Reaction between CO2 and CaO under dry grinding

This study was carried out to investigate the reaction between CO₂ and materials that contain CaO under dry grinding. Chemical reagent CaO was used in this experiment, and waste concrete was also tested to examine the feasibility of CO₂ sorption into it. Samples were ground in a CO₂ atmosphere by a centrifugal ball mill. The reaction was measured with the constant volume method. The effects of amount of sample, the number and diameter of balls, the concentration of CO₂ in the mixture of CO₂ and air and the rotational speed on the CO₂ sorption were examined. The amount of the CO₂ sorption under grinding was larger than that without grinding. The grinding enhanced the reaction between CaO and CO₂. The CO₂ sorption steeply increased with time in the early stage of grinding. After that, it increased gradually. The CO₂ reacted with the CaO at the surface layer of the newly exposed surface of the CaO particles during the grinding. The initial sorption rate of CO₂ was related with the shear force. In the latter stage of grinding, the grinding process caused the CaO particles to agglomerate. As a result, the sorption of CO₂ became slow. It was found that the waste concrete had high potential for sorption of CO₂ by means of dry grinding.     

马来西亚现代建筑发展史

与本地区受殖民统治的其他亚洲国家的情况类似．马来西亚的建筑风格也受到了西方建筑理念的影响。在马来西亚．你可以从1920年代之后的作品上找到这些理念运用在设计和建筑上的证据。     

Mechanical and Tribological Behavior of Powder Metallurgy Processed Aluminum–Graphite Composite

Russian Journal of Non-Ferrous Metals - In this research, the mechanical and tribological behavior of aluminum–graphite (Al–Gr) composite has been investigated in order to determine the...     

Determination of amylopectin structure and physicochemical properties in rice endosperm starch of mutant lines derived from Malaysian rice cultivar MR219

BACKGROUND: Characterization of starch properties and functionality can apply breeding program selection for desirable traits such as eating, cooking and processing qualities to meet consumer preference. Low amylose content is generally preferred in Malaysia because of cohesive, tender and glossy cooked rice. Rice high in short‐chain amylopectin has a lower transition temperature of starch gelatinization. In the continuing search for improved starch quality in rice cultivars a study was carried out with new mutant lines MR219‐4 and MR219‐9, derived from MR219. RESULTS: MR219 and its mutant lines contain L‐type amylopectin, being high in amylopectin of intermediate chain length with degree of polymerization 12‐21. The apparent amylose content (AAC) in MR219‐4 had lower AAC value (19.2%) compared to other lines. A strongly negative correlation was found between chain‐length fraction of amylopectin and transition temperatures—onset temperature peak temperature, and conclusion temperature (0.992, 0.958, 0.950; P < 0.01)—with fraction b1 (fb1), respectively. CONCLUSION: The Malaysian lines studied contain L‐type amylopectin and offer a better understanding of grain quality improvement in terms of starch properties and functionality. This information will be directly applicable to select for desirable traits in future breeding programs. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

A review on bio-oil production from biomass by using pyrolysis method

The paper provides an updated review on thermal conversion of biomass for the production of liquid products referred as bio-oil. This technology is described focusing on the characterization of feedstock, reactor design, products formation and upgrading. For feedstock characterization is covered in terms of several pretreatment methods. The reactor designs are illustrated number of design ranging from fixed bed to circulating fluidized bed. The properties of bio-oil composition have caused increasingly extensive research to be undertaken to address properties that need modification and this area is reviewed in terms of physical, catalytic and chemical upgrading. The mechanism of the products formation is also illustrated by several chemical routes. Reactor parameters such as heating rate, temperature of pyrolysis, catalysts etc are reviewed.     

Determination of aflatoxins in animal feeds by HPLC with multifunctional column clean-up

A reversed-phase HPLC method with fluorescence detection for the determination of the aflatoxins B1, B2, G1 and G2 in 42 animal feeds, comprising corn (16), soya bean meal (8), mixed meal (13), sunflower, wheat, canola, palm kernel, copra meals (1 each) was carried out. The samples were first extracted using acetonitrile:water (9:1), and was further cleaned-up using a multifunctional column. Optimum conditions for the extraction and chromatographic separation were investigated. By adopting an isocratic chromatographic system using a mobile phase comprising acetonitrile:methanol:water (8:27:65, v/v/v), the separation of the four aflatoxins was possible within 30 min. Recoveries for aflatoxins B1, B2, G1 and G2 were 98 ± 0.7%, 95 ± 1.0%, 94 ± 3.6% and 97 ± 4.3%, respectively. The results show that eight samples (19%) were contaminated with aflatoxins, ranging from 6.5 to 101.9 ng g^?1. Total aflatoxin levels in three samples exceed the legal limits of many countries of 20 ng g^?1.     

Offline Error Detection in MEDA-Based Digital Microfluidic Biochips Using Oscillation-Based Testing Methodology

Digital microfluidics is an emerging class of lab-on-a-chip system. Reliability is a critical performance parameter as these biochips are employed in various safety-critical biomedical applications. With the introduction of highly scalable, reconfigurable and field programmable Micro-Electrode-Dot-Array (MEDA) architecture, the limitation of conventional DMFBs in varying the droplet size/volume in fine grain manner has been resolved. However, the MEDA-based biochips must be adequately tested upon fabrication to guarantee the correctness of bioassays. In this work, an offline testing approach based on Oscillation-Based Testing (OBT) methodology is presented for MEDA-based digital microfluidic biochips. Various simulations were performed for droplet-electrode short fault model involving single and multiple micro-electrodes. Furthermore, the loss of droplet volume due to the presence of defect was analyzed using COMSOL Multiphysics. The simulation results based on PSpice and COMSOL show that the proposed approach is effective for detecting defects in MEDA-based biochips.     

Novel initialization scheme for Fuzzy C-Means algorithm on color image segmentation

This paper presents a novel initialization scheme to determine the cluster number and obtain the initial cluster centers for Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm to segment any kind of color images, captured using different consumer electronic products or machine vision systems. The proposed initialization scheme, called Hierarchical Approach (HA), integrates the splitting and merging techniques to obtain the initialization condition for FCM algorithm. Initially, the splitting technique is applied to split the color image into multiple homogeneous regions. Then, the merging technique is employed to obtain the reasonable cluster number for any kind of input images. In addition, the initial cluster centers for FCM algorithm are also obtained. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed HA initialization scheme substantially outperforms other state-of-the-art initialization schemes by obtaining better initialization condition for FCM algorithm.     

Mean drop size correlations and population balance models for liquid—liquid dispersion

Reliable models are required for accurate estimation of drop sizes which govern the interfacial area and rate of mass transfer in a system where various correlations and models have been improved for better accuracy and wider application breath. In this article, relevant semiempirical equations and population balance equation (PBE) models are reviewed. Semiempirical correlations are highly system dependent and limited to prediction of steady‐state drop size while PBE models could estimate transient drop size with considerations of inhomogeineity and flow spatial variation during drop size evolution. With appropriate model parameters determination, different PBE models can be used to reproduce experimental data for a similar system. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 1129–1145, 2015     

Optimisation of gelatine extraction from hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) skins and measurement of gel strength and SDS–PAGE

The extraction of hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) gelatine was optimised using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and gel strength and SDS–PAGE were evaluated. The optimum conditions for extraction were 0.75 M NaCl for 9 min of pre-treatment time and hot water extraction at 49.3 °C for 60 min. Results showed that the predicted yield by RSM (17.4%) closely matched the experimental yield of 17.6%. SDS–PAGE showed that hoki gelatine contained higher molecular weight subunits (∼191 kDa) but lower gel strength (197 ± 5 g) than those from porcine (307 ± 8.4 g) or bovine (273 ± 16.1 g) gelatine determined at 7 °C. However, hoki gelatine gel strength was significantly higher than those from other cold-water fish species reported in literature, which could account for the slight differences in methodologies reported.