Effect of Fuel Additives on the Performance and Emissions of an Internal Combustion Engine

Internal combustion engines fuel additives producers claim that with the addition of some additives to diesel fuel, an engine can function better in terms of performance and efficiency and decrease the emissions due to the combustion process as well. The diesel engine thermal efficiency ranges from about 35 to 40 percent. The diesel fuel price in Malaysia is about RM 1.80 per liter. The emissions due to the combustion of diesel fuel include mostly COx and NOx emissions. A study must be carried out in order to validate the claims of the fuel additives producers and find out the effect of the additives on the performance and the emissions of the diesel engine. The objective of this project is to carry out the experiment needed to validate the claims throughout running an engine using an additive free diesel fuel and an additive on diesel fuel. This experiment is conducted through using two fuel additives. After testing the fuel with the additives and without the additives the results of the experiment are tabulated, comparing torque, power, specific fuel consumption and exhaust temperature with respect to the engine’s speed. A single cylinder two strokes diesel engine is used in this experiment with and without the additives. The parameters of interest in this study would be (Torque, Fuel consumption, power and exhaust temperature) According to recent researches made by few researchers some additives validated the claims of the fuel additives producers. Some of these research results is included with further details in this report

Linear-time Online Action Detection From 3D Skeletal Data Using Bags of Gesturelets

Sliding window is one direct way to extend a successful recognition system to handle the more challenging detection problem. While action recognition decides only whether or not an action is present in a pre-segmented video sequence, action detection identifies the time interval where the action occurred in an unsegmented video stream. Sliding window approaches for action detection can however be slow as they maximize a classifier score over all possible sub-intervals. Even though new schemes utilize dynamic programming to speed up the search for the optimal sub-interval, they require offline processing on the whole video sequence. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for online action detection based on 3D skeleton sequences extracted from depth data. It identifies the sub-interval with the maximum classifier score in linear time. Furthermore, it is invariant to temporal scale variations and is suitable for real-time applications with low latency

An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship between New Investors and the Telecommunications Stocks 'Bubble Post the Egyptian Revolution

The Egyptian Exchange (EGX) declined 6.25% following the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 on the 25th January. The EGX was closed after the revolution for a period of 55 days, till it was reopened on Wednesday 23rd March and the market fell by a further 8.9% on reopening. Subsequently, all the market indices soared during the period from the 23rd of March till the end of May 2011. Therefore, this study shares with some existing works the objective of getting a better understanding of investor behavior during financial bubbles and aims to analyze empirically the relationship between new investors (NI) and the telecommunications stocks’ bubble that occurs after the Egyptian revolution.  A similar methodology is employed as that used in previous studies in particular, the study of Gong, Pan and Shi (2015). The empirical findings of this research effort reveal that (1) the new investors initiated the telecommunications stocks’ bubble; (2) the continuous entrance of new investors in the EGX sustained this bubble; and (3) the slow decline of the average price of telecommunications stocks over time is due to the new investors. Compared with other factors, the continuous stream of new investors was the most robust driving force of the bubble over the whole trading period. Key Words: Telecommunications Stocks- Financial Bubble- New Investors (NI)-Behavioral Finance- Egyptian Exchange (EGX) -Egyptian Revolution- EGX 30 Index- Black-Scholes value- Volatility- Market Retur

The Impact of Investors’ Perception of Risk on Portfolio Management: Evidence from the Kingdom of Bahrain

The Study of risk perception and its impact on investors’ behavior is well established in the literature of behavioral finance. Plentiful studies have been conducted to explore, investigate and measure this link. However, very few of them attempt to find this link in the context of portfolio management. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to test empirically the impact of investors’ perception of risk on portfolio management in the Kingdom of Bahrain. This study draws on 151 questionnaire surveys of investors in Bahrain. Participants were asked to assess one randomly selected portfolio type (from P (A) to P (F)) on a questionnaire consisting of 33 determents of the risk perception which were selected from the surveys of previous studies. Subsequently, a model of determinants of perceived risk and portfolio management was developed and tested. Furthermore, the data were analyzed using linear stepwise regression and factor analysis with varimax rotation. Suitability of the data was checked by calculating the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value and analyzing the anti-image-covariance-matrix. The results reveal that perceived portfolio risk is not only affected by quantitative aspects of potential losses and gains but also qualitative manifestations evidence to be pertinent. Worry & anxiety, liquidity; and the level of confidence in the economy and/or the stock market load high on the factor representing the perceived risk by investors which is associated with portfolio management in the Kingdom of Bahrain. KEY WORDS: Portfolio   Management-   Risk   Perception-   Behavioral   Finance-   Investment Decisions- Kingdom of Bahrain

COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF CURRENT SOURCE INVERTER INDUCTION MOTOR DRIVE SYSTEMS

The known concept of supplying an induction motor from a static current source converter results in ac drive performance with several important advantages over the more familiar voltage fed inverter. All ac drive using such a current source inverter is shown in Fig. 1. Basically, it consists o

Energy-aware cooperative wireless networks with multiple cognitive users

In this paper, we study and analyze cooperative cognitive radio networks with arbitrary number of secondary users (SUs). Each SU is considered a prospective relay for the primary user (PU) besides having its own data transmission demand. We consider a multi-packet transmission framework that allows multiple SUs to transmit simultaneously because of dirty-paper coding. We propose power allocation and scheduling policies that optimize the throughput for both PU and SU with minimum energy expenditure. The performance of the system is evaluated in terms of throughput and delay under different opportunistic relay selection policies. Toward this objective, we present a mathematical framework for deriving stability conditions for all queues in the system. Consequently, the throughput of both primary and secondary links is quantified. Furthermore, a moment generating function approach is employed to derive a closed-form expression for the average delay encountered by the PU packets. Results reveal that we achieve better performance in terms of throughput and delay at lower energy cost as compared with equal power allocation schemes proposed earlier in the literature. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate our theoretical findings

Addressing the Deficit: An Analysis of Boardroom Diversity Gaps and Progress toward Global Governance Standards in Bahrain

this study aims to identify and describe the level of board diversity in Bahraini firms listed on Bahrain Bourse, also known as the Bahrain Stock Exchange (BSE), and estimate the disparity between the employed diversity in Bahrain compared to international standards. The research seeks to answer two key questions: (1) what is the description of board diversity in Bahraini firms listed on BSE? (2) What is the gap in board diversity levels between Bahraini firms listed on Bahrain Stock Exchange (BSE) and international practices? Hence, content analysis was employed to collect the required data from the annual reports of 114 publicly listed service firms between 2018 and 2022. Through data analysis, the study assessed the representation of diverse directors on the boards of Bahraini firms, focusing on gender diversity. The analysis revealed that Bahraini boards continue to be predominantly composed of male directors. Female directors accounted for only 5 percent of the total directors, with an average of 0.35 female directors per board. Based on the findings, the study recommends a review and revision of laws and regulations pertinent to the board of directors, including corporate law and the corporate governance code in Bahrain. These revisions are necessary to promote and ensure greater board diversification within Bahraini firms. The study goes beyond mere description and estimation by addressing the practical implications of the findings. By recommending a review and revision of laws and regulations related to the board of directors, including corporate law and the corporate governance code, the study offers actionable suggestions to promote greater board diversification in Bahrain

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment for Jatropha Biodiesel in Egypt

AbstractThe main goal of this paper is to evaluate the environmental performance for the system of Jatropha biodiesel production from cradle to wheel according to the unique Egyptian Jatropha biodiesel model because it depends on waste water which is sewage water and waste land which is desert. This evaluation is performed through a life cycle analysis study which is implemented according to the international standard organization guidelines ISO 14040 and the environmental impacts assessment is executed through SimaPro LCA. The main motivation behind this life cycle analysis is the absence of any environmental life cycle analysis studies for Jatropha biodiesel production in Egypt so such study would be helpful in future Jatropha biodiesel projects in Egypt. Results show that Jatropha biodiesel production in Egypt has many environmental benefits such as combating desertification and fewer impacts compared to fossil diesel which makes Jatropha more than an energy crop. However, there is a need for further social and economic life cycle analysis for Jatropha biodiesel production in Egypt on both small farmers and commercial projects levels. The targeted audiences concerning the results are scientists and stakeholders interested in Jatropha biodiesel productio

Modeling and simulation of a wirelessly-powered thermopneumatic micropump for drug delivery applications

This paper presents modeling and finite element analysis of a thermopneumatic micropump with a novel design that does not affect the temperature of the working fluid. The micropump is operated by activating a passive wireless heater using wireless power transfer when the magnetic field is tuned to match the resonant frequency of the heater. The heater is responsible for heating an air-heating chamber that is connected to a loading reservoir through a microdiffuser element. The solution inside the reservoir is pumped through a microchannel that ends with an outlet hole. The thermal and pumping performances of the micropump are analyzed using finite element method over a low range of Reynold’s number ⩽ 10 that is suitable for various biomedical applications. The results demonstrate promising performance with a maximum flow rate of ∼2.86 μL/min at a chamber temperature of 42.5 ºC, and a maximum pumping pressure of 406.5 Pa. The results show that the developed device can be potentially implemented in various biomedical areas, such as implantable drug delivery applications

Effect of Fuel Additives on the Performance and Emissions of an Internal Combustion Engine

Internal combustion engines fuel additives producers claim that with the addition of some additives to diesel fuel, an engine can function better in terms of performance and efficiency and decrease the emissions due to the combustion process as well. The diesel engine thermal efficiency ranges from about 35 to 40 percent. The diesel fuel price in Malaysia is about RM 1.80 per liter. The emissions due to the combustion of diesel fuel include mostly COx and NOx emissions. A study must be carried out in order to validate the claims of the fuel additives producers and find out the effect of the additives on the performance and the emissions of the diesel engine. The objective of this project is to carry out the experiment needed to validate the claims throughout running an engine using an additive free diesel fuel and an additive on diesel fuel. This experiment is conducted through using two fuel additives. After testing the fuel with the additives and without the additives the results of the experiment are tabulated, comparing torque, power, specific fuel consumption and exhaust temperature with respect to the engine’s speed. A single cylinder two strokes diesel engine is used in this experiment with and without the additives. The parameters of interest in this study would be (Torque, Fuel consumption, power and exhaust temperature) According to recent researches made by few researchers some additives validated the claims of the fuel additives producers. Some of these research results is included with further details in this report