System Identification for a Pilot Scale Acetone and Isopropyl Alcohol Distillation Column

System identification is a technique to build an accurate and precise model of complex system from noisy data. It has been used to represent the relationship between output and input data and also to develop understanding on the internal working system. System identification can be applied in various fields of applications. In this project the system identification is basically focused on the pilot scale of Acetone – Isopropyl alcohol distillation column by relate the control variables which are acetone top and bottom composition with the manipulated variables that are reflux flow rate and steam flow rate. This distillation process is to separate the mixture of acetone and isopropyl alcohol into individual components with certain composition. Basically this project involves both experimental work and simulation work. System identification requires data from experimental work from Distribution Control System (DCS) in order to simulate the relation between input and output of the system by using System Identification Toolbox. In this report, the low order transfer function model is developed and represents the acetone – isopropyl alcohol distillation column. Model validation has been done to compare performance between the mathematical models with the actual plant. From this project the modelling of system identification of the pilot scale distillation column will be further used in the advanced process control application to improve the performance of the process control in the system

S-BIN: MOBILE APPLICATION FOR WASTE COLLECTION MANAGEMENT

This project presents a mobile application in which the Smart Bin system could monitor the level of garbage and provide a preferred schedule of waste collection based on the forecasted data or previous data. The system is designed to collect and deliver the data through Wi-Fi network. The system also employs duty cycle technique to reduce power consumption and maximize operational time. Furthermore, the system implemented GPS which could navigate and locate the waste bin locations to provide the shortest route for the UTP’s cleaner

Disclosing the Loan officer's role in microfinance development

The financial exclusion of the developing country poor requires radically enterprising solutions. Hence microfinance originally aspired to intermediate through unique double bottom line initiatives which would supply more appropriate credit, then other ‘financial services’, in an essentially participatory, bottom-up way. This would simultaneously support local small scale economic activity while enhancing well-being and social/gender justice. However the frontline local officers originally recruited into microfinance institutions to help ‘empower’ the poor towards this end later adopted unexpectedly different roles. Using original data from Zambia this paper examines how this occurred in a frontier field situation. Here loan officers performed multiple, ambiguous, and changeable roles while their home institution first sought to decouple, and then prioritized its own immediate survival over its other founding aspirations. As they acted more like ‘loan repayment agents’ and ‘debt collectors’ than genuinely participative ‘facilitators’ supporting the poor, further, unintended consequences resulted. Any further decoupling and retreat from committed double bottom line working could bear heavily upon microfinance’s further/future development prospects