Pyrolysis of brominated feedstock plastic in a fluidised bed reactor

Fire retarded high impact polystyrene has been pyrolysed using a fluidised bed reactor with a sand bed. The yield and composition of the products have been investigated in relation to fluidised bed temperature. The bromine distribution between the products and a detailed analysis of the oils using GC-FID/ECD, GC-MS, FT-ir, and size exclusion chromatography has been carried out. It was found that the majority of the bromine transfers to the pyrolysis oil and the antimony was detected in both the oil and the char. Oil made up over 89.9% of the pyrolysis products. Over 30% of the oil consisted of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, styrene and cumene. The pyrolysis gases were mainly hydrocarbons in the C1-C4 range but some HBr and Br2 was detected

Fast pyrolysis of halogenated plastics recovered from waste computers

The disposal of waste computers is an issue that is gaining increasing interest around the world. In this paper, results from the fast pyrolysis in a fluidized bed reactor of three different waste computer monitor casings composed of mainly acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) copolymer and two different waste computer body casings composed of mostly poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) type polymers are presented. Preliminary characterization of the waste plastics was investigated using coupled thermogravimetric analysis-Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (TGA-FT-IR). The results showed that the plastics decomposed in two stages. For the ABS-containing monitor casings, aromatic and aliphatic material were released in the first and second stages. The PVC-containing computer body casing samples showed a first-stage evolution of HCl and a second stage evolution of aromatic and aliphatic material and further HCl. In addition, each of the five plastics was fast-pyrolyzed in a laboratory-scale fluidized bed reactor at 500 °C. The fluidized bed pyrolysis led to the conversion of most of the plastics to pyrolysis oil, although the two PVC computer body cases produced large quantities of HCl. The pyrolysis oils were characterized by GC-MS and it was found that they were chemically very heterogeneous and contained a wide range of aliphatic, aromatic, halogenated, oxygenated, and nitrogenated compounds

Cloud-based robots and intelligent space teleoperation tools

Despite an idea of robotic system teleoperation is a relatively old concept, here we present its enhancements heading to an interconnection of teleoperation and collecting relevant information from the environment where robots act. This environment should be an intelligent space featured with various devices and sensors, which allows to obtain, preprocess and stores data in the cloud. Those data should provide relevant information for teleoperator or directly for robots, which act autonomously. For this purpose, we developed cloud-based tools, named Telescope v2. It is a platform-independent system for remote monitoring and controlling various systems. In this paper, we introduce this system, its abilities, and compare it with its network-based ancestor, Telescope v1. We analyze measurements of latency and response time when our new system is used for teleoperation in different places equipped with various Internet bandwidths

Seeds Buffering for Information Spreading Processes

Seeding strategies for influence maximization in social networks have been studied for more than a decade. They have mainly relied on the activation of all resources (seeds) simultaneously in the beginning; yet, it has been shown that sequential seeding strategies are commonly better. This research focuses on studying sequential seeding with buffering, which is an extension to basic sequential seeding concept. The proposed method avoids choosing nodes that will be activated through the natural diffusion process, which is leading to better use of the budget for activating seed nodes in the social influence process. This approach was compared with sequential seeding without buffering and single stage seeding. The results on both real and artificial social networks confirm that the buffer-based consecutive seeding is a good trade-off between the final coverage and the time to reach it. It performs significantly better than its rivals for a fixed budget. The gain is obtained by dynamic rankings and the ability to detect network areas with nodes that are not yet activated and have high potential of activating their neighbours.Comment: Jankowski, J., Br\'odka, P., Michalski, R., & Kazienko, P. (2017, September). Seeds Buffering for Information Spreading Processes. In International Conference on Social Informatics (pp. 628-641). Springe

Thermal and catalytic decomposition studies of microalgal residue using pyrolysis-GC/MS and TG/MS

The marine algal biomass is one of the most promising candidates for the raw material of sustainable biofuel production. Biofuels of different phases can be converted by bio- or thermochemical methods. In this study thermogravimetry/mass spectrometry (TG/MS) and pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) were used to analyze the main decomposition products of the deoiled algal cake (DAC). Two mesoporous silica catalysts (SBA-15 and FSM-16) were applied to modify the composition of the evolving gas phase products. The yield of the evolving volatile gas products was enhanced by the use of the SBA-15. This catalyst promoted the decomposition of the inorganic carbonates into carbon dioxide. The formation of hydrocarbons during the fast pyrolysis simple alcohol molecules were formed from the deoiled algal residue. The yields of the anhydro-sugar derivatives were strongly affected by the presence of both catalysts. The intensity of the aromatic and aliphatic decomposition products were influenced by the catalytic decomposition procedure