Impact of sulphur contamination on the performance of mixed ionic-electronic conducting membranes for oxygen separation and hydrogen production

PhD ThesisMixed ionic-electronic conducting (MIEC) membranes are a promising technology for oxygen separation but they are not commercialised yet due to sealing issue and sensitivity to impurities in feedstock. In this study, La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3- (LSCF6428) was successfully sealed for long-term operation of 963 h using a gold-glass-ceramic sealant. The membrane was then tested for air separation in presence of hydrogen sulphide for 100 h and results showed that the impurity caused a drop in oxygen flux to zero within few hours. The flux could not be fully restored after hydrogen sulphide removal and only 6 to 35% was recovered. It was proposed that hydrogen sulphide was adsorbed on the membrane in the form of sulphur and it occupied oxygen vacancies. With time, strontium segregates toward sulphur to form irreversible layer of strontium sulphate. To restore the damaged surface, the membrane was treated by 1% (mol) of hydrogen for 20 h and the recovery improved from 6 to 12%. It was discovered that the poisoning mechanism is a function of oxygen partial pressure and change of partial pressure from 0.21 to 0.01 bar resulted in 90% recovery and this can be used as a strategy to reduce the damage. The next step was to test the membrane for hydrogen production using 1% (mol) of methane and results showed that methane conversion was steady at 33% for 350 h. Methane oxidation was also carried in presence of hydrogen sulphide but it resulted in drop of conversion to 8%. However, the conversion was slowly regenerating with time and it reached a constant value of 15%. This recovery was interpreted by the reaction of methane with hydrogen sulphide or methane decomposition and the membrane acted as a catalyst for these reactions. After hydrogen sulphide removal from the feed, the conversion kept on decreasing and this was linked to the change of membrane properties and therefore the membrane could not provide the sites for methane-oxygen reaction. For better stability under hydrogen sulphide, the membrane was modified by adding a powder of LSCF6428 material over the dense membrane. This dual layer membrane was stable for air separation under hydrogen for 33 h and the flux was only reduced by 5%

Beneficiation of some Egyptian Glass Sands

The attrition-scrubbing of some Egyptian glass sands was necessary for the disintegration of the ferruginous clayey coating on quartz grains. The effects of time of attrition-ing, impeller speed and solid/liquid ration were investi-gated. Classification of the scrubbed sands resulted in the removal of a slimy fraction and yielded a product having 0.065% Fe. Acid attritioning of sand with commer-cial HCL at room temperature did not affect the iron, coat-ing quartz particles

Enhancing FP-Growth Performance Using Multi-threading based on Comparative Study

The time required for generating frequent patterns plays an important role in mining association rules, especially when there exist a large number of patterns and/or long patterns. Association rule mining has been focused as a major challenge within the field of data mining in research for over a decade. Although tremendous progress has been made, algorithms still need improvements since databases are growing larger and larger. In this research we present a performance comparison between two frequent pattern extraction algorithms implemented in Java, they are the Recursive Elimination (RElim) and FP-Growth, these algorithms are used in finding frequent itemsets in the transaction database. We found that FP-growth outperformed RElim in term of execution time. In this context, multithreading is used to enhance the time efficiency of FP-growth algorithm. The results showed that multithreaded FP-growth is more efficient compared to single threaded FP-growth

The Coincidence Problem in Holographic f(R) Gravity

It is well-known that $f(R)$ gravity models formulated in Einstein conformal frame are equivalent to Einstein gravity together with a minimally coupled scalar field. In this case, the scalar field couples with the matter sector and the coupling term is given by the conformal factor. We apply the holographic principle to such interacting models. In a spatially flat universe, we show that the Einstein frame representation of $f(R)$ models leads to a constant ratio of energy densities of dark matter to dark energy.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

Mach's Principle and Model for a Broken Symmetric Theory of Gravity

We investigate spontaneous symmetry breaking in a conformally invariant gravitational model. In particular, we use a conformally invariant scalar tensor theory as the vacuum sector of a gravitational model to examine the idea that gravitational coupling may be the result of a spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this model matter is taken to be coupled with a metric which is different but conformally related to the metric appearing explicitly in the vacuum sector. We show that after the spontaneous symmetry breaking the resulting theory is consistent with Mach's principle in the sense that inertial masses of particles have variable configurations in a cosmological context. Moreover, our analysis allows to construct a mechanism in which the resulting large vacuum energy density relaxes during evolution of the universe.Comment: 9 pages, no figure

Contributor Notes

FOR production of standard grade Ferro-manganese the iron content in manganese ores should not exceed certain limits. Vast reserves of ferruginous manganese ores exist in several locations in U. A. R., which do not find good markets on account of their high iron content. Preliminary work showed that the iron content could be successfully reduced by magnetic roasting followed by magnetic sepa-ration. As reduction to the magnetic stage takes place readily in the fluidized state`, it was decided to use the fluidization technique in the present study

Technical efficiency and resources allocation in university hospitals in Tehran, 2009-2012

Background: Assessment of hospitals' performance in achieving its goals is a basic necessity. Measuring the efficiency of hospitals in order to boost resource productivity in healthcare organizations is extremely important. The aim of this study was to measure technical efficiency and determining status of resource allocation in some university hospitals, in Tehran, Iran. Methods: This study was conducted in 2012; the research population consisted of all hospitals affiliated to Iran and Tehran medical sciences universities of. Required data, such as human and capital resources information and also production variables (hospital outputs) were collected from data centers of studied hospitals. Data were analyzed using data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, Deap2,1 software; and the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) method, Frontier 4,1 software. Results: According to DEA method, average of technical, management (pure) and scale efficiency of the studied hospitals during the study period were calculated 0.87, 0.971, and 0.907, respectively. All kinds of efficiency did not follow a fixed trend over the study time and were constantly changing. In the stochastic frontier's production function analysis, the technical efficiency of the studied industry during the study period was estimated to be 0.389. Conclusion: This study represented hospitals with the highest and lowest efficiency. Reference hospitals (more efficient states) were indicated for the inefficient centers. According to the findings, it was found that in the hospitals that do not operate efficiently, there is a capacity to improve the technical efficiency by removing excess inputs without changes in the level of outputs. However, by the optimal allocation of resources in most studied hospitals, very important economy of scale can be achieved

Anterior Ocular Biometrics as Measured by Ultrasound Biomicroscopy

Background: High frequency ultrasonography (ultrasound biomicroscopy; UBM) is an ophthalmic diagnostic tool that can be used to measure the depth of the anterior segment (ASD), the anterior chamber angle (ACA), as well as thicknesses of the iris and the ciliary body (CB). Methods: The anterior segment dimensions and thicknesses were measured by Sonomed 35-MHz. Results: Measurements for 95 eyes from 52 adults were analyzed. The mean and median ASD and ACA were 2.91, 2.92 ± 0.41 mm and 34.1, 34.3 ± 12.1 degrees, respectively. The angle superiorly was wider than inferiorly (p = 0.04). At the root of the iris, the mid of the iris, and the juxtapupillary edge of the iris, the iris thicknesses (median, mean) were 0.40, 0.41 ± 0.1, 0.50, 0.51 ± 0.1, and 0.70, 0.71 ± 0.1 mm, respectively. The thicknesses of CB and CB together with the ciliary processes (median, mean), were 0.70, 0.71 ± 0.15 mm and 1.36, 1.41 ± 0.15 mm, respectively. The upper quadrant of both the iris and the CB was significantly thicker than the lower quadrant (p = 0.04). Conclusions: Our biometric measurements for the anterior segment can be used as normative data for anterior segment depth and angle and iris and ciliary body thickness in normal eyes

Transport Properties in Ferromagnetic Josephson Junction between Triplet Superconductors

Charge and spin Josephson currents in a ballistic superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor junction with spin-triplet pairing symmetry are studied using the quasiclassical Eilenberger equation. The gap vector of superconductors has an arbitrary relative angle with respect to magnetization of the ferromagnetic layer. We clarify the effects of the thickness of ferromagnetic layer and magnitude of the magnetization on the Josephson charge and spin currents. We find that 0-\pi transition can occur except for the case that the exchange field and d-vector are in nearly perpendicular configuration. We also show how spin current flows due to misorientation between the exchange field and d-vector.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure