Internet of Things in Health Care Using Fog Computing

Internet of Things has seeded in many areas of humanoid lifestyle, of which the health care is the most crucial area on which the focus is to be induced. This paper will describe the use of smartphones as a sensor to keep the track of the health of the patients. Considering the various disadvantages of using cloud computing, this paper will be talking about the use of fog computing for faster analysis of data. Fog Computing will emphasize on three types of patients and those would include the ones who are critically Injured or just generally hospitalized or the ones who might in future need occasional monitoring since they were discharged depending upon their current health status

A review on the heat and mass transfer phenomena in nanofluid coolants with special focus on automotive applications

Engineered suspensions of nanosized particles (nanofluids) are characterized by superior thermal properties. Due to the increasing need for ultrahigh performance cooling in many industries, nanofluids have been widely investigated as next-generation coolants. However, the multiscale nature of nanofluids implies nontrivial relations between their design characteristics and the resulting thermo-physical properties, which are far from being fully understood. This pronounced sensitivity is the main reason for some contradictory results among both experimental evidence and theoretical considerations presented in the literature. In this Review, the role of fundamental heat and mass transfer mechanisms governing thermo-physical properties of nanofluids is assessed, from both experimental and theoretical point of view. Starting from the characteristic nanoscale transport phenomena occurring at the particle-fluid interface, a comprehensive review of the influence of geometrical (particle shape, size and volume concentration), physical (temperature) and chemical (particle material, pH and surfactant concentration in the base fluid) parameters on the nanofluid properties was carried out. Particular focus was devoted to highlight the advantages of using nanofluids as coolants for automotive heat exchangers, and a number of design guidelines was suggested for balancing thermal conductivity and viscosity enhancement in nanofluids. This Review may contribute to a more rational design of the thermo-physical properties of particle suspensions, therefore easing the translation of nanofluid technology from small-scale research laboratories to large-scale industrial applications

Engineering Nanofluids for Heat Transfer Applications

Nanofluids (NFs) are nanotechnology-based colloidal dispersion prepared by dispersing nanoparticles (NPs) in conventional liquids, as the base liquid. These advanced fluids have displayed potential to enhance the performance of conventional heat transfer fluids. This work aims at providing an insight to the field of NFs by investigating in detail the fabrication and evaluation of physico-chemical, thermo-physical and heat transfer characteristics of NFs for practical heat transfer applications. However, in order to utilize NFs as heat transfer fluids in real applications there are some challenges to overcome. Therefore, our goal is not only to optimize the thermo-physical properties of NFs with the highest thermal conductivity (TC) and minimal impact of NPs on viscosity, but also on preparing NFs with good stability and the best heat transfer performance. In the first stage, detailed studies were carried out to engineer NFs with good stability and optimal thermo-physical properties. In this work we investigated the most important factors, and the dependence of thermo-physical properties of NFs, including NP composition and concentration, NF stability, surface modifiers, particle size (NP size and particle with micron size), NF preparation method (two-step vs one-step method) and base liquid was studied. We also demonstrated, for the first time, the role of crystal structure, exemplified by alpha- and beta- SiC particles, on thermo-physical properties of NFs. For these purposes several NFs were fabricated using different nanostructured materials and various base liquids by one-step and two-step methods. An optimization procedure was designed to keep a suitable control in order to reach the ultimate aim where several stages were involved to check the desired characteristics of each NF system. Among several NFs systems studied in the first stage evaluation, a particular NF system with 9 wt% concentration, engineered by dispersing SiC NPs with alpha- crystal structure in water/ethylene glycol as based liquid exhibited the optimal thermo-physical properties. This NF was the only case which could pass the all criteria involved in the optimization procedure by exhibiting good stability, TC enhancements of ~20% with only 14% increase in viscosity at 20 oC. Therefore, this engineered NF was considered for next phase evaluation, where heat transfer coefficient (HTC) tests were designed and carried out to evaluate the thermal transport property of the selected alpha- SiC NF. A HTC enhancement of 5.5% at equal pumping power, as realistic comparison criteria, was obtained indicating the capability of this kind of NFs to be used in industrial heat transfer applications. These findings are among the few studies in the literature where the heat transfer characteristics of the NFs were noticeable, reproducible and based on a realistic situation with capability of commercializing as effective heat transfer fluid.  QC 20140416Nanohe

Flowsheet Design and Layout Preparation of Coal Processing Plants

Layout of a Coal Preparation plant involves several equipments housed sequentially with the sole objective of producing a coal of certain desired quality. Design of such plant consists of three basic steps viz., development of a flowsheet, equipment selection and layout prepartion. This task is done very judiciously by a team of engineers after several permutations and combinations. For a coal of known washability characteristics, one can design several flowsheets but ultimately the type of flowsheet to be adopted is decided by capital cost and life of the plant operation. The present lecture material has been prepared purely from the academic point of view to bring awareness about the basic information(s) that one need to collect for the design of flowsheet and preparation of a layout. The steps that are to be adopted in designing of such plants, selection of equipments and its layout preparation are described in this lecture in detail. Hence the facts that are narrated in this topic are the information(s) collected from the literature to which the experiences of the author gained over the years in this field has been added

Recovery of Hematite from Banded Hematite Quartzite of Southern India by Magnetic Separation and Reverse Flotation

Recovery and grade are the two crucial performance parameters commonly used in mineral processing plant operations. These two parameters are interdependent. An increase in recovery would result in a decreased product grade and vice versa. The present study enumerates concentration efficiency (CE),which can be adopted exclusively for processing low-grade hematite ore by WHIMS—the reverse flotation route to produce a pellet grade concentrate. In this study, the ore’s amenability by wet high-intensity magnetic separation followed by the reverse flotation of a magnetic concentrate route is investigated on BHQ samples of the Sandur schist belt (Kumaraswamy hills), India, after its characterization by microscopic and XRD studies. Dodecyl amine acetate was used as a collector to float siliceous gangue while depressing hematite using the freshly synthesized caustic starch as a depressant. The separation efficiency of the flotation was evaluated by estimating the grade, recovery, and concentration efficiency. The WHIMS conducted using the feed with the particle size minus 106 µm (d80 = 82 µm) followed by reverse flotation produced a pellet grade concentrate assaying 64.60% Fe, a 0.32 alumina-to-silica ratio with 60.4% Fe recovery, and a yield of 37.4% with 79.0% concentration separation efficiency

Detection of scoliosis in human spine using Cobb angle

BACKGROUND: The human backbone is the central support structure of the body. It connects different parts of the body. The spine helps in doing various daily activities such as sitting, walking, standing, and bending. Any impairment in the spine causes spinal disease. Scoliosis is an abnormality in the spinal curve. It consists of a lateral curve. The severity of scoliosis is based on the curvature of the spine, which is calculated based on end plates. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: Scoliosis is measured using the Cobb angle. The most challenging task is to automate the calculation of scoliosis, considering X-rays of the spine as the input image. Once the end plates are detected, the calculation of the Cobb angle becomes easy, and the calculation can be automated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The proposed method considers X-ray images of the spine. X-ray images of patients who are defective with scoliosis are used to calculate the Cobb angle using the computerized method. The X-ray images of patients include the Cobb angle ranging with different degrees. Here, the Cobb angle with a degree up to 10 is considered normal and above 10° is considered not normal/affected with scoliosis. In the computerized method, Python 3.7.4 software is used for quantifying the Cobb angle of scoliosis. The main objective of finding the Cobb angle using the computerized method is to reduce human intervention while calculating the Cobb angle. Before the processing begins, the most tilted extreme and inferior vertebrae were taken for cropping the region of interest. As X-ray images are prone to noise, a median filter has been used for image smoothing. For the given X-ray to determine horizontal edge detection, a Gaussian derivative with the suitable thresholding and edge extraction structure has been used. The horizontal edge detection method is considered more suitable compared to vertical detection for detecting end plates of the spinal curve in the case of scoliosis and Cobb angle detection. After horizontal edge detection, the Hough transform is used for the detection of vertebrae slopes. After calculating the slopes of vertebrae, the Cobb angle of scoliosis has been calculated. RESULTS: The proposed Hough transform method increases the efficiency of the existing system accuracy from 75%–80% to 80%–85% by making the Cobb angle calculation automated, thereby reducing manual intervention. Further, depending on the severity of the curvature of the spine in detecting scoliosis, treatment may be suggested to the patients. CONCLUSION: The proposed method is used to calculate the Cobb angle using the image processing technique. The X-ray images of the human spine are taken as input images. By cropping the region of interest in the spinal image from end vertebral plates, the Cobb angle is calculated with minimal human intervention. By adjusting the parameters of the above-mentioned technique, more accurate results are obtained. This technique helps in diagnosis and treatment of scoliosis by evaluation of automated Cobb angle

Thermal performance of screen mesh heat pipe with Al2O3 nanofluid

This study presents the effect of Al2O3 nanofluid (NF) on thermal performance of screen mesh heat pipe in cooling applications. Three cylindrical copper heat pipes of 200 mm length and 6.35 mm outer diameter containing two layers of screen mesh were fabricated and tested with distilled water and water based Al2O3 NF with mass concentrations of 5% and 10% as working fluids. To study the effect of NF on the heat pipes thermal performance, the heat input is increased and then decreased consecutively and the heat pipes surface temperatures are measured at steady state conditions. Results show that using 5 wt.% of Al2O3 NF improves the thermal performance of the heat pipe for increasing and decreasing heat fluxes compared with distilled water, while utilizing 10 wt.% of Al2O3 NF deteriorates the heat pipe thermal performance. For heat pipe with 5 wt.% Al2O3 NF the reduction in thermal resistance of the heat pipe is found to be between 6% and 24% for increasing and between 20% and 55% for decreasing heat fluxes, while the thermal resistance increased between 187% and 206% for increasing and between 155% and 175% for decreasing steps in heat pipe with 10 wt.% of Al2O3 NF.Qc 20150507</p