Energy, exergy, and economic evaluation of integrated waste incineration facility with a thermal power plant

Increased waste production and poor waste management have created severe negative environmental impacts. Waste incineration is a way to produce energy and decreases environmental impacts; however, this technique cannot be considered independently as a source of power generation because of its low performance. This study aims to evaluate the integration of a waste incineration system with a natural gas-fired power plant in terms of energy, exergy, and economic points. As a result of the proposed configurations, in addition to promoting efficiency and net power production, some equipment is removed from power plants. Efforts are made to increase the accuracy of simulation results by paying attention to the combustion process in boilers and predicting the actual working condition of feed water heaters. Results showed that the hybrid scheme improves electricity generation by up to 2.87 MW and boosts energy, and exergy efficiency by up to 0.32%, and 0.3%, respectively

Numerical Study of Laminar Forced Convection of Water/Al2o3 Nanofluid in an Annulus with Constant Wall Temperature

Laminar forced convection of a nanofluid consisting of water and Al2O3 in a horizontal annulus has been studied numerically. Two-phase mixture model has been used to investigate thermal behaviors of the nanofluid over constant temperature thermal boundary condition and with different volume concentration of nanoparticles. Comparisons with previously published experimental and analytical works on flow behavior in horizontal annulus show good agreements between the results as volume fraction is zero. In general convective heat transfer coefficient increases with nanoparticle concentration.   ABSTRAK: Kertaskerja ini mengkaji secara numerik olakan paksa bendalir lamina yang menganduangi air dan Al2O3 didalam anulus mendatar. Model campuran dua fasa digunakan bagi mengkaji tingkah laku haba bendalir nano pada keadaan suhu malar dengan kepekatan nanopartikel berbeza. Perbandingan dengan karya eksperimen dan analitikal yang telah diterbitkan menunjukkan bahawa kelakuan aliran didalm anulus mendatar adalah baik apabila pecahan isipadu adalah sifar. Pada amnya, pekali pemindahan haba olakan meningkat dengan kepekatan nanopartikel.   KEYWORDS: nanofluid; volume concentration; heat transfer enhancement; laminar flow convection; annulu

Catalysts for Enhanced CO2-CH4 Exchange in Natural Gas Hydrates. An experimental feasibility study of exchange enhancement by use of chemical additives

Gas hydrate is a solid state of gas and water at high pressure and low temperature conditions. Vast energy potential is associated with gas hydrates and extensive on-going research aims at addressing the technical viability of production from hydrate deposits. Two different approaches to produce natural gas from hydrate reservoir have been proposed. Either decompose the hydrate by altering thermodynamic conditions or expose the hydrate to a thermodynamically more stable hydrate former inducing a replacement process of the encaged CH4 molecule in the lattice structure with the introduced new hydrate former. The latter has gained recent attention both in research and industrial communities. CO2 is an attractive candidate for such process due to both offering a better hydrate stability and possibilities for sequestrating a climate gas as gas hydrates in the earth. The work presented in this thesis is a series of experiments which studied processes involved during hydrate formation and hydrate dissociation within porous rocks. Methane hydrate was successfully and repeatedly formed within Bentheim sandstone core samples. The generated PVT-data were used to estimate the amount of methane stored in hydrate, the amount of free methane in the pores as well as the post hydrate formation water saturation. A comparison of data acquired in this study with in-house data demonstrated a trend towards higher post hydrate formation water saturation for increased initial water saturation and higher brine salinity. A number of experiments were conducted to study hydrate dissociation based production methods. Depressurization as a production method was investigated and production data acquired were compared with numerical simulation results acquired using TOUGH + HYDRATE. Thermal stimulation was investigated where temperature of the hydrate system was increased stepwise in order to find the dissociation threshold temperature at the experimental conditions. These data were later used to test the hydrate stability calculator CSMGem. Production by in situ exchange with liquid CO2 was studied during six experiments. These experiments were categorized by temperature during the exchange and presence of chemical additives during the exchange process. Two baseline exchange experiment was conducted at 83bar and 9.6 ºC using pure CO2. Another exchange experiment was conducted at 83bar and 4ºC to study the impact of temperature on the exchange rate. Enhancement of the exchange rate would potentially benefit from both increased methane production as well as the larger amount of CO2 stored in hydrate. Initial experiments of using Monoethanolamine (MEA) and Methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) to enhance the exchange rate were performed at 83bar and 4ºC. MEA and MDEA are respectively primary and tertiary alkanolamines that react with CO2 in an exothermic reaction. The generated heat from the reaction has the potential of triggering hydrate dissociation. Two experiments were conducted where slugs of MDEA and MEA were added to the injected CO2. Heat loss along the injection line resulted in low or no effect on the production. In order to minimize the heat loss, the chemical additive and CO2 had to be injected separately and react within or at the inlet of the core. The experimental setup had to be modified in order to allow for the latter. The amount of heat generated from the reaction between the injected chemical additive and CO2 resulted in dissociation of methane hydrate and high methane recovery. As a part of this master thesis, a mass flow meter was implemented, tested, and used in the production line enabling more accurate production measurements. Data acquired by mass flow meter in conjunction with data from a gas chromatograph were used to quantify the production as a function of time. In addition, a new confinement system using confinement buffers were implemented offering better confinement stability during the experiments. A new experimental setup was designed and built during spring 2012 as a part of the work presented here

Common Β- Thalassaemia Mutations in

Introduction: β –Thalassaemia was first explained by Thomas Cooly as Cooly’s anaemia in 1925. The β- thalassaemias are hereditary autosomal disorders with decreased or absent β-globin chain synthesis. The most common genetic defects in β-thalassaemias are caused by point mutations, micro deletions or insertions within the β-globin gene. Material and Methods: In this research , 142 blood samples (64 from childrens hospital of Tabriz , 15 samples from Shahid Gazi hospital of Tabriz , 18 from Urumia and 45 samples from Aliasghar hospital of Ardebil) were taken from thalassaemic patients (who were previously diagnosed ).Then 117 non-familial samples were selected . The DNA of the lymphocytes of blood samples was extracted by boiling and Proteinase K- SDS procedure, and mutations were detected by ARMS-PCR methods. Results: From the results obtained, eleven most common mutations,most of which were Mediterranean mutations were detected as follows; IVS-I-110(G-A), IVS-I-1(G-A) ،IVS-I-5(G-C) ,Frameshift Codon 44 (-C,( codon5(-CT),IVS-1-6(T-C), IVS-I-25(-25bp del) ,Frameshift 8.9 (+G) ,IVS-II-1(G-A) ,Codon 39(C-T), Codon 30(G-C) the mutations of the samples were defined. The results showed that Frameshift 8.9 (+G), IVS-I-110 (G-A) ,IVS-II-I(G-A), IVS-I-5(G-C), IVS-I-1(G-A) , Frameshift Codon 44(-C) , codon5(-CT) , IVS-1-6(T-C) , IVS-I-25(-25bp del) with a frequency of 29.9%, 25.47%,17.83%, 7.00%, 6.36% , 6.63% , 3.8% , 2.5% , 0.63% represented the most common mutations in North - west Iran. No mutations in Codon 39(C-T) and Codon 30(G-C) were detected. Cunclusion: The frequency of the same mutations in patients from North - West of Iran seems to be different as compared to other regions like Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon and Fars province of Iran. The pattern of mutations in this region is more or less the same as in the Mediterranean region, but different from South west Asia and East Asia

Common Β- Thalassaemia Mutations in Northwestern Iran

Introduction: β –Thalassaemia was first explained by Thomas Cooly as Cooly’s anaemia in 1925. The β- thalassaemias are hereditary autosomal disorders with decreased or absent β-globin chain synthesis. The most common genetic defects in β-thalassaemias are caused by point mutations, micro deletions or insertions within the β-globin gene. Material and Methods: In this research , 142 blood samples (64 from childrens hospital of Tabriz , 15 samples from Shahid Gazi hospital of Tabriz , 18 from Urumia and 45 samples from Aliasghar hospital of Ardebil) were taken from thalassaemic patients (who were previously diagnosed ).Then 117 non-familial samples were selected . The DNA of the lymphocytes of blood samples was extracted by boiling and Proteinase K- SDS procedure, and mutations were detected by ARMS-PCR methods. Results: From the results obtained, eleven most common mutations,most of which were Mediterranean mutations were detected as follows; IVS-I-110(G-A), IVS-I-1(G-A) ،IVS-I-5(G-C) ,Frameshift Codon 44 (-C,( codon5(-CT),IVS-1-6(T-C), IVS-I-25(-25bp del) ,Frameshift 8.9 (+G) ,IVS-II-1(G-A) ,Codon 39(C-T), Codon 30(G-C) the mutations of the samples were defined. The results showed that Frameshift 8.9 (+G), IVS-I-110 (G-A) ,IVS-II-I(G-A), IVS-I-5(G-C), IVS-I-1(G-A) , Frameshift Codon 44(-C) , codon5(-CT) , IVS-1-6(T-C) , IVS-I-25(-25bp del) with a frequency of 29.9%, 25.47%,17.83%, 7.00%, 6.36% , 6.63% , 3.8% , 2.5% , 0.63% represented the most common mutations in North - west Iran. No mutations in Codon 39(C-T) and Codon 30(G-C) were detected. Cunclusion: The frequency of the same mutations in patients from North - West of Iran seems to be different as compared to other regions like Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon and Fars province of Iran. The pattern of mutations in this region is more or less the same as in the Mediterranean region, but different from South west Asia and East Asia

Study of squeeze film damping in a micro-beam resonator based on micro-polar theory

In this paper, squeeze film damping in a micro-beam resonator based on micro-polar theory has been investigated. The proposed model for this study consists of a clamped-clamped micro-beam bounded between two fixed layers. The gap between the micro-beam and layers is filled with air. As fluid behaves differently in micro scale than macro, the micro-scale fluid field in the gap has been modeled based on micro-polar theory. Equation of motion governing transverse deflection of the micro- beam based on modified couple stress theory and also non-linear Reynolds equation of the fluid field based on micropolar theory have been non-dimensionalized, linearized and solved simultaneously in order to calculate the quality factor of the resonator. The effect of micropolar parameters of air on the quality factor has been investigated. The quality factor of the of the micro-beam resonator for different values of non-dimensionalized length scale of the beam, squeeze number and also non-dimensionalized pressure has been calculated and compared to the obtained values of quality factor based on classical theory