Design of the Conceptual Implementation of an Apparatus with the Induced Heat and Mass Transfer for Vaporization and Rectification

The need to find solutions to problems on the efficient use of energy resources has been substantiated, under conditions for meeting the requirements to the environmental sustainability of production in the process of executing such technological operations as vaporization and rectification. We have identified the prospects of searching for and applying the induced processes, which are characterized by high energy efficiency and are environmentally friendly.The kinetics of temperature have been investigated under the effect from the induced heat transfer of the components of the internal thermostat volume, under condition of using different liquids in its internal environment.Our study has established the impossibility for the liquid in the inner volume thermostat to achieve the boiling temperature under condition of the effect of the induced heat and mass transfer, proven by the visual observations and by the value of its temperature. In the experiment under atmospheric pressure, the thermostat temperature was equal to 115...116 °C, while the temperature of the volumetric water did not exceed 97 °C. It was established that at the thermostat temperature of 105...106 °C and under atmospheric pressure, the ethyl alcohol temperature did not exceed 72...73 °C, and for water ‒ 83...85 °C, under the condition of the effect of the induced heat-and-mass transfer.It was found that ethyl alcohol and water are transferred to the gas state under the effect of the induced heat-and-mass transfer separately. It is possible to register the removal of the liquid phase of the mixture components based on the jump-like transition in the kinetics of the fluid temperature. It was established that the liquid phase did not boil for a mixture of ethyl alcohol with water under the effect of the induced heat-and-mass transfer at the thermostat temperature of 105 °C and under atmospheric pressure.We have proposed a conceptual solution to the technical implementation of the universal device that employs the effect of the induced heat-and-mass transfer in order to execute technological operations of vaporization and rectification excluding the boiling phase. Based on a given conceptual solution, we have built a laboratory prototype of the installation, in which vaporization is carried out under atmospheric pressure at the liquid phase temperature of 83...85 °C. The economic effect from the installation is achieved through the simplified equipment and reduction in energy consumption per product unit by larger than 1.3 times compared to the vacuum-evaporator apparatu

Report on noninvasive prenatal testing: classical and alternative approaches [version 1; referees: 2 approved]

Concerns of traditional prenatal aneuploidy testing methods, such as low accuracy of noninvasive and health risks associated with invasive procedures, were overcome with the introduction of novel noninvasive methods based on genetics (NIPT). These were rapidly adopted into clinical practice in many countries after a series of successful trials of various independent submethods. Here we present results of own NIPT trial carried out in Moscow, Russia. 1012 samples were subjected to the method aimed at measuring chromosome coverage by massive parallel sequencing. Two alternative approaches are ascertained: one based on maternal/fetal differential methylation and another based on allelic difference. While the former failed to provide stable results, the latter was found to be promising and worthy of conducting a large-scale trial. One critical point in any NIPT approach is the determination of fetal cell-free DNA fraction, which dictates the reliability of obtained results for a given sample. We show that two different chromosome Y representation measures—by real-time PCR and by whole-genome massive parallel sequencing—are practically interchangeable (r=0.94). We also propose a novel method based on maternal/fetal allelic difference which is applicable in pregnancies with fetuses of either sex. Even in its pilot form it correlates well with chromosome Y coverage estimates (r=0.74) and can be further improved by increasing the number of polymorphisms