Modelling of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extraction of Oil from Oilseeds

This study is aimed to learn the underlying behaviour of the Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (C02) Extraction on the oilseeds or any solid without chemical reaction. CFD model will be developed to better understand the mass transfer phenomenon and complex flow field around a single particle in porous medium. Wide range of species has been explored such as wheat germ, oats, tomato, grape seed and soybean. Despite the relatively large number of species processed, only some models of the SFE of oil seed have been published. CFD numerically solves the Navier-Stokes equations and the energy and species balances. Some important variables in extraction process such as solvents flow rate and solid particle length will be modeled. Volume of Fluid (VOF) method will be used to predict the mentioned fields in a 2D geometry. This project focus is to model the the concentration profile of oil under Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extraction condition via CFD. In the end, it will predict extract yields as a function of flow rate and particle diameter. Thus, determine the most optimum operating conditions and improve the efficiency of the extraction process. Experimental result referred is to validate the proposed model

IOT-based solution towards real-time monitoring system for high jump spot

In high jump sport, approach speed is one (1) of the important parameters to maintain the speed as well as to gain good momentum at the ankle during the take-off. The good approach speed can prevent injury at the ankle for the athlete. Today, high jump athletes still use high-speed camera to guide them in training by capturing all of the athletes’ movements. This is because, there is no wearable device that can monitor the athlete performance during the training in real-time. Thus, the aim of this study is to develop a wearable Internet of things (IoTs) device that measures the speed during the approach speed and force during the take-off to help athletes to improve the performances and prevent injury at the ankle during take-off. This IoT device has implemented real-time monitoring systems (RtMS) that used IoTs as a connectivity which includes input, process and output. The input consists of global positioning system (GPS) sensor attached to the waist and force sensors placed at the bottom of the ankle as a wireless input for data capturing. These data is then being processed by microcontroller units (MCUs) with an embedded Wi-Fi module on the same chip that has been programmed and the results obtained are displayed on the mobile application (app). Other than that, there is a vibrator motor placed near the GPS sensor which acts as an actuator output that will vibrate according to the speed setting of the athletes. Apart from that, the latency and throughput of the two (2) different MCUs were also measured and compared to investigate the network transmission issues during the sport event. The ESP8266 MCU has been selected as the result shows that it has high throughput, low latency and small in terms of size compared to Arduino Yun Mini MCU. This system shows a significant result when intermediate athletes tested the devices with and without using the alarm system. Hence, it is shown that the implementation of wearable devices that monitored speed and force parameter helps to improve the performance of the athlete by following professional benchmark data

Modelling of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extraction of Oil from Oilseeds

This study is aimed to learn the underlying behaviour of the Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (C02) Extraction on the oilseeds or any solid without chemical reaction. CFD model will be developed to better understand the mass transfer phenomenon and complex flow field around a single particle in porous medium. Wide range of species has been explored such as wheat germ, oats, tomato, grape seed and soybean. Despite the relatively large number of species processed, only some models of the SFE of oil seed have been published. CFD numerically solves the Navier-Stokes equations and the energy and species balances. Some important variables in extraction process such as solvents flow rate and solid particle length will be modeled. Volume of Fluid (VOF) method will be used to predict the mentioned fields in a 2D geometry. This project focus is to model the the concentration profile of oil under Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extraction condition via CFD. In the end, it will predict extract yields as a function of flow rate and particle diameter. Thus, determine the most optimum operating conditions and improve the efficiency of the extraction process. Experimental result referred is to validate the proposed model

Real-Time High Jump Wearable Device with ESP8266 for High-Performance and Low-Injury

In the world of sports, the injury is unavoidable, however, the performance is the first priority. The percentage of the athletes to get injured is very high due to the fallibility of athlete jumping themselves. Therefore, this study presents the design and implementation of high-performance and low-injury real-time high jump wearable device by using ESP8266 microcontroller. The proposed wearable device is built because of there is no device to monitor this sport during training. There are three (3) parts have been integrated to build this wearable device – input, process and output. The input consists of global positioning system (GPS) sensor that attached to the waist and force sensing resistor (FSR) sensor was placed at the bottom of the ankle as a wireless input for data captured. These data were then being processed by ESP8266 microcontroller hardware device with an embedded wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) module on the same chip that has been programmed and results obtained were displayed via the mobile app. Graphical user interface (GUI) of the wearable device has been designed using C language code using OpenHAB software and data from the wearable device were also available in log formats. The outcomes obtained have shown encouraging results since all data can be visualised and monitored in real-time, history of the training can be retrieved and the benchmark data acts as a guide to the other athlete to improve the performance

Design and Implementation of Computing-based Air Conditioner (AC) (ComBAC) – A Preliminary Work

Computing-based air conditioner (ComBAC) highlights the concept of spot cooling that helps to reduce energy consumption without sacrificing consumer comfortability, while the conventional air conditioner (AC) cooling down the entire space regardless of occupancy. In this study, National Instruments (NI) myRIO has been explored as a hardware solution, and the advantage of graphical-based programming in LabVIEW has been fully used to design the graphical user interface (GUI) as well as for data acquisition programming. For the input, web camera C170 is used to detect the presence of human/object in a room, while the value of current is being measured using current sensor and later being analysed by NI myRIO to exhibit the energy consumed of an AC. NI myRIO also acts to control the AC, to divert the air flow according to the spot cooling concept and visualisation of energy consumed available via liquid crystal display (LCD). To evaluate the proposed system, ComBAC has been prototyped into a wallmounted AC unit with 2.5 meter height within a 3 3 square meter room floor area. An evaluation for objects/humans detection and dynamic tracking mechanism has been conducted and results obtained shown promising results. The proposed system has successfully captured the presence of object/human in a room, analyse the data and finally portray the value of energy consumption of the AC

Drying performance of piper nigrum in a swirling fluidized bed dryer: An experimental study

Sun drying is widely used in drying agricultural products such as piper nigrum because of its ability to dry a high volume in one batch. However, this conventional method of drying has many disadvantages, especially on the hygienic issue. This study investigates the drying performance of piper nigrum by using conventional sun drying and a new dryer called Swirling Fluidized Bed Dryer. Swirling fluidized bed dryer is operated using two inclination angles of air distributors, namely 45°, 67° and one perforated plate distributor. The drying performance is accessed in terms of drying time and moisture content reduction at three different operating temperatures. The results show that the drying time of piper nigrum using a swirling fluidized bed dryer is reduced as compared to conventional sun drying. Besides, the drying performance between different distributors in swirling fluidized bed shows that the moisture content reduction of piper nigrum using 45° angle of air distributor shows the most reduction compared to 67° angle distributor and followed by the perforated distributor. In conclusion, results show that the drying of piper nigrum in a swirling fluidized bed operated with 45° inclination angle of the distributor at high operating temperature gives the best performance

Internet of Things (IoT)-based Solution for Real-time Monitoring System in High Jump Sport

Samsung, Fitbit and Sony are advanced companies that have produced various wearable devices for years especially for sports technology for the needs of athletes. The high-tech developments within the Internet of things (IoTs) also have given athletes and coaches a smart way to develop the way the athlete training and play that give us economic benefit. However, recent year the high jump sport monitoring system still used high-speed camera which is non-economical to the athlete and coaches. Besides, the camera itself need technical expertise to setup the devices and the results is hard to understand and not in real-time. Therefore, the aims of this paper is to develop IoT-based solution for real-time monitoring system in high jump sport. Hence, the OpenHAB mobile application (app) was created to communicate between wearable device and server. This mobile app helps athlete to monitor their performances in the smartphone through IoT-based solution rather than using costly gears similar to high-speed camera. The outcomes achieved have revealed promising results since all data can be visualised and monitored in real-time, history of the training can be retrieved via the logs files and the benchmark data acts as a guide to the intermediate athlete to improve the performance

Wearable Devices Components for High Jump Sport: An Overview

Wearable devices like FitBit, Garmin and Amazfit smartwatch have become popular in recent years. Athlete like swimmers and runners mostly use smartwatch to track speed of the swim or run using embedded global positioning system (GPS) sensor in the wearable devices. Unfortunately, high jump sports still on the old style in tracking the movement of the jump by using vision system. Thus, this paper presents an overview on related work, existing methods and developments on the area of wearable sensor for high jump sports. The analysis of high jump sports related works in terms of main injury and parameters to prevent the injury are being analysed. The used of biosensors in recent wearable devices has been also reviewed in term of the types and issues of sensor that need to implements in the wearable device. Other than that, the processing methods that contains Internet of Thing (IoT) gateway device, network transmission and real-time monitoring system (RtMS) are proposed to develop a complete wearable device. Finally, the main injury parameters of the high jump sports and sensors related to the parameter has been reviewed and an overall idea of processing method RtMS has been summarised

Throughput, latency and cost comparisons of microcontroller-based implementations of wireless sensor network (WSN) in high jump sports

In high jump sports, approach take-off speed and force during the take-off are two (2) main important parts to gain maximum jump. To measure both parameters, wireless sensor network (WSN) that contains microcontroller and sensor are needed to describe the results of speed and force for jumpers. Most of the microcontroller exhibit transmission issues in terms of throughput, latency and cost. Thus, this study presents the comparison of wireless microcontrollers in terms of throughput, latency and cost, and the microcontroller that have best performances and cost will be implemented in high jump wearable device. In the experiments, three (3) parts have been integrated-input, process and output. Force (for ankle) and global positioning system (GPS) sensor (for body waist) acts as an input for data transmission. These data were then being processed by both microcontrollers, ESP8266 and Arduino Yun Mini to transmit the data from sensors to the server (host-PC) via message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol. The server acts as receiver and the results was calculated from the MQTT log files. At the end, results obtained have shown ESP8266 microcontroller had been chosen since it achieved high throughput, low latency and 11 times cheaper in term of prices compared to Arduino Yun Mini microcontroller.The authors would like to thanks to Postgraduate Research Grant Scheme (GPPS) UTHM for funding this research work and Institut Sukan Negara (ISN) for their support.Scopu

A DFT study on an alkali atom doped decahedral silver nanocluster for potential application in opto-electronics and catalysis

A systematic study of the structural, electronic and optical properties of the decahedral bimetallic Ag12X cluster is presented in the framework of density functional theory (DFT), where one atom of an alkali metal (X = Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Fr) is added, replacing a Ag atom in the decahedral Ag-13 cluster in core (c-doped), vertex (v-doped) and surface (s-doped) positions. Geometrical optimization of the clusters indicated that Li and Na doped clusters exhibited the highest stability. The binding energy (BE), vertical ionization potential (VIP), vertical electron affinity (VEA) and HOMO-LUMO gaps were calculated to compare the electronic stability and chemical inertness of the doped clusters. In addition, the VIP and VEA values of the doped clusters revealed that the doped clusters exhibited more electronic and chemical reactivity than the undoped Ag-13. Through optical spectra analysis, it is revealed that Ag12Na and Ag12Li clusters exhibited higher oscillation strength, whilst the s-doped Ag12Li exhibited 3 times higher oscillation strength with respect to undoped Ag-13. In addition, a partial density of states (PDOS) calculation indicated that the red or blue shifting of the d-electrons are potentially responsible for this red and blue shifting of the optical peaks of the doped Ag12X clusters. Finally, these Ag12X clusters have promising electronic and optical properties; in particular, the Ag12Li dimer is a highly stable cluster with excellent optical absorption spectra. Thus, a neutral Ag12Li cluster might find good application in opto-electronics and its anion might be highly reactive and thus, can be a very good potential candidate for catalysis