15,972 research outputs found
Continuous production of KNO3 nanosalts for the fertilization of soil by means of a Spinning Disk Reactor
In this study the production of high soluble material
nanoparticles was successfully performed by means of a
spinning disk reactor (SDR). This result was possible due
to the use of a potassium nitrate saturated solution, which
was continuously recycled back to the reactor after
removal of the produced solid nanoparticles.
Several process configurations were checked. It appears to
be mandatory that the recycled saturated solution must be
free of residual nanoparticles since their presence would
lead to heterogeneous nucleation. In this respect, a small
amount of nitric acid was added to the stream to permit the
residual nanoparticle dissolution. Moreover, a spiral
wounded piping system was developed in order to increase
both the contact time and the mixing condition of the
saturated solution with the added acid before entering the
SD
About the limits of microfiltration for the purification of wastewaters
In the past, microfiltration was widely used as a
pretreatment step for wastewater stream purification
purposes. Experiences performed during the last years
shows that microfiltration fails to maintain its
performances for longer period of times. Many case studies
demonstrate that the adoption of microfiltration leads to
the failure of the overall process; the severe fouling of the
microfiltration membranes leads to high operating costs
with the consequence to make the treatment of the
wastewater economically unfeasible. The boundary flux
concept is a profitable tool to analyze fouling issues in
membrane processes. The boundary flux value separates an
operating region characterized by reversible fouling
formation from irreversible one. Boundary flux values are
not content, but function of time, as calculated by the subboundary
fouling rate value. The knowledge of both
parameters may fully describe the membrane performances
in sub-boundary operating regimes. Many times, for
wastewater purification purposes, ultrafiltration
membranes appear to be suits better to the needs, even they
exhibit lower permeate fluxes compared to microfiltration.
Key to this choice is that ultrafiltration appears to resist
better to fouling issues, with a limited reduction of the
performances as a function of time. In other words, it
appears that ultrafiltration exhibit higher boundary flux
values and lower sub-boundary fouling rates. In this work,
after a brief introduction to the boundary flux concept, for
many different wastewater streams (more than 20,
produced by the most relevant industries in food,
agriculture, manufacture, pharmaceutics), the boundary
flux and sub-boundary fouling rate values of different
microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes will be
discussed and compared. The possibility to successfully
use microfiltration as a pretreatment step strongly depends
on the feedstock characteristics and, in detail, on the
particle size of the suspended matter. In most cases,
microfiltration demonstrates to be technically unsuitable
for pretreatment purposes of many wastewater streams; as
a consequence, the adoption of microfiltration pushes
operators to exceed boundary flux conditions, therefore
triggering severe fouling, that leads to economic
unfeasibility of the process in long terms
Quantum synchronization as a local signature of super- and subradiance
We study the relationship between the collective phenomena of super and
subradiance and spontaneous synchronization of quantum systems. To this aim we
revisit the case of two detuned qubits interacting through a pure dissipative
bosonic environment, which contains the minimal ingredients for our analysis.
By using the Liouville formalism, we are able to find analytically the ultimate
connection between these phenomena. We find that dynamical synchronization is
due to the presence of long standing coherence between the ground state of the
system and the subradiant state. We finally show that, under pure dissipation,
the emergence of spontaneous synchronization and of subradiant emission occur
on the same time scale. This reciprocity is broken in the presence of dephasing
noise.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Normal form decomposition for Gaussian-to-Gaussian superoperators
In this paper we explore the set of linear maps sending the set of quantum
Gaussian states into itself. These maps are in general not positive, a feature
which can be exploited as a test to check whether a given quantum state belongs
to the convex hull of Gaussian states (if one of the considered maps sends it
into a non positive operator, the above state is certified not to belong to the
set). Generalizing a result known to be valid under the assumption of complete
positivity, we provide a characterization of these Gaussian-to-Gaussian (not
necessarily positive) superoperators in terms of their action on the
characteristic function of the inputs. For the special case of one-mode
mappings we also show that any Gaussian-to-Gaussian superoperator can be
expressed as a concatenation of a phase-space dilatation, followed by the
action of a completely positive Gaussian channel, possibly composed with a
transposition. While a similar decomposition is shown to fail in the multi-mode
scenario, we prove that it still holds at least under the further hypothesis of
homogeneous action on the covariance matrix
Chromium recovery by membranes for process reuse in the tannery industry
Leather tanning is a wide common industry all over the
world. In leather processing, water is one of the most
important medium, almost 40-45 L water kg-1 raw-hide or
skin is used by tanneries for processing finished leathers.
The composition of tannery wastewater presents
considerable dissimilarities in the concentration range of
pollutants both of inorganic (chlorides, with concentration
ranging from several hundred to over 10,000 mg L-1 Cl–;
sulphate (VI), ammonium ions and sulphide ions,
exhibiting concentration that ranges from tens to several
hundred mg L-1) and organic (the COD value is usually
several thousand mg L-1 O2). Throughout the years, many
conventional processes have been carried out to treat
wastewater from tannery industry: unfortunately, in this
case, biological treatment methods give rise to an
excessive production of sludge, whereas physical and
chemical methods are too expensive in terms of energy and
reagent costs. In this work, a membrane process based on
NF membrane modules was adopted to treat the tannery
feedstock after primary conventional treatment. In a first
step, the determination of all boundary flux parameters, in
order to inhibit severe fouling formation during operation,
were performed. After this, experimental work was carried
out to validate the approach. The target of water
purification was reached, that is the legal discharge to
municipal sewer system in Italy of 90% of the initial
wastewater stream volume. This allows having an
immediate cost saving of 21%. Moreover, the developed
process leads to a second benefit, that is the production of
5% of the initial volume as a highly chromium-rich
concentrate at no cost suitable to tannery process recycle
and reuse. In this case, cost saving rates exceeds 40%. At
the end, scale-up of the investigated process will be
discussed from technical and economic point of view
Influence of electromagnetic interferences on the gravimetric sensitivity of surface acoustic waveguides
Surface acoustic waveguides are increasing in interest for (bio)chemical
detection. The surface mass modification leads to measurable changes in the
propagation properties of the waveguide. Among a wide variety of waveguides,
Love mode has been investigated because of its high gravimetric sensitivity.
The acoustic signal launched and detected in the waveguide by electrical
transducers is accompanied by an electromagnetic wave; the interaction of the
two signals, easily enhanced by the open structure of the sensor, creates
interference patterns in the transfer function of the sensor. The influence of
these interferences on the gravimetric sensitivity is presented, whereby the
structure of the entire sensor is modelled. We show that electromagnetic
interferences generate an error in the experimental value of the sensitivity.
This error is different for the open and the closed loop configurations of the
sensor. The theoretical approach is completed by the experimentation of an
actual Love mode sensor operated under liquid in open loop configuration. The
experiment indicates that the interaction depends on the frequency and the mass
modifications.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure
Cavity-aided quantum parameter estimation in a bosonic double-well Josephson junction
We describe an apparatus designed to make non-demolition measurements on a
Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped in a double-well optical cavity. This
apparatus contains, as well as the bosonic gas and the trap, an optical cavity.
We show how the interaction between the light and the atoms, under appropriate
conditions, can allow for a weakly disturbing yet highly precise measurement of
the population imbalance between the two wells and its variance. We show that
the setting is well suited for the implementation of quantum-limited estimation
strategies for the inference of the key parameters defining the evolution of
the atomic system and based on measurements performed on the cavity field. This
would enable {\it de facto} Hamiltonian diagnosis via a highly controllable
quantum probe.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX4; Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Medição simultânea de velocidade e concentração em meios lĂquidos
Este artigo descreve os procedimentos experimentais para medição simultânea de
velocidade e concentração, utilizando Anemometria Laser Doppler e Fluorescência Induzida
por Laser. Apesar da fluorescência induzida por laser ser uma técnica usual no âmbito da
quĂmica analĂtica, a sua aplicação em Mecânica dos Fluidos nĂŁo Ă© comum. Efectuaram-se ensaios de maneira a caracterizar o comportamento experimental das soluções aquosas do traçador fluorescente (rodamina B) e desenvolveu-se um mĂ©todo experimental em que a FluorescĂŞncia Induzida por Laser podia ser utilizada juntamente com a Anemometria Laser Doppler
Limitation of entanglement due to spatial qubit separation
We consider spatially separated qubits coupled to a thermal bosonic field
that causes pure dephasing. Our focus is on the entanglement of two Bell states
which for vanishing separation are known as robust and fragile entangled
states. The reduced two-qubit dynamics is solved exactly and explicitly. Our
results allow us to gain information about the robustness of two-qubit
decoherence-free subspaces with respect to physical parameters such as
temperature, qubit-bath coupling strength and spatial separation of the qubits.
Moreover, we clarify the relation between single-qubit coherence and two-qubit
entanglement and identify parameter regimes in which the terms robust and
fragile are no longer appropriate.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; revised version, accepted for publication in
Europhys. Let
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