Dehydration of Gas Mixture Using Throttling Valve: Effect of Pressure & Effect on Moisture Content

Natural gas hydrate has always bring major problem to pipelines corrosion and plugging. Many technologies have been invented and applied to tackle this problem. The widely used and most feasible technologies used is absorption by using triethylene glycol (TEG). This technology has been used in industry for decades due to its promising efficiency. However, its packing column requires a large column space for maximizing the absorption amount. Besides, there are other drawbacks of using this method such as desiccant effectiveness which decreases promptly at temperatures greater than 80°F (26.67°C) and high energy consumption. Hence, the throttling technique is proposed to remove moisture content in natural gas mixture in achieving the essentials for critical offshore application, which removes water vapor in large production, small size and less weight. The advantage of the proposed system include self-induced refrigeration, small in size, low operating cost, simple mechanical design and unlikely to form hydrates. In this project, relationship between feed pressure and temperature drop in a throttling valve is studied. On top of that, the effect on different moisture content in hydrocarbon mixture with various throttling pressure is studied. Mathematical study is also developed to model and validate the temperature drop for different gas mixture under different feed pressure in a throttling valve. Calculated value is compared with experimental data to study the contributing factor of efficient water removal. Dehydration via throttling valve can be achieved by controlling the parameters: eg., increasing the feed pressure with constant temperature and increasing the feed temperature with inlet pressure kept constant. The dehydration of gas mixture by using throttling valve deemed a valuable result noting that the effectiveness of the throttling valve can go up to 87% if a proper insulation is installed

The cross-contamination potential of mobile telephones

The use of mobile devices for professional, business, educational, personal and social purposes has accelerated exponentially over the last decade. Staff working in healthcare organisations, and patients and visitors using healthcare settings, understandably want to use mobile technology. Concerns have been raised about safety in terms of interference with equipment, and threats to privacy and dignity, yet less policy attention has been paid to infection risks. Healthcare professional students were supplied with smartphones as part of a larger educational project. Devices collected from a sub-sample of students working in operating theatre contexts were sampled to estimate the cross-contamination potential of the technology. A longitudinal multiple measures design was used. Under laboratory conditions, samples were taken from surfaces using swabbing techniques followed by contact plating. The devices were subsequently cleaned with 70% isopropyl alcohol and returned to the students. All devices demonstrated microbial contamination and over three quarters (86%) polymicrobial contamination. The technique and sites used to sample for microbial contamination influenced the levels of contamination identified. Swabbing alone was less likely to isolate polymicrobial contamination than contact plating, and some microorganisms were isolated only by contact plates and not by swabbing of the same area. The findings from this study demonstrate further research is urgently needed to inform evidence-based infection control policy on the use of personal equipment such as mobile devices in the healthcare settings where contamination may have adverse effects on patients, staff and visitors

Using the Medical Research Council framework for the development and evaluation of complex interventions in a theory-based infant feeding intervention to prevent childhood obesity:The baby milk intervention and trial

Introduction. We describe our experience of using the Medical Research Council framework on complex interventions to guide the development and evaluation of an intervention to prevent obesity by modifying infant feeding behaviours. Methods. We reviewed the epidemiological evidence on early life risk factors for obesity and interventions to prevent obesity in this age group. The review suggested prevention of excess weight gain in bottle-fed babies and appropriate weaning as intervention targets; hence we undertook systematic reviews to further our understanding of these behaviours. We chose theory and behaviour change techniques that demonstrated evidence of effectiveness in altering dietary behaviours. We subsequently developed intervention materials and evaluation tools and conducted qualitative studies with mothers (intervention recipients) and healthcare professionals (intervention deliverers) to refine them. We developed a questionnaire to assess maternal attitudes and feeding practices to understand the mechanism of any intervention effects. Conclusions. In addition to informing development of our specific intervention and evaluation materials, use of the Medical Research Council framework has helped to build a generalisable evidence base for early life nutritional interventions. However, the process is resource intensive and prolonged, and this should be taken into account by public health research funders. This trial is registered with ISRTCN: 20814693 Baby Milk Trial

The Difficult-to-Control Asthmatic: A Systematic Approach

With the judicious use of inhaled corticosteroids, β2 agonists, and leukotriene modifiers, most patients with asthma are easily controlled and managed. However, approximately 5% of asthmatics do not respond to standard therapy and are classified as "difficult to control." [1] Typically, these are patients who complain of symptoms interfering with daily living despite long-term treatment with inhaled corticosteroids in doses up to 2,000 μg daily. Many factors can contribute to poor response to conventional therapy, and especially for these patients, a systematic approach is needed to identify the underlying causes. First, the diagnosis of asthma and adherence to the medication regimen should be confirmed. Next, potential persisting exacerbating triggers need to be identified and addressed. Concomitant disorders should be discovered and treated. Lastly, the impact and implications of socioeconomic and psychological factors on disease control can be significant and should be acknowledged and discussed with the individual patient. Less conventional and novel strategies for treating corticosteroid-resistant asthma do exist. However, their use is based on small studies that do not meet evidence-based criteria; therefore, it is essential to sort through and address the above issues before reverting to other therapy

The influence of category-specific and system-wide preferences on cross-linguistic word order patterns

Typological data shows a tendency for languages to exhibit harmonic (i.e. consistent) ordering between heads and dependents. However, some categories seem to contradict this tendency. Here we investigate one such case, the order of the noun with respect to two dependents—adjectives, which tend to follow the noun and genitives which precede. We report two silent gesture experiments examining (i) whether there are cognitive biases favouring postnominal adjective and prenominal genitive order in a single trial judgement task, and (ii) if those preferences continue to influence order when participants learn a complete word order system. Our results shed light on how biases for individual categories of elements interact with biases that affect the wider linguistic system. While participants strongly prefer postnominal adjectives and prenominal genitives when these are judged in isolation, when they learn a system of ordering, these biases are obscured and (at least in some cases) harmony emerges

A study of flux lines lattice order and critical current with time of flight small angle neutron scattering

Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) is an historical technique to study the flux lines lattice (FLL) in a superconductor. Structural characteristics of the FLL can be revealed, providing fundamental information for the physics of vortex lattice. However, the spatial resolution is limited and all the correlation lengths of order are difficult to extract with precision. We show here that a time of flight technique reveals the Bragg peak of the FLL, and also its translational order with a better resolution. We discuss the implication of these results for pinning mechanisms in a Niobium sample.Comment: accepted in PR

Dehydration of Gas Mixture Using Throttling Valve: Effect of Pressure & Effect on Moisture Content

Natural gas hydrate has always bring major problem to pipelines corrosion and plugging. Many technologies have been invented and applied to tackle this problem. The widely used and most feasible technologies used is absorption by using triethylene glycol (TEG). This technology has been used in industry for decades due to its promising efficiency. However, its packing column requires a large column space for maximizing the absorption amount. Besides, there are other drawbacks of using this method such as desiccant effectiveness which decreases promptly at temperatures greater than 80°F (26.67°C) and high energy consumption. Hence, the throttling technique is proposed to remove moisture content in natural gas mixture in achieving the essentials for critical offshore application, which removes water vapor in large production, small size and less weight. The advantage of the proposed system include self-induced refrigeration, small in size, low operating cost, simple mechanical design and unlikely to form hydrates. In this project, relationship between feed pressure and temperature drop in a throttling valve is studied. On top of that, the effect on different moisture content in hydrocarbon mixture with various throttling pressure is studied. Mathematical study is also developed to model and validate the temperature drop for different gas mixture under different feed pressure in a throttling valve. Calculated value is compared with experimental data to study the contributing factor of efficient water removal. Dehydration via throttling valve can be achieved by controlling the parameters: eg., increasing the feed pressure with constant temperature and increasing the feed temperature with inlet pressure kept constant. The dehydration of gas mixture by using throttling valve deemed a valuable result noting that the effectiveness of the throttling valve can go up to 87% if a proper insulation is installed

Effect of recycled manure solids as bedding on bulk tank milk and implications for cheese microbiological quality

The dairy farm environment influences the raw milk microbiota and consequently affects milk processing. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate farm management practices such as the bedding materials. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of recycled manure sol-ids (RMS) as bedding material on bulk tank milk and microbiological implications for cheese quality. Bulk tank samples were collected from 84 dairy farms using RMS or straw bedding. The use of RMS did not influ-ence thermophilic and mesophilic aerobic viable counts from spores. However, straw-milk samples gave higher values for mesophilic anaerobic spore-forming bacteria (0.44 log cfu/mL) than RMS-milk samples (0.17 log cfu/mL). The presence of thermoresistant lactic acid bacteria was not increased in milk from farms using RMS. Nevertheless, taxonomic profiles of thermoresis-tant bacteria isolated were different between the 2 types of milk. More Enterococcus faecalis and Streptococcusspp. were identified in RMS-milk samples. Thermore-sistant enterococci and streptococci could easily end up in cheese. Therefore, milk proteolytic activities of these isolates were tested. Neither Streptococcus spp. nor Enterococcus faecium isolates exhibited proteolytic ac-tivities, whereas 53% of E. faecalis showed some. Also, only 1 vancomycin-resistant enterococcus was detected. Survival of selected RMS-milk samples isolates (3 E. faecalis and 1 Streptococcus thermophilus) was evalu-ated during a model Cheddar cheese manufacture. Al-though those strains survived well, they did not modify the acidification curve of milk. However, they might cause organoleptic defects during cheese maturing

Purification, molecular cloning, and characterization of glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) from pigmented Vitis vinifera L. cell suspension cultures as putative anthocyanin transport proteins

The ligandin activity of specific glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) is necessary for the transport of anthocyanins from the cytosol to the plant vacuole. Five GSTs were purified from Vitis vinifera L. cv. Gamay Fréaux cell suspension cultures by glutathione affinity chromatography. These proteins underwent Edman sequencing and mass spectrometry fingerprinting, with the resultant fragments aligned with predicted GSTs within public databases. The corresponding coding sequences were cloned, with heterologous expression in Escherichia coli used to confirm GST activity. Transcriptional profiling of these candidate GST genes and key anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway genes (PAL, CHS, DFR, and UFGT) in cell suspensions and grape berries against anthocyanin accumulation demonstrated strong positive correlation with two sequences, VvGST1 and VvGST4, respectively. The ability of VvGST1 and VvGST4 to transport anthocyanins was confirmed in the heterologous maize bronze-2 complementation model, providing further evidence for their function as anthocyanin transport proteins in grape cells. Furthermore, the differential induction of VvGST1 and VvGST4 in suspension cells and grape berries suggests functional differences between these two proteins. Further investigation of these candidate ligandins may identify a mechanism for manipulating anthocyanin accumulation in planta and in vitro suspension cells