378 research outputs found

    DBSCAN algoritmin hyperparametri optimisointi käyttäen uudenlaista geneettiseen algoritmiin perustuvaa menetelmää

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    Ship traffic is a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the pressure on the maritime industry to lower its carbon footprint is constantly growing. One easy way for ships to lower their emissions would be to lower their sailing speed. The global ship traffic has for ages followed a practice called "sail fast, then wait", which means that ships try to reach their destination in the fastest possible time regardless and then wait at an anchorage near the harbor for a mooring place to become available. This method is easy to execute logistically, but it does not optimize the sailing speeds to take into account the emissions. An alternative tactic would be to calculate traffic patterns at the destination and use this information to plan the voyage so that the time at anchorage is minimized. This would allow ships to sail at lower speeds without compromising the total length of the journey. To create a model to schedule arrivals at ports, traffic patterns need to be formed on how ships interact with port infrastructure. However, port infrastructure is not widely available in an easy-to-use form. This makes it difficult to develop models that are capable of predicting traffic patterns. However, ship voyage information is readily available from commercial Automatic Information System (AIS) data. In this thesis, I present a novel implementation, which extracts information on the port infrastructure from AIS data using the DBSCAN clustering algorithm. In addition to clustering the AIS data, the implementation presented in this thesis uses a novel optimization method to search for optimal hyperparameters for the DBSCAN algorithm. The optimization process evaluates possible solutions using cluster validity indices (CVI), which are metrics that represent the goodness of clustering. A comparison with different CVIs is done to narrow down the most effective way to cluster AIS data to find information on port infrastructure

    Comparative Study: Impacts of Ca and Mg Salts on Iron Oxygen Carriers in Chemical Looping Combustion of Biomass

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    Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is one of the most promising methods for carbon capture and storage (CCS). An oxygen carrier, i.e., a mineral that can be oxidized and reduced, is used to convert the fuel in the process. The produced CO2 is inherently separated from the air components that enables easier CCS. The use of biomass-based fuels is desirable since it can lead to negative CO2 emissions. On the other hand, alkali compounds from the biomass may interact with the oxygen carrier causing problems, such as deactivation of the oxygen carrier. The most common oxygen carriers contain iron, since iron-based ores and industrial waste materials are readily available and cost-efficient. Therefore, the interaction between the iron oxygen carriers and the biomass ash-forming compounds needs to be investigated. Since Ca/Mg are abundant in biomass, it is important to clarify how their compounds interact with the oxygen carrier. In this study, the effect of Ca/Mg carbonates, chlorides, nitrates, sulfates, and phosphates along with synthetic biomass-derived ash on iron oxides was investigated. Redox reactions were investigated at 950 degrees C during 5 h under both oxidizing and reducing atmospheres. The results showed that the effect of Ca/Mg salts on the oxygen carrier varied depending on the anion of the salt. Generally, the nitrate- and phosphate-based salts of both Ca and Mg showed the harshest effect regarding agglomeration of the oxygen carriers. It was shown that the Ca/Mg-based compounds interacted differently with iron oxides, which was an unexpected result

    Leaching for recovery of copper from municipal solid waste incineration fly ash: Influence of ash properties and metal speciation.

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    Recovery of metals occurring in significant amounts in municipal solid waste incineration fly ash, such as copper, could offer several advantages: a decreased amount of potentially mobile metal compounds going to landfill, saving of natural resources and a monetary value. A combination of leaching and solvent extraction may constitute a feasible recovery path for metals from municipal solid waste incineration fly ash. However, it has been shown that the initial dissolution and leaching is a limiting step in such a recovery process. The work described in this article was focused on elucidating physical and chemical differences between two ash samples with the aim of explaining the differences in copper release from these samples in two leaching methods. The results showed that the chemical speciation is an important factor affecting the release of copper. The occurrence of copper as phosphate or silicate will hinder leaching, while sulphate and chloride will facilitate leaching

    Recycling Zinc from Metal Oxide Varistors Through Leaching and Cementation of Cobalt and Nickel

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    Metal oxide varistors (MOVs) are housed in a surge arrestor and composed of zinc oxide (> 90 wt%) and other metal oxides such as antimony, bismuth, cobalt, manganese, and nickel. Due to the high concentration of zinc in MOVs, it is a better choice to recycle them as opposed to landfilling. This research set out to determine if cementation could be used as a purification step to remove co-leached metals, leading to a purified leachate suitable for zinc electrowinning. Zinc was leached from crushed MOVs using dilute sulfuric acid, which avoided co-leaching of antimony and bismuth but required further purification to remove co-leached cobalt and nickel. In further purification of the leachate, cementation was investigated. Initial findings suggest that the cobalt concentration can be reduced by over 50 % (200 mg/L) and nickel concentration reduced by over 90 % (90 mg/L), by optimizing the activator (Sb/Cu) concentration, temperature, pH, and surface area of zinc dust. Further investigations into optimized batch addition of zinc and copper-antimony activators verified that nearly 92 % (> 390 mg/L) of the cobalt and all nickel (100 mg/L) can be removed from the acidic varistor leachate. These results suggest that cementation by addition of zinc dust can be used for purification of zinc solutions containing over 400 mg/L cobalt and 100 mg/L nickel and thus preparation of the solutions for zinc electrowinning

    Chemical fractionation for the characterisation of fly ashes from co-combustion of biofuels using different methods for alkali reduction

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    a b s t r a c t Chemical fractionation, SEM–EDX and XRD was used for characterisation of fly ashes from different cocombustion tests in a 12MW circulating fluidized bed boiler. The fuels combusted were wood pellets as base fuel and straw pellets as co-fuel in order to reach a fuel blend with high alkali and chlorine concentrations. This fuel blend causes severe problems with both agglomeration of bed material if silica sand is used and with deposits in the convection section of the boiler. Counter measures to handle this situation and avoiding expensive shut downs, tests with alternative bed materials and additives were performed. Three different bed materials were used; silica sand, Olivine sand and blast furnace slag (BFS) and different additives were introduced to the furnace of the boiler; Kaolin, Zeolites and Sulphur with silica sand as bed material. The results of the study are that BFS gives the lowest alkali load in the convection pass compared with Silica and Olivine sand. In addition less alkali and chlorine was found in the fly ashes in the BFS case. The Olivine sand however gave a higher alkali load in the convection section and the chemical fractionation showed that the main part of the alkali in the fly ashes was soluble, thus found as KCl which was confirmed by the SEM–EDX and XRD. The comparison of the different additives gave that addition of Kaolin and Zeolites containing aluminium- silicates captured 80% of the alkali in the fly ash as insoluble alkali–aluminium-silikates and reduced the KCl load on the convection section. Addition of sulphur reduced the KCl load in the flue gas even more but the K2SO4 concentration was increased and KCl was found in the fly ashes anyhow. The chemical fractionation showed that 65% of the alkali in the fly ashes of the Sulphur case was soluble

    Composition of agglomerates in fluidized bed reactors for thermochemical conversion of biomass and waste fuels Experimental data in comparison with predictions by a thermodynamic equilibrium model

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    Controlled combustion tests of biomass were performed in the 12 MWth circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boiler located on the campus of Chalmers University of Technology. The aim was twofold: to investigate the composition of agglomerated material and also to highlight the reasons for sintering and agglomeration during thermochemical conversion of biomass and wastes in fluidized bed reactors using quartz sand as bed material. Bed ash from three different tests regarding fuel or fuel mixtures (wood with straw, bark, and bark with refused derived fuel) was analysed to determine the ash elements using: (a) inductive coupled plasma (ICP) equipped with optical emission spectroscopy (OES) and (b) scanning electron microscopy equipped with an electron dispersive X-ray spectrometer (SEM-EDX). Chemical equilibrium calculations were also performed to support the interpretation of the experimental findings. It was found that the combination of (i) well controlled full-scale tests in a fluidized bed boiler, (ii) the use of line-scans by the EDX spectrometer of the SEM on bed samples and (iii) thermodynamic equilibrium modelling is a powerful tool in understanding the phenomena of bed agglomeration using quartz sand

    Space shuttle: a test vehicle for the reliability of the SkyWater 130nm PDK using OpenLane and the Google/E-fabless shuttle run for future space systems

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    The ASIC industry is experiencing a massive change in the recent years with more and more small and medium business entering the custom ASIC development. This trend is fueled by the recent open hardware movement and relevant government and privately funded initiatives. These new developments can open new opportunities in the space sector, which is traditionally characterised by very low volumes and very high non-recurrent (NRE) costs, if we can show that the produced chips have favourable radiation properties. In this ACM SRC entry, we describe the design and tape-out of Space Shuttle, the first test chip for the evaluation of the suitability of the SkyWater 130nm PDK and the OpenLane EDA toolchain using the Google/E-fabless shuttle run for future space processors

    Separation of Heavy Rare-Earth Elements from Light Rare-Earth Elements Via Solvent Extraction from a Neodymium Magnet Leachate and the Effects of Diluents

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    In recent decades, rare-earth elements (REEs) have seen a considerable increase in usage in modern technologies and the so-called green energy sources. The REEs are currently regarded to be among the most critical elements by the European Union (EU) and the United States (USA). Large investments are made in the research of recycling of the REEs from end-of-life products and E-scrap. One potential source for recycling of larger amounts of neodymium and dysprosium are end-of-life neodymium magnets. In this work, the selective extraction of REEs from a sulfuric media leachate (containing Nd, Dy, Pr, Gd, Co, and B) obtained by selective roasting of NdFeB waste and leaching was investigated. The extracting agent D2EHPA (di-(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid) diluted in Solvent 70, hexane, octane, cyclohexanone, chloroform, 1-octanol, and toluene was used for the investigation of the effects of using different diluents on the extraction of REEs and the separation between the light and the heavy REEs. The concentrations of D2EHPA in the used diluents were 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, and 1.2 M. The highest separation factors between the heavy and the light REEs were achieved using 0.3 M D2EHPA in hexane, while no B or Co extraction was measurable. The REEs were completely extracted as a group using 0.9 M or 1.2 M D2EHPA in either octane or hexane, also with no B or Co extraction. The aliphatic nonpolar diluents showed better properties than the aromatic and polar ones. The complete stripping of REEs from the loaded organic phases was proven to be efficient using hydrochloric acid at concentrations of 2 M or higher
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