The effect of sintering temperature on silica derived from rice husk ash - Nickel Oxide (SiO 2 -NiO) foam fabrication via slurry technique

Fabrication of ceramic foam has been an interesting study in the field of a porous material due to the excellent mechanical and physical properties. This study presents an approach for the fabrication of Silica (SiO2) derived from rice husk ash (RHA) and Nickel Oxide (NiO) foams using the slurry technique, highlighting the sintering temperature affects. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) was used as binder and Polyurethane (PU) foam was applied as the space holder. The composition of SiO2 applied in this study was 20wt%. The PU foams dipped into SiO2-NiO slurry were dried and further sintered at three different sintering temperatures of 1050˚C, 1150˚C and 1250˚C. The morphologies of SiO2-NiO foams were observed by using the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and physical properties were determined by using Archimedes method for investigating the total porosity and bulk density. The identification of phases of SiO2-NiO foams were analysed by using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). The XRD analyses indicated that there were only SiO2 and NiO present and no additional phases detected after sintering which implied the compatibility of SiO2 derived from RHA and NiO even temperatures up to 1250˚C. The density values of the SiO2-NiO foams were found to increase with increasing of sintering temperature. The densities were found to be in the range 0.5239g/cm³ to 0.6210g/cm3 and the percentage of the foams porosity were in the range of 69.71% to 75.19% .Thus it is concluded that the slurry technique is found to be successful to fabricate the SiO2 as derived from RHA and NiO foams. The sintering temperatures was found to affect the SiO2-NiO foams in turns of the density and porosity of the foam

Discussion of the technology and research in fuel injectors common rail system

Common rail is one of the most important components in a diesel and gasoline direct injection system. It features a high-pressure (100 bar) fuel rail feeding solenoid valves, as opposed to a low-pressure fuel pump feeding unit injectors. Third-generation common rail diesels now feature piezoelectric injectors for increased precision, with fuel pressures up to 2,500 bar. The purpose of this review paper is to investigate the technology and research in fuel injectors common rail system. This review paper focuses on component of common rail injection system, pioneer of common rail injection, characteristics of common rail injection system, method to reduce smoke and NOx emission simultaneously and impact of common rail injection system. Based on our research, it can be concluded that common rail injection gives many benefit such as good for the engine performance, safe to use, and for to reduce the emission of the vehicle. Fuel injection common rail system is the modern technology that must be developed. Nowadays, our earth is polluting by vehicle output such as smoke. If the common rail system is developed, it can reduce the pollution and keep our atmosphere clean and safe

The Voltage Regulation of a Buck Converter using a Neural Network Predictive Controller

In this paper, a neural network predictive controller (NNPC) is proposed to control a buck converter. Conventional controllers such as proportional-integral (PI) or proportional-integral-derivative (PID) are designed based on the linearized small-signal model near the operating point. Therefore, the performance of the controller in the start-up, load change, or reference change is not optimal since the system model changes by changing the operating point. The neural network predictive controller optimally controls the buck converter by following the concept of the traditional model predictive controller. The advantage of the NNPC is that the neural network system identification decreases the inaccuracy of the system model with inaccurate parameters. A NNPC with a well-trained neural network can perform as an optimal controller for the buck converter. To compare the effectiveness of the traditional buck converter and the NNPC, the simulation results are provided

Design and Implementation of a Voltage Tracking with Artificial Neural Network Controller for a Double-input Buck-Boost Converter

This paper proposes an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) control voltage tracking scheme of a double-input buckboost DC-DC converter. In this topology, a back-propagation algorithm topology is implemented. The controller is developed to improve the performance of the double-input converter during transient and steady-state operations. The neural network controller design, which is developed against output voltage command tracking is proposed. The proposed concept has been investigated and validated experimentally on a laboratory prototype using DSP TMS320F28335real time digital controller to verify the dynamic response of the proposed controller. The experimental results confirm the validity of the proposed neural network control technique, which is a promising an efficient control topology that ensures doubleinput converter suitable for electric vehicle and renewable energy applications

Investigating the use of the e-mail in the teaching and learning of a technical subject among Polytechnic Ungku Omar Students

Through the use of technology in education, effectiveness in the teaching and learning process can be achieved. In this project, the researcher wants to identify whether the usage of the electronic mail in the teaching and learning of a technical subject will benefit the teaching and learning process or not. Other than that, researcher wants to identify problems faced in applying the electronic mail in the teaching and learning of a technical subject among Polytechnic Ungku Omar students. Respondents of the project were one class of Polytechnic Ungku Omar students who were taking Data Communication subject. There were two research approaches used in getting the data which are qualitative approaches and quantitative approach. Qualitative data includes data collected through observations, interview and content analysis. Quantitative data includes data collected through questionnaires. Data collected reveals that participants used the e-mail in different ways which brought them various benefits. E-mail was used as a pedagogy of teaching and learning, medium of communication and tool for different purposes like academic purposes, general query and query for personal development, socializing, complaining and suggesting ideas. The use of e-mail was influenced by factors like gender, personality, experience in using e-mail and the features of the e-mail itself. However, the problem faced by the students such as slow downloading or server problems, limited number of computers for use, limited number of computer labs, many of the computers in the polytechnic were not working properly, crowded computer lab, compact personal time table, lecturer to students ratio was too high, difficult to understand the description, do not have enough money to surf at Cyber Cafe and no free or confirmed access to Internet in Polytechnic have influenced the use of the electronic mail in the teaching and learning of a technical subject among Polytechnic Ungku Omar student

Alternative fuel from vegetable oils and animal fats

This study investigated the properties of processing vegetable and animal fat to be used as alternative fuel. The vegetable oil processing industry comprises the abstraction and treating of oils and fats from vegetable sources. Vegetable oils and fats are principally used for human consumption but are also used in animal feed, for medicinal purposes, and certain technical applications. In contrast triglycerides, vegetable waxes lack glycerin in their structure. Although many plant parts may yield oil, in commercial practice, oil is extracted primarily from seeds, for many developing countries, the concept of employing vegetable oils as sources for diesel fuels can be attractive. Often the culture of the appropriate plant is well established, the oil extraction well developed, and handling and storage well defined. Yields per hectare of tropical crops such as palm and coconut oils far exceed the yields of vegetable oils in temperate zones. Also, the production of most tropical vegetable oils has positive energy. A rendering process is performed to remove excess fat from animal carcasses and then turned into oil. Thus, to obtain refined oil, there is process from crude palm oil that involves removal of the products of hydrolysis and oxidation or abstraction process of oil from the palm kernels. After refining, the oil may be split (fractionated) into liquid and solid phases by thermo-mechanical means such as controlled cooling, crystallization, and filtering, the later oil is competing successfully with the more expensive groundnut, corn, and sunflower oils

Design and simulation of DC-DC buck-boost converter with voltage source inverter using MATLAB/Simulink for BLDC motor drives

The brushless DC (BLDC) motor is frequently employed in various applications, as it has excellent features compared with those of the conventional brushed DC motor. Furthermore, the BLDC motor is electrically commuted by power switches, resulting in higher reliability, more significant dynamic response, and longer operating life. A three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) is fed to the BLDC motor to operate, as it has better performance at low speeds. The inverter operates in 120° and 180° conduction modes. In this paper, a DC-DC buck-boost converter was implemented to act as thestep-up or step-down transformer for the system, as it offershigh efficiency across extensive input and output voltage ranges. A simulation using MATLAB/Simulink software was carriedout with different duty cycles, and the result was analyzed.Based on the results obtained, the overshoot percentage was5.22% with a settling time of 0.042

Voltage tracking of a DC-DC buck-boost converter using gaussian fuzzy logic control

DC - DC converters are the most widely used circuits in power electronics. They can be found in almost every electronic device nowadays, since all semiconductor components are powered by DC sources. DC-DC converter usually consists of power semiconductor devices which are operated as electronic switches. Operation of the switching devices causes the inherently nonlinear characteristic to the dc-dc converters including the buck-boost converter. Proportional-Integral-Differential (PID) controllers have been usually applied to the dc-dc converters because of their simplicity design. However, implementations of this control method to the nonlinear system such as the buck-boost converters will suffer from dynamic response for the converter output. To achieve a stable and fast response, nonlinear controller were applied to control buck-boost converters. Gaussian Fuzzy Logic Control (GFLC) was designed for the buck-boost converters. MATLAB/Simulink was used as the platform in designing both of Gaussian Fuzzy Logic and PID controllers. The controllers performance are compared based on dynamic respond of the controllers in term of settling time (ts), overshoot ratio, peak time (tp) and voltage deviations. Based on simulation results, GFLC have a superior dynamic respond performance compare to PID controller. GFLC produced 0.02% overshoot ratio, 0% voltage deviation and lower setting time (36.08ms) which is a very good dynamic respond in order to achieve desired output voltage values for buck-boost converter