Soju

This thesis, written in novel form, is a study in love addiction. Set in Seoul, South Korea, it follows the journey of Colton Nash — a journalist and a drunk — as he falls in love with a girl named Hana and travels along his arc of addiction. A work of “dirty realism,” Soju: A Novel is written in a neo-minimalistic style that focuses on showing, not telling the reader about Colton's experiences as a stranger in a strange land. By eliminating as many “thought” verbs as possible and focusing on active, bouncing, vivid verbs, the aim was to pull the reader into Colton's world. A world foreign to most readers. This cannot be accomplished by using active verbs alone. No. Limiting the amount of adverbs, extended metaphors and internal dialogue, being economical with words, focusing on surface details and “on-the-body” writing were all stylistic choices made to engage the reader on a more visceral level and, hopefully, pull them deeper into the story and Colton's addiction

A machine learning approach to constructing Ramsey graphs leads to the Trahtenbrot-Zykov problem.

Attempts at approaching the well-known and difficult problem of constructing Ramsey graphs via machine learning lead to another difficult problem posed by Zykov in 1963 (now commonly referred to as the Trahtenbrot-Zykov problem): For which graphs F does there exist some graph G such that the neighborhood of every vertex in G induces a subgraph isomorphic to F? Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to graph theory. Chapter 2 introduces Ramsey theory for graphs. Chapter 3 details a reinforcement learning implementation for Ramsey graph construction. The implementation is based on board game software, specifically the AlphaZero program and its success learning to play games from scratch. The chapter ends with a description of how computing challenges naturally shifted the project towards the Trahtenbrot-Zykov problem. Chapter 3 also includes recommendations for continuing the project and attempting to overcome these challenges. Chapter 4 defines the Trahtenbrot-Zykov problem and outlines its history, including proofs of results omitted from their original papers. This chapter also contains a program for constructing graphs with all neighborhood-induced subgraphs isomorphic to a given graph F. The end of Chapter 4 presents constructions from the program when F is a Ramsey graph. Constructing such graphs is a non-trivial task, as Bulitko proved in 1973 that the Trahtenbrot-Zykov problem is undecidable. Chapter 5 is a translation from Russian to English of this famous result, a proof not previously available in English. Chapter 6 introduces Cayley graphs and their relationship to the Trahtenbrot-Zykov problem. The chapter ends with constructions of Cayley graphs Γ in which the neighborhood of every vertex of Γ induces a subgraph isomorphic to a given Ramsey graph, which leads to a conjecture regarding the unique extremal Ramsey(4, 4) graph

Biochar: Product development in remote regions from mixed residues

Biochar is a particularly interesting pyrolysis product in regions where there is an abundance of waste biomass to convert but limited ability to effectively turn the waste into a product due to distance to market, lack of infrastructure (e.g. pipelines for gas), and the heterogeneous nature of the biomass (e.g. forestry residues, fishery by-product etc.). Biochar is a more homogeneous material (compared to waste biomass) expanding possible applications, is a less dense solid (making transport less costly), and could be used to sustainably develop an industry/product in these regions. Please click on the file below for full content of the abstract

Crab body pyrolysis: Characterization and applications of crab biochar: A crabby solution

Nova Scotia crab harvesters sell over 5 million lbs of Snow Crab (Chionoecetes opilio) annually. The commercially desired product are the legs and shoulders generating resultant waste streams from bodies of the snow crabs (approximately 1/3 of the crab). Currently this waste is landfilled which is costly and fossil fuel intensive. There is a desire to find a more environmentally sustainable practice to divert this organic animal waste from NS landfills. In a landfill, snow crab residues will decompose and generate some small amount of fixed carbon, however much of the carbon is released into the environment as CO2 during decomposition and aside from some microbial benefits none of the remaining interesting chemicals are utilized during landfill decomposition. The chemical composition of the snow crab includes a high content of protein (34.2% dw) and essential amino acids; they also have fat (17.1% dw), with a high proportion of ω3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and approximately 28.5% dw minerals (calcium, phosphorous, and magnesium) making this waste stream very intriguing as a starting biomass for the generation of biochar. In this paper we have determined the optimal pyrolysis conditions and highest yield for the char generated from the crab body waste stream. The chars have been fully characterized and we have investigated several applications ranging from neutralization material for acidic waters to concrete additives and catalysis. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Potential value of pyrolysis oil derived from shellfish processing by-product

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Functionalized Pyrolysis Products for High Value Chemical Production

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Decision-support system for risk management of produced water in the offshore petroleum industry

A decision-support system for produced water management (DISSPROWM) in offshore operations is being developed. The system determines the risk and hazards to human and marine species from non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic pollutants, including radionuclides present in produced water. The DISSPROWM also evaluates the best available treatment technology for treating the produced water whose properties are in the database. The system consists of a Windows-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed with Microsoft Visual Basic, which integrates a SQL Server database, a risk assessment model and a dilution model for produced water contaminants. The database contains most produced water pollutants and their important properties that are required in dispersion and risk assessment modelling. The database also contains current produced water regulations and information on some of the selected existing treatment technologies with typical cost data required in the decision-support system

Parametric analysis of pyrolysis process on the product yields in a bubbling fluidized bed reactor

This paper presents a numerical study of operating factors on the product yields of a fast pyrolysis process in a 2-D standard lab-scale bubbling fluidized bed reactor. In a fast pyrolysis process, oxygen-free thermal decomposition of biomass occurs to produce solid biochar, condensable vapours and non-condensable gases. This process also involves complex transport phenomena and therefore the Euler-Euler approach with a multi-fluid model is applied. The eleven species taking part in the process are grouped into a solid reacting phase, condensable/non-condensable phase, and non-reacting solid phase (the heat carrier). The biomass decomposition is simplified to ten reaction mechanisms based on the thermal decomposition of lignocellulosic biomass. For coupling of multi-fluid model and reaction rates, the time-splitting method is used. The developed model is validated first using available experimental data and is then employed to conduct the parametric study. Based on the simulation results, the impact of different operating factors on the product yields are presented. The results for operating temperature (both sidewall and carrier gas temperature) show that the optimum temperature for the production of bio-oil is in the range of 500–525 °C. The higher the nitrogen velocity, the lower the residence time and less chance for the secondary crack of condensable vapours to non-condensable gases and consequently higher bio-oil yield. Similarly, when the height of the biomass injector was raised, the yields of condensable increased and non-condensable decreased due to the lower residence time of biomass. Biomass flow rate of 1.3 kg/h can produce favourable results. When larger biomass particle sizes are used, the intraparticle temperature gradient increases and leads to more accumulated unreacted biomass inside the reactor and the products’ yield decreases accordingly. The simulation indicated that the larger sand particles accompanied by higher carrier gas velocity are favourable for bio-oil production. Providing a net heat equivalent of 6.52 W to the virgin biomass prior to entering the reactor bed leads to 7.5% higher bio-oil yields whereas other products’ yields stay steady. Results from different feedstock material show that the sum of cellulose and hemicellulose content is favourable for the production of bio-oil whereas the biochar yield is directly related to the lignin content

Pyrolysis of waste plastic fish bags (polyethylene and polypropylene) to useable fuel oil

The objective of this study is to determine the feasibility of pyrolysis of waste plastic fish feed bags to heating oil. Pyrolysis is a thermal treatment without oxygen and produces three products (gas, oil, and solid), the yields depend on the feedstock and operating conditions. The fish feed bags are polyethylene (PE) or polypropylene (PP) and are typically contaminated with a small amount of residual fish feed. This limits the treatment and disposal options. Thermal decomposition of the bags to their original oil base could potentially produce a fuel for use in heating and possibly power for the plant. Unused and used bags were pyrolyzed and compared to determine the impact of the fish feed on the oil and the residual solids and gas evolved during the process. The temperature for the pyrolysis temperature is a function of the feed material. For waste plastic the temperature can range between 400−550°C depending on the type of plastic. In this work a series of pyrolysis experiments were performed where key factors that would impact the oil quality produced, were varied including; temperature of pyrolysis 400−550°C) type of bag (PE, PP, and mixtures of the two), mass of residual fish feed retained in bag (0-40% by mass of feedstock) and gas residence time. Based on these experiments the optimum operating conditions were obtained. A temperature of 500°C produced the maximum wax/oil yields, 69-75wt% of feedstock with a solids (residue) between 6-7wt%, and gas between 23-25wt%, depending on the feedstock. The melting point of wax/oil samples varied between 53-62°C. The melting point of the wax/oil samples decreased slightly with increasing amounts of fish feed. The increase in wax/oil yield is likely a result that the FF pyrolysis products are predominantly lipids, this would both add to the overall oil content and possibly decrease the uncondensable gas content through co-pyrolysis. The heating values of the wax/oil samples varied from 42.8- 45.7 MJ/kg. The pure fish feed heating value was 25.47 MJ/kg. The heating values of all waxes are comparable to standard fuels, 44-46 MJ/kg petrol/gasoline, 43 MJ/kg for diesel, and from 43-44 MJ/kg for fuel oil. Although, the wax/oil samples are solid (wax) at temperatures below 50oC, heating to above 60oC produces a liquid oil with a high heating value. The gas produced in 2 the pyrolysis, largely methane and ethane, could be used as a fuel gas. Based on 100 metric tonnes of waste bags per year this translates to 2.8 MJ/yr from the oil and 1.38 MJ/yr from the gas

Numerical modelling of a fast pyrolysis process in a bubbling fluidized bed reactor

In this study, the Eulerian-Granular approach is applied to simulate a fast pyrolysis bubbling fluidized bed reactor. Fast pyrolysis converts biomass to bio-products through thermochemical conversion in absence of oxygen. The aim of this study is to employ a numerical framework for simulation of the fast pyrolysis process and extend this to more complex reactor geometries. The framework first needs to be validated and this was accomplished by modelling a lab-scale pyrolysis fluidized bed reactor in 2-D and comparing with published data. A multi-phase CFD model has been employed to obtain clearer insights into the physical phenomena associated with flow dynamics and heat transfer, and by extension the impact on reaction rates. Biomass thermally decomposes to solid, condensable and non-condensable and therefore a multi-fluid model is used. A simplified reaction model is sued where the many components are grouped into a solid reacting phase, condensable/non-condensable phase, and non-reacting solid phase (the heat carrier). The biomass decomposition is simplified to four reaction mechanisms based on the thermal decomposition of cellulose. A time-splitting method is used for coupling of multi-fluid model and reaction rates. A good agreement is witnessed in the products yield between the CFD simulation and the experiment