficiency... [more]

Corn husks are an important byproduct of the corn processing industry. Although they are a rich source of bioactive compounds, especially flavonoids, corn husks are usually disposed of or used as animal feed. In this paper, we investigate their recovery by an enzyme-assisted extraction process consisting of a pretreatment of the plant material with cellulase followed by solvent extraction with aqueous ethanol. A four-factor, three-level Box−Behnken design combined with the response surface methodology was used to optimize the enzyme dosage (0.3−0.5 g/100 g), incubation time (1.5−2.5 h), liquid-to-solid ratio (30−40 mL g−1) and ethanol concentration in the solvent (60−80% v/v). Under the optimal conditions, about 1.3 g of total flavonoids per 100 g of dry waste were recovered. A statistical analysis of the results was performed to provide a quantitative estimation of the influence of the four factors, alone or in combination, on the extraction yields. Overall, the results from this stud... [more]

Gate valves have been widely used in the piping system and have attracted a lot of attention from researchers. In this paper, a wedge-type double disk parallel gate valve is chosen to be analyzed. The Reynolds number varying from 200 to 500,000, and the valve opening degree varying from 20% to 100%, and the groove depth varying from 2.3 mm to 9 mm are chosen to investigate their effects on the flow and loss coefficients of the gate valve. The results show that the loss coefficient decreases and the flow coefficient increases with the increase of the Reynolds number and the valve opening degree, while with the increase of the groove depth, the loss coefficient barely changes, but the flow coefficient increases if the Reynolds number is larger than 10,000. In addition, the effects of the gaps between the disk and the limit stop on the stress distribution of the bolt are also investigated, and the results show that if the gaps are negative, high stress will act on the bolt at the contact... [more]

Focusing on the bottlenecks of traditional physical activation method for the preparation of activated carbons (ACs), we established a simple and scalable method to control the physicochemical structure of ACs and study their CO2 adsorption performance. The preparation is achieved by ammonia activation at different volume fractions of ammonia in the mixture (10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) to introduce the nitrogen-containing functional groups and form the original pores and subsequent chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at different deposition times (30, 60, 90, and 120 min) to further adjust the pore structure. The nitrogen content of ACs-0.1/0.25/0.5/0.75/1 increases gradually from 2.11% to 8.84% with the increase of ammonia ratio in the mixture from 10% to 75% and then decreases to 3.02% in the process of pure ammonia activation (100%), during which the relative content of pyridinium nitrogen (N-6), pyrrolidine (N-5), and graphite nitrogen (N-Q) increase sequentially but nitrogen oxygen... [more]

In the current study, the Fe2O3/biochar nanocomposite was synthesized through a self-assembly method, followed by the immobilization of Pseudomonas putida (P. putida) on its surface to produce the P. putida/Fe2O3/biochar magnetic innovative nanocomposite. The synthesized nanocomposite was characterized using different techniques including X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Then, the efficiencies of this material to remove calconcarboxylic acid (CCA) organic dye, ammonium ions (NH4+), and phosphate ions (PO43−) from industrial wastewater were analyzed. The removal rates of up to 82%, 95%, and 85% were achieved for CCA dye, PO43−, NH4+, respectively, by the synthesized composite. Interestingly, even after 5 cycles of reuse, the prepared nanocomposite remains efficient in the removal of pollutants. Therefore, the P. putida/Fe3O4/biochar composite was found to be an actual talen... [more]