Cost benefit analysis of composting and anaerobic digestion in a community: A review

Currently, population and urbanisation are rapidly growing which causes a tremendous amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) being generated. The MSW management in Malaysia can be considered relatively poor and disorganised. The most preferred MSW disposal method in Malaysia is through landfilling. To address this and to respond to increasing global environmental concerns, composting and anaerobic digestion have been hailed as an environmentally and economically friendly alternative besides landfilling. By capturing the organic materials from MSW and putting it to a more beneficial use as feedstock for composting and anaerobic digestion sounds very ideal. Focusing on the waste landfilling prevention for a small community, this paper discusses on whether composting or anaerobic digestion might be a feasible alternative to landfilling. Both solutions differ in various aspects. The purpose of this study is to know whether composting or anaerobic digestion is more beneficial by performing cost benefit analysis on both situations. In this study we estimated the cost benefit analysis of three different scenarios. First scenario is the baseline for the current practice of solid waste management where the wastes are dumped to landfill. Second scenario is the installation of composting plant and the third scenario will be estimated on the installation of anaerobic digester

Steering intervention strategy for side lane collision Avoidance

Advance Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have successfully been integrated in many vehicles; however, the research on its improvement is still on-going. Some of the features of ADAS include Lane Departure warning System, Blind Spot detection, Lane Change Assistance and etc. However, with such systems available, accidents still occurred due to the driver's lack of awareness and negligence towards the given indication and warning, especially situation related to side lane collision. Thus, this paper aims to propose a simple steering intervention control. If the driver still proceed for the lane change when there are other object appearing in the blind spot area, the proposed solution will automatically trigger vehicle evasion mode to avoid side lane collision. The system does not take into account comfort in order to warn the driver. The system was tested and validated using a test vehicle. The results show that the steering intervention provides good vehicle evasion results and hypothetically it may act as the final warning towards the person behind the wheel

Threat assessment algorithm for Active Blind Spot Assist system using short range radar sensor

Road safety has become more concern due to the number of accidents that keeps increasing every year. The safety systems include from simple installation such as seat belt, airbag, and rear camera to more complicated and intelligent systems such as braking assist, lane change assist, steering control and blind spot monitoring. This paper proposes another intelligent safety system to be implemented in passenger vehicle by monitoring the blind-spot region by using automotive short range radar as sensor to assess its surrounding. This system is called Active Blind-Spot Assist (ABSA) system and this system will collaborate with a Steering Intervention system for autonomous steering maneuvers. The objective of ABSA system is to deploy safety interventions by giving warning to the driver whenever other vehicle is detected within the blind-spot region. Furthermore, this active system also triggers autonomous steering control when the potential of collision with the detected vehicle increases greatly. Consequently, a threat assessment algorithm is developed to evaluate the right moment to give safety interventions to the driver and the conditions for autonomous steering maneuvers. The process of developing the threat assessment algorithm explained in this paper

I-Drive: Modular system architecture and hardware configuration for an intelligent Vehicle research platform

There are many researches in the field of autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle in Malaysia, but most of them never have the chance to be tested in actual environment due to constraints in terms of hardware and its configuration. Thus, this paper aims to share with other researchers in the field of Autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle with our independent modular-based system and hardware configuration of an Autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle research platform at our university. Each of the research projects are represented by a module and they are linked by a communication layer. The modules utilised the communication layers to transmit and received data as a part of system communication network, and finally this configuration build up the whole system. Through this approach, it is hoped that the contribution from each research project leads to fully autonomous vehicle and intelligent vehicle. The proposed modular system and hardware configuration have been successfully verified via our platform through lane-keeping research. The proposed platform is demonstrated via I-DRIVE (Intelligent Drive Vehicle) on the standard testing track and Malaysia highway road

I-Drive: Modular system architecture and hardware configuration for an intelligent Vehicle research platform

There are many researches in the field of autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle in Malaysia, but most of them never have the chance to be tested in actual environment due to constraints in terms of hardware and its configuration. Thus, this paper aims to share with other researchers in the field of Autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle with our independent modular-based system and hardware configuration of an Autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle research platform at our university. Each of the research projects are represented by a module and they are linked by a communication layer. The modules utilised the communication layers to transmit and received data as a part of system communication network, and finally this configuration build up the whole system. Through this approach, it is hoped that the contribution from each research project leads to fully autonomous vehicle and intelligent vehicle. The proposed modular system and hardware configuration have been successfully verified via our platform through lane-keeping research. The proposed platform is demonstrated via I-DRIVE (Intelligent Drive Vehicle) on the standard testing track and Malaysia highway road

Effect of high inlet temperature of spray dryer on viability of microencapsulated Trichoderma asperellum conidia

In recent years, the use of spray drying for microencapsulating beneficial microbes has gained the interest of researchers, mainly due to dried powder formulation could prevent contamination and prolong self-life of the microbes. The major constraint of spray drying is conidia could lose viability during the drying process due to heat. In this present study, the effect of spray drying inlet temperature on viability of microencapsulated Trichoderma asperellum conidia was assessed. A blend biopolymer of gum Arabic and maltodextrin in ratio of 1:1 was used to microencapsulate the conidia at 150, 160 and 170oC inlet temperatures of spray drying process. Assessment of conidia viability was performed based on conidia percent survival of spray dried (PSsd) and survival increase (SI) unit values. Viability of the microencapsulated conidia was also evaluated their shelf life stored at two different temperatures which were at 28 ±2˚C and 4±2˚C for 40 weeks. The finding showed that viability of microencapsulated conidia was optimum obtained at inlet temperature of 170˚C with 68.2% of PSsd and SI and 17.7 units of SI compared to 15.9% and 1.5 unit respectively obtained for 160oC and 0.2% and 0.7 unit for 150oC. The highest inlet temperature has showed the highest viability compared to lower temperatures. Conidia stored at low temperature of 4 ±2˚C has survived longer up to 40 weeks that were confirmed via the viability test. High inlet temperature of 170oC was desirable to enhance survivability and viability of the conidia to be used as biocontrol agent up to 40 weeks at low temperature storage. These microencapsulated conidia could be further tested on their capability to inhibit the pathogen of pineapple diseas

A Non-Standard Optimal Control Problem Using Hyperbolic Tangent

A current ideal control issue in the region of financial aspects has numerical properties that do not fall into the standard optimal control problem detailing. In our concern the state an incentive at the final time, y(T ) = z, is free and obscure, and furthermore the integrand is a piecewise consistent capacity of the obscure esteem y(T ). This is not a standard optimal control problem and cannot be settled utilizing Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle with the standard limit conditions at the final time. In the standard issue a free final state y(T ) yields an important limit condition p(T ) = 0, where p(t) is the costate. Since the integrand is a component of y(T ), the new fundamental condition is that y(T ) yield to be equivalent to a specific necessary that is a consistent capacity of z. We present a continuous estimation of the piecewise consistent integrand function through hyperbolic tangent approach and tackle a case utilizing a C++ shooting method with Newton emphasis for tackling the two point boundary value problem (TPBVP). The limiting free y(T ) value is computed in an external circle emphasis through the Golden Section metho

Evaluating mobile laser scanning for landslide monitoring

Landslide is one of the natural disasters that give a huge impact to human life and social-economic development. Landslide needs to be monitored periodically in order to avoid loss of human life and damages of properties. Various methods have been used for monitoring landslide. This aim of the research is to evaluate the potential of mobile laser scanning technique for monitoring of landslide area. The objectives of the research are to acquire three-dimensional surface data of landslide area in different epochs and to analyze the movement of the landslide area using three-dimensional surface deviation and ground surveying techniques. The methodology begins with the GPS survey for the establishment of ground control points for the project area. The total station survey was then carried out to measure the three-dimensional coordinates of twenty well distributed targets located at the project area. The data collection phase was then continuing with the mobile laser scanning survey. The processing of the two epochs data acquired from both techniques was then carried out simultaneously and the methodology concluded with the output comparison analysis for the movement detection of the land slip. The finding shows that the mobile laser scanning provides fast and accurate data acquisition technique of the landslide surface. The surface deviation analysis of the two epochs laser scanning data was capable to detect the movement occurred in the project area. The results were successfully evaluated using the changes of the three-dimensional coordinates of the targets from the two epoch’s ground surveying data

Activated alumina preparation and characterization: The review on recent advancement

Aluminum and aluminum based material are significant industrial materials synthesis because of their abandonment, low weight and high-quality corrosion resistance. The most advances in aluminum processing are the ability to synthesize it’s under suitable chemical composition and conditions, a porous structure can be formed on the surface. Activated alumina particles (AAP) synthesized by the electrochemically process from aluminum have gained serious attention, inexpensive material that can be employed for water filtration due to its active surface. Thus, the paper present a review study based on recent progress and advances in synthesizing activated alumina, various techniques currently being used in preparing activated alumina and its characteristics are studied and summarize

The effect of processing parameters on the performance of cotton-fabric-based MEMS fabricated using stamped silver nanoparticles

In this study, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were being transferred onto fabric by stamping to produce different conductive regions. The resistive part acts as the transducer of the device using piezoresistive effects. The scope of this project is to investigate the effect of stamping processing parameters to the fabricated textile-based Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS). We show that the force applied during stamping procedure and the amount of AgNPs will affect the performance of the sensor. We calculated the gauge factor in order to investigate the sensitivity of the sensor with different processing parameters. We found that there are optimum values for both the applied force, i.e. about 15N, and the applied AgNPs amount, i.e. 0.5 μl, such that the sensitivity of the textile-based MEMS strain sensing is maximum