Evaluation of Pressure Drop and Particle Sphericity for an Air-rock Bed Thermal Energy Storage System

Abstract The pressure drop of a packed bed thermal energy storage system with irregular shaped solid pellets and tank-to-particle diameter ratio of 10.4 is investigated. The bed height to diameter ratio is 2. The particle sphericity is calculated and used to compare pressure drop correlations to the measured values in the particle Reynolds number range of 353 ≤ Re p ≤ 5206

Optimizing emergency preparedness and resource utilization in mass-casualty incidents

This paper presents a response model for the aftermath of a Mass-Casualty Incident (MCI) that can be used to provide operational guidance for regional emergency planning as well as to evaluate strategic preparedness plans. A mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation is proposed for the combined ambulance dispatching, patient-to-hospital assignment, and treatment ordering problem. T he goal is to allocate effectively the limited resources during the response so as to improve patient outcomes, while the objectives are to minimize the overall response time and the total flow time required to treat all patients, in a hierarchical fashion. The model is solved via exact and MIP-based heuristic solution methods. The applicability of the model and the performance of the new methods are challenged on realistic MCI scenarios. We consider the hypothetical case of a terror attack at the New York Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan with up to 150 trauma patients. We quantify the impact of capacity-based bottlenecks for both ambulances and available hospital beds. We also explore the trade-off between accessing remote hospitals for demand smoothing versus reduced ambulance transportation times

Enzymatic Depilation of Animal Hide: Identification of Elastase (LasB) from Pseudomonas aeruginosa MCM B-327 as a Depilating Protease

Conventional leather processing involving depilation of animal hide by lime and sulphide treatment generates considerable amounts of chemical waste causing severe environmental pollution. Enzymatic depilation is an environmentally friendly process and has been considered to be a viable alternative to the chemical depilation process. We isolated an extracellular protease from Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain MCM B-327 with high depilation activity using buffalo hide as a substrate. This 33 kDa protease generated a peptide mass fingerprint and de novo sequence that matched perfectly with LasB (elastase), of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In support of this data a lasB mutant of MCM B-327 strain lacked depilatory activity and failed to produce LasB. LasB heterologously over-produced and purified from Escherichia coli also exhibited high depilating activity. Moreover, reintroduction of the lasB gene to the P. aeruginosa lasB mutant via a knock-in strategy also successfully restored depilation activity thus confirming the role of LasB as the depilating enzyme

Efficient Operating Room Redesign through Process Improvement and Optimal Handling of Scheduled and Emergent Surgeries

This article is focused on the benefits of reducing variability and the role of operations research techniques in efficient operating room (OR) redesign through process improvement and optimal management of scheduled and emergent surgeries at hospitals. Issues at a participant hospital are studied which are presented in this article where in the authors develop a three step OR redesign model to address them. Firstly, the process bottlenecks affecting OR performance were identified with the help of a discrete event simulation (DES) model. Once the DES model focusing on the \u27as-is\u27 operations of the OR was built and validated, it was used to evaluate various improvement strategies. Secondly, in order to efficiently deal with unscheduled surgeries, a simulated queuing model was used to determine the number of ORs to be reserved which would help in better managing natural variability. Finally, OR time (with the remaining ORs) was allocated for scheduled surgeries after accommodating various operational constraints including surgeon preferences with the help of a mixed integer programme (MIP) model. The empirical observations and results are presented as well

Search for an immobile entity on a network

We consider the problem of searching for a single, uniformly distributed immobile entity on an undirected network. This problem differs from edge-covering problems, e.g., the Chinese Postman Problem (CPP), since the objective here is not to find the minimum length tour that covers all the edges at least once, but instead to minimize the expected time to find the entity. We introduce a heuristic algorithm to deal with the search process given that the entity is equally likely to be at any point on the network. Computational results are presented.

Dispatching and routing of emergency vehicles in disaster mitigation using data fusion

The aim of this paper is to develop a robust methodology for the dispatching and routing of emergency vehicles (EVs) in a post-disaster environment with the support of data fusion. In this work, we consider an earthquake scenario with a large number of casualties needing medical attention. Given an influx of information (regarding casualties, road, traffic conditions, etc.), data are fused to provide estimates of the entities under consideration. We use this information to dispatch and route EVs to casualty pickup locations, followed by delivery to appropriate hospitals. Key factors here include patient priorities, clustering criteria, and distance. Similarly, factors affecting the dispatching of EVs from patient locations to hospitals include waiting time at hospital emergency rooms, hospital capacity, and distance. Routes must be generated for EVs by accounting for real-world road networks, existing road damage, congestion, and related issues. We develop a dispatching and routing simulation model, and utilize a case study to evaluate the performance of our proposed methodology.Emergency response services Data fusion dispatching Routing Simulation Large-scale networks

Encapsulation of thermal energy storage media

In one embodiment, a method for depositing metal on a polymer surface, the method includes coating the polymer surface with a binding metal to render the polymer surface solvophillic and/or hydrophilic and depositing a further metal on the binding metal-coated polymer surface

Encapsulation of thermal energy storage media

In one embodiment, a method for fabricating a ceramic phase change material capsule includes forming a hollow ceramic capsule body having a filling hole, filling the ceramic capsule body with one or more phase change materials via the filling hole, and closing and sealing the filling hole

Photocatalytic degradation of 3,4-dichlorophenol using TiO₂ in a shallow pond slurry reactor

75-81In the present study, the TiO2 mediated photocatalytic degradation of 3,4-dichlorophenol, as a model compound, has been investigated using a low cost non-concentrating shallow pond slurry reactor at laboratory scale under a variety of conditions. The degradation was studied by monitoring the change in substrate concentration employing UV-spectroscopic analysis, decrease in COD values and increase in chloride formation as a function of irradiation time. The effect of pH, catalyst loading, substrate concentration, UV intensity, aperture to volume ratio of the reactor and presence of electron acceptors such as hydrogen peroxide besides molecular oxygen, on degradation, was studied. The degradation rates were strongly influenced by some of these parameters. The optimum parameters for maximum degradation were determined. The degradation of 3,4-dichlorophenol can be emulated in sunlight using a similar large-scale shallow pond reactor for the solar detoxification in open atmosphere

Encapsulation of thermal energy storage media

In one embodiment, a method for fabricating a ceramic phase change material capsule includes forming a solid phase change material pellet, coating the pellet with a green ceramic material, and sintering the green ceramic material while on the pellet to form a ceramic outer shell of the capsule