Used cooking oil as a source for biodiesel blend

With the depleted world petroleum reserves and increase demand for oil as a fuel, it has become imperative to investigate the possibility of using non-fossil fuel as an alternative fuel for diesel engine. Therefore, this paper describes the experimental investigation on possibility of producing biodiesel from used cooking oil and their properties, characteristics and performance as a blended biodiesel for diesel engine at constant speed. Properties analysis of biodiesel from used cooking oil in accordance to the ASTM D6751 specification showed that it fulfilled the requirements of a biodiesel fuel specification. Comparison also conducted between the ordinary diesel as a standard fuel and several set of blended biodiesel range from I% to 5% volume of biodiesel. The properties of blended biodiesel were not much different to the properties of conventional diesel fuel except the density and specific gravity. The density of diesel is 0.8358 gm/cc and the biodiesel is 0.8723 gm/cc. For blended biodiesel, it's slightly increased from 0.8363 gm/cc for I% to 0.8385 gm/cc for 5%. The results from Detroit Deisel Engine performance test showed that the blending fuel sample produced almost the same performance characteristics as compared to conventional diesel. As a result, blended biodiesel with used cooking oil is suitable to be used up to 5% as a fuel for diesel engine at constant speed and gives the same engine performances as conventional diesel fue

Hybrid of Eddy Current Probe Based on Permanent Magnet and GMR Sensor

The eddy current testing (ECT) is used to inspect a material to determine its properties without destroying its utility. The applications include detection of flaws in aircrafts, pipeline, etc. An ECT is a weak sensitivity to a subsurface defect. Applications of giant magnetic sensors (GMR) are increasingly applied to the measurement of weak magnetic fields related to the currents they cause. In this paper, GMR sensor with magnet bar (permanent) is utilized. The proposed probe system is utilized to study the impact of the width and depth defect on the signal of eddy current testing. The maximum depth of flaw in a mild steel can be revealed by using this probe. The graph of the difference between the peak amplitude and the penetration depth of each slot of a different width of the two bands of mild steel shows the increase of the signal for each slot and flat above 3mm. The experimental result proves the inability of a PMGMR probe to detect a defect at a depth of 3mm on a surface defect

Hybrid of Eddy Current Probe based on Permanent Magnet and GMR Sensor

The eddy current testing (ECT) is used to inspect a material to determine its properties without destroying its utility. The applications include detection of flaws in aircrafts, pipeline, etc. An ECT is a weak sensitivity to a subsurface defect. Applications of giant magnetic sensors (GMR) are increasingly applied to the measurement of weak magnetic fields related to the currents they cause. In this paper, GMR sensor with magnet bar (permanent) is utilized. The proposed probe system is utilized to study the impact of the width and depth defect on the signal of eddy current testing. The maximum depth of flaw in a mild steel can be revealed by using this probe. The graph of the difference between the peak amplitude and the penetration depth of each slot of a different width of the two bands of mild steel shows the increase of the signal for each slot and flat above 3mm. The experimental result proves the inability of a PMGMR probe to detect a defect at a depth of 3mm on a surface defect

Textile Diamond Dipole and Artificial Magnetic Conductor Performance under Bending, Wetness and Specific Absorption Rate Measurements

Textile diamond dipole and Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) have been proposed and tested under wearable and body centric measurements. The proposed antenna and AMC sheet are entirely made of textiles for both the substrate and conducting parts, thus making it suitable for wearable communications. Directive radiation patterns with high gain are obtained with the proposed AMC sheet, hence minimizing the radiation towards the human body. In this study, wearable and body centric measurements are investigated which include bending, wetness and Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). Bending is found not to give significant effect to the antenna and AMC performance, as opposed to wetness that yields severe performance distortion. However, the original performance is retrieved once the antenna and AMC dried. Moreover, notable SAR reduction is achieved with the introduction of the AMC sheet, which is appropriate to reduce the radiation that penetrates into human flesh

Influence of Al doping on random lasing in ZnO nanorods

Random lasing was demonstrated from aluminum doped ZnO nanorods fabricated on ITO coated glass substrates using simple chemical deposition technique. Different Aluminum (Al) doping parameters were explored in an attempt to realize low threshold ZnO random lasers. Results confirm threshold was strongly dependent on doping concentration and suggestive of resonant coupling with Al in lowering the threshold by 2 orders of magnitude when compared to undoped ZnO nanorods. Lowest threshold was obtained from ZnO nanorods doped with 10 mM of aluminum, suggesting best doping concentration for ZnO random lasers formed by nanorod array. Results further indicate possibility of controlling random lasing properties by adjusting the doping concentration

Embroidery Leaf Shape Dipole Antenna Performances and Characterisation

In this paper, leaf shape textile antenna in ISM band has been chosen to study. The operating frequency of the dipole antenna is 2.45GHz. The effect of conductive threads with three different types of sewing has been analysed. The first type of sewing leaf shape dipole antenna is to stitch around itself and embroidered into a fleece fabric with circular follow by vertical and horizontal stitch respectively. From measured return loss, the antenna with circular stitch shows better performances with optimum resonances compared with the two types of stitching. The measured results confirm that the circular stitch is more suitable for leaf shape dipole antenna design. Thus it can be concluded that different stitch gives different results for leaf shape dipole antenna

Meander bowtie Antenna for Wearable Application

This paper proposes a flexible compact bowtie antenna for medical application that operates at 2.45 GHz. The proposed antennas are miniaturized using meander technique. Both substrates and conducting material of the antenna are made of flexible material semi-transparent film as the substrate and shieldit fabric as the conducting material which suitable for wearable and on body application. The results show that the total length of the antenna is significantly reduced by up to 38%. However, the gain of the antenna is slightly decreased when the size of the antenna become smaller. The results of this research could provide guidance and has significant implication for future development of wearable electronics especially in medical monitoring application

Modelling performance of ocean-thermal energy conversion cycle according to different working fluids

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a promising renewable energy technology with the concept to harness the energy stored at the surface seawater (SSW) and the cold deep seawater (DSW). The operation is based on the Rankine cycle, and involves at a minimum temperature difference of 20 K of the SSW and DSW to generate electricity. This research focuses on the economic efficiency of different working fluids used in the OTEC Rankine cycle. The various working fluids include ammonia, ammonia-water mixture (0.9), propane, R22, R32, R134a, R143a, and R410a. Most of the existing commercial OTEC systems use ammonia as the working medium despite its toxic nature. This study shows that the ammonia-water mixture still gives the best results in terms of heat transfer characteristics because of its greater transport properties and stability compared to other fluids. However, fluids such as propane and R32 can also be used as a substitute for ammonia-water mixture despite having slightly lower efficiency, because they are non-toxic and safer towards the environment. The same developmental model was used to present the proposed modified OTEC Rankine cycle, which shows a 4% increase in thermal cycle efficiency. This study reveals economically efficient and environmentally friendly working fluids

Design and Analysis of Optimum Performance Pacemaker Telemetry Antenna

The demand for health technology is increasing especially in the telemetry applications. These applications generally use implanted antennas to be utilized for data transfer from patients to other reader devices. This procedure can make the health care more efficient since it provides fast diagnosis and treatment to the patient. Therefore, in order to effectively implement an implanted antenna inside the human body, thorough numerical analysis and simulations are required prior to the fabrication of antenna. In this work, an implanted antenna has been proposed to be designed at 402.5MHz within the biomedical frequency band of 402- 405MHz. By introducing a compact loop antenna for telemetry applications in a Pacemaker, a number of advantages can be achieved for health care such as efficient data information and quick diagnosis. Moreover, in this work an investigation of compact loop antenna with casing in Pacemaker has been carried out by placing the antenna inside the phantom of human body model