Forward osmosis (FO) process was applied to concentrate the orange juice. FO relies on the driving force generating from osmotic pressure difference that result from concentration difference between the draw solution (DS) and orange juice as feed solution (FS). This driving force makes the water to transport from orange juice across a semi-permeable membrane to the DS without any energy applied. Thermal and pressure-driven dewatering methods are widely used, but they are prohibitively energy intensive and hence, expensive. Effects of various operating conditions on flux have been investigated. Four types of salts were used in the DS, (NaCl, CaCl2, KCl, and MgSO4) as osmotic agent and the experiments were performed at the concentration of the salts in the DS ranged (3.5 – 20% by wt), the temperature of DS ranged (20 – 50oC), and the flow rate of the FS and DS ranged (1 – 4 lit/min). It was observed that the optimum operating conditions are: concentration of salt = 20% by wt for CaCl2, temperature of DS = 50oC, and the flow rate of FS = 4 lit/min where at these conditions the maximum flux was obtained equal to 13.2 lit/m2.h or the total volume of the water transferred from the juice (during 3 hours and membrane area of 0.0135 m2) was 0.535 lit. NaCl performed much higher efficiency as osmotic agent than the others salts up to the concentration of 15.2%, but after 15.2% the CaCl2 was the best.
In the present work, the ternary compound MgxZn7-x O7Wurtzoid with variable Zn and Mg contents was analyzed using density functional theory with B3LYP 6-311G**basis set. The electronic and vibrational properties of MgxZn7-xO7 wurtzoids, were investigated, including energy gaps, bond lengths, spectral properties, such like infrared spectra and Raman. IR and Raman spectra were compared with experimental longitudinal optical modes frequency results. The theoretical results agree well with experiments and previous data. It has been found that the energy gap is increasing with the increased Mg concentration, and that the longitudinal optical position exposes a UV shift movement with an increase in the concentration.
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One of the goals of adding adjuvants to agricultural spray solutions is to enhance the droplet size characteristics of this spray. Droplet size, in turn, has an influence in the deposited spray quality, in addition to the drift and losses of spray to off-target places. The aim of this research was to evaluate the effect of adding adjuvants to two types of water from different sources on the droplet size characteristics. Two types of adjuvants were employed in the tests: the active substance content of the first adjuvant was a 50% aqueous solution of sodium salt of alkylbenzenesulfonic acid—10% (HY), whereas the second was from rapeseed oil (natural origin)—85% (OL). Both adjuvants were tested in two concentrations: the first was
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This research is addressing the effect of different ferrocene concentration (0.00, 2.15x10-3, 4.30x10-3, 8.60x10-3, and 12.9x10-3) on the bulk free radical polymerization of methyl methacrylate monomer in benzene using benzoyl peroxide as initiator. The polymerization was conducted at 60º C under free oxygen atmosphere. The resulting polymers were characterized by FTIR. The results were compared with the presence and absence of ferrocene at 10% conversion. The %conversion was 3.04% with no ferrocene present in the polymerization medium and its increase to 9.06 with a first lowest ferrocene concentration added, i.e. 2.15 x10-3mol/l. This was positively reflected on the poly(methyl methacrylate) molecular weight measured by viscosity techniq
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Emulsion Liquid Membrane (ELM) is an emerging technology that removes contaminants from water and industrial wastewater. This study investigated the stability and extraction efficiency of ELM for the removal of Chlorpyrifos Pesticide (CP) from wastewater. The stability was studied in terms of emulsion breakage. The proposed ELM included n-hexane as a diluent, span-80 as a surfactant, and hydrochloric acid (HCl) as a stripping agent. Parameters such as mixing speed, aqueous feed solution pH, internal-to-organic membrane volume ratio, and external-to-emulsion volume ratio were investigated. A minimum emulsion breakage of 0.66% coupled with a maximum chlorpyrifos extraction and stripping efficiency were achieved at 96.1% and 95.7% at b
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In this work, a new development of predictive voltage-tracking control algorithm for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFCs) model, using a neural network technique based on-line auto-tuning intelligent algorithm was proposed. The aim of proposed robust feedback nonlinear neural predictive voltage controller is to find precisely and quickly the optimal hydrogen partial pressure action to control the stack terminal voltage of the (PEMFC) model for N-step ahead prediction. The Chaotic Particle Swarm Optimization (CPSO) implemented as a stable and robust on-line auto-tune algorithm to find the optimal weights for the proposed predictive neural network controller to improve system performance in terms of fast-tracking de
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This work aims to optimize surface roughness, wall angle deviation, and average wall thickness as output responses of ALuminium-1050 alloy cone formed by the single point incremental sheet metal forming process. The experiments are accomplished based on the use of a mixed level Taguchi experimental design with an L18 orthogonal array. Six levels of step depth, three levels of tool diameter, feed rate, and tool rotational speed have been considered as input process parameters. The analyses of variance (ANOVA) have been used to investigate the significance of parameters and the effect of their levels for minimum surface roughness, minimum wall angle deviation, and maximum average wall thickness. The results indicate that step depth and tool r
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