Preparations and characterizations of new series of TTF ligands containing a nitrogen aromatic heterocycle

The detailed synthesis of a new series of conjugated TTF ligands with nitrogen-based aromatic heterocycle are presented. In all these molecules, trimethyl-TTF or TTF skeleton are bridged to the nitrogen aromatic ligand through a conjugated spacer such as ethenyl or phenylethenyl unit. Their electrochemical characterization as well as the crystal structure of one of these compounds is given.     

Mining Projected Clusters in High-Dimensional Spaces

Clustering high-dimensional data has been a major challenge due to the inherent sparsity of the points. Most existing clustering algorithms become substantially inefficient if the required similarity measure is computed between data points in the full-dimensional space. To address this problem, a number of projected clustering algorithms have been proposed. However, most of them encounter difficulties when clusters hide in subspaces with very low dimensionality. These challenges motivate our effort to propose a robust partitional distance-based projected clustering algorithm. The algorithm consists of three phases. The first phase performs attribute relevance analysis by detecting dense and sparse regions and their location in each attribute. Starting from the results of the first phase, the goal of the second phase is to eliminate outliers, while the third phase aims to discover clusters in different subspaces. The clustering process is based on the K-means algorithm, with the computation of distance restricted to subsets of attributes where object values are dense. Our algorithm is capable of detecting projected clusters of low dimensionality embedded in a high-dimensional space and avoids the computation of the distance in the full-dimensional space. The suitability of our proposal has been demonstrated through an empirical study using synthetic and real datasets.     

Hydrogen supplemented natural gas effect on a DI diesel engine operating under dual fuel mode with a biodiesel pilot fuel

In order to slow down the continuing environmental deterioration, regulations for pollutant emissions limitations are increasingly rigorous. The development of new alternative fuels for internal combustion engines is a very interesting solution not only to overcome the pollution problem but also because of the petroleum shortage. In this context, the present work investigates the improvement of a DI diesel engine operating at constant speed (1500 rpm) and under dual fuel mode with eucalyptus biodiesel and natural gas (NG) enriched by various H₂ quantities (15, 25 and 30 by v%). The eucalyptus biodiesel quantity injected into the engine cylinder is kept constant, to supply around 10% of the engine nominal power, for all examined engine loads. The engine load is further increased using only the gaseous fuel (NG+H₂), which is introduced with the intake air. The effect of H₂/NG blending ratio on the combustion parameters, performance and pollutant emissions of the engine is investigated and compared with those of pure NG case. An important benefit in terms of brake specific fuel consumption, reaching a decrease of 4–10% with the 25% H₂ blend compared to the pure NG case, is achieved. Concerning the pollutant emissions, NG enrichment with H₂ is an efficient solution to enhance the combustion process and hence reduce carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbon and soot emissions at high loads where they are important for pure NG. However for the nitrogen oxide emissions, NG blending with H₂ is attractive only at low and medium loads where their levels are lower than pure NG.     

Adsorption of tetrahydrothiophene on faujasite type zeolites: Breakthrough curves and FTIR spectroscopy study

Adsorption of tetrahydrothiophene (THT) on NaX, CaX, AgX, and H-USY was studied by dynamic adsorption method and FTIR spectroscopy. The stoichiometric adsorption capacities are not very different for all materials, which is indicative of a complete micropore filling. In contrast, the overall rate constant of adsorption, determined from fitting the breakthrough curves with Bohart–Adams equation, is two times greater for H-USY than for type X zeolites. For NaX, CaX and H-USY, heating under N₂ flow at 300 °C allows to restore completely their initial adsorption capacities. In the case of AgX the same treatment results in a twofold lose of capacity accompanied by a collapse of the zeolite structure as evidenced by XRD. The nature of interaction between THT molecules and zeolites was characterized by FTIR spectroscopy. Only a weak interaction through hydrogen bonding was observed for THT on H-USY leading to an almost complete desorption at 100 °C. For NaX and CaX adsorbed molecules are gradually eliminated when heated to 300 °C while completely different pattern was observed for THT adsorbed on AgX on which the amount of the adsorbate remains nearly constant between 25 and 200 °C, but rapidly decreases on further heating. Such a behavior is indicative of much stronger interaction between THT molecules and Ag⁺ cations in agreement with the data on the regeneration of the adsorbents.