Use of corn fractionation techniques in dry grind process increases the number of coproducts, enhances their quality and value, generates feedstock for cellulosic ethanol production and potentially increases profitability of the dry grind process. The aim of this study is to develop process simulation models for eight different wet and dry corn fractionation techniques recovering germ, pericarp fiber and/or endosperm fiber, and evaluate their techno-economic feasibility at the commercial scale. Ethanol yields for plants processing 1113.11 MT corn/day were 37.2 to 40 million gal for wet fractionation and 37.3 to 31.3 million gal for dry fractionation, compared to 40.2 million gal for conventional dry grind process. Capital costs were higher for wet fractionation processes ($92.85 to $97.38 million) in comparison to conventional ($83.95 million) and dry fractionation ($83.35 to $84.91 million) processes. Due to high value of coproducts, ethanol production costs in most fractionation processes ($1.29 to $1.35/gal) were lower than conventional ($1.36/gal) process. Internal rate of return for most of the wet (6.88 to 8.58%) and dry fractionation (6.45 to 7.04%) processes was higher than the conventional (6.39%) process. Wet fractionation process designed for germ and pericarp fiber recovery was most profitable among the processes. Full article

Many pharmaceutical molecules, fine chemicals, and proteins exhibit liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS, also known as oiling out) during solution crystallization. LLPS is of significant concern in crystallization process development, as oiling out can compromise the effectiveness of a crystallization and can lead to operational problems. A comprehensive methodology that allows a process scientist/engineer to characterize the various phase boundaries relevant to oiling out is currently lacking. In this work, we present a modeling framework useful in predicting the binodal, spinodal, and gelation boundaries starting from the solubility data of a solute that is prone to oiling out. We collate the necessary theoretical concepts from the literature and describe a unified approach to model the phase equilibria of solute–solvent systems from first principles. The modeling effort is validated using experimental data reported in the literature for various solute–solvent systems. The predictive methods presented in this work can be easily implemented and help a process engineer establish the design space for a crystallization process that is affected by liquid–liquid phase separation. Full article

The current study investigates the effect of hydrothermal pretreatment (HTP) on acidification of source-separated organics (SSO) in terms of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) production and solubilization. Temperature and retention time for HTP of SSO ranged from 150 to 240 °C and 5 to 30 min, respectively. The soluble substance after hydrothermal pretreatment initially increased, reaching its peak at 210 °C and then declined gradually. The highest overall chemical oxygen demand (COD) solubilization of 63% was observed at “210 °C-20 min” compared to 17% for raw SSO. The highest VFAs yield of 1536 mg VFAs/g VSS added was observed at “210 °C-20 min” compared to 768 mg VFAs/g VSS for raw SSO. Intensification of hydrothermal pretreatment temperature beyond 210 °C resulted in the mineralization of the organics and adversely affected the process. Full article

In Pakistan, the utilization of renewable energy sources is increasing in order to reduce the electricity supply and demand gap. However, concentrated solar power (CSP) generation has not been considered in the country even though it has gained considerable attention worldwide. This study, as such, investigates the potential, performance, and economic analyses of four CSP technologies for different locations in Pakistan. Initially, an assessment of CSP sites, including solar resource, land, and water availability, was undertaken. Then, performance simulations of CSP technologies for four different locations of Pakistan, namely Quetta, Hyderabad, Multan, and Peshawar, were examined. For all cases, highest energy production was achieved in summers and lowest in winters, and CSP plants with evaporative cooling were found to be efficient compared to air cooling. The results also revealed that the Quetta and Hyderabad regions were promising for CSP development while parabolic tough (PT) and solar power tower (SPT) were the suitable CSP technologies for these regions. Specifically, the SPT plant with air cooling could be a favorable option for energy production in Quetta. Lastly, economic analyses revealed the financial feasibility of CSP plants in Pakistan since the levelized cost of energy is found to be significantly low. Full article

Coating metals with anti-coking materials inhibit their catalytic coking and are especially beneficial in the pyrolysis of hydrocarbon fuels. It is believed that growth characteristics and properties may play a pivotal role in the anti-coking performance of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coatings. In this study, TiN and TiO₂ coatings were obtained by CVD using TiCl₄–N₂–H₂ and TiCl₄–H₂–CO₂ systems, respectively. The effects of deposition time, residence time, and partial pressure were examined, and the coating microstructure was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results reveal that the effect of deposition parameters on the growth characteristics of TiN and TiO₂ coatings is very different. The growth of the TiN coating shows characteristics of the island growth model, while the TiO₂ coating follows the layer model. In general, the growth rate of the star-shaped TiN crystals is higher than that of crystals of other shapes. For the TiO₂ coating, the layer mode growth characteristics indicate that the morphology of the TiO₂ coating does not change significantly with the experimental conditions. Coking tests showed that the morphology of non-catalytic cokes is not only affected by the temperature, pressure, and coking precursor, but is also closely related to the surface state of the coatings. Both TiN and TiO₂ coatings can effectively prevent catalytic coking and eliminate filamentous cokes. In some cases, however, the N or O atoms in the TiN and TiO₂ coatings may affect common carbon deposits formed by non-catalytic coking, such as formation of needle-like and flaky carbon deposits. Full article

As enterprises pay more and more attention to environmental issues, the green supply chain management (GSCM) mode has been extensively utilized to guarantee profit and sustainable development. Green supplier selection (GSS), which is a key segment of GSCM, has been investigated to put forward plenty of GSS approaches. At present, enterprises prefer to construct the large-scale teams of decision makers to obtain the more reasonable ranking results during GSS process. However, the existing methods pay little attention to the large-scale GSS procedure. To investigate the GSS issue with a large-scale group of decision makers, a new GSS approach under a q-rung interval-valued orthopair fuzzy environment is developed. The q-rung interval-valued orthopair fuzzy numbers are introduced to describe the evaluation information of green suppliers. Combined with a clustering approach and several clustering principles, the large-scale decision makers are divided into several subgroups. Next, the similarity measures between the evaluation matrices are computed to determine the weights of subgroups, and the collective evaluation information can be obtained using the q-rung interval-valued orthopair fuzzy aggregation operator. According to the weighted entropy measure, the weights of criteria are calculated; then, the q-rung interval-valued orthopair fuzzy multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis plus the full multiplicative form (q-RIVOF-MULTIMOORA) method is constructed to determine the best green supplier. At last, a practical GSS example is applied to show the feasibility of the proposed approach, and the sensitivity and comparative analyses indicate that for the large-scale GSS issues, the proposed approach can obtain the more robust and reasonable ranking results. Full article

Eutrophication is an inevitable phenomenon, and it has recently become an unabated threat. As a positive, the thriving microalgal biomass in eutrophic water is conventionally perceived to be loaded with myriad valuable biochemical compounds. Therefore, a sugarcane-bagasse-based adsorbent was proposed in this study to harvest the microalgal biomass for producing biodiesel. By activating the sugarcane-bagasse-based adsorbent with 1.5 M of H₂SO₄, a highest adsorption capacity of 108.9 ± 0.3 mg/g was attained. This was fundamentally due to the surface potential of the 1.5 M H₂SO₄ acid-modified sugarcane-bagasse-based adsorbent possessing the lowest surface positivity value as calculated from its point of zero charge. The adsorption capacity was then improved to 192.9 ± 0.1 mg/g by stepwise optimizing the adsorbent size to 6.7–8.0 mm, adsorption medium pH to 2–4, and adsorbent dosage to 0.4 g per 100 mL of adsorption medium. This resulted in 91.5% microalgae removal efficiency. Excellent-quality biodiesel was also obtained as reflected by the fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) profile, showing the dominant species of C16–C18 encompassing 71% of the overall FAMEs. The sustainability of harvesting microalgal biomass via an adsorption-enhanced flocculation processes was also evidenced by the potentiality to reuse the spent acid-modified adsorbent. Full article

The diffusion coefficient of gases in coal varies with time. This study aims to develop an unsteady dynamic diffusion (UDD) model based on the decay of diffusion coefficient with time and the change of integral. This study conducted a series of gas desorption and diffusion experiments with three different combinations of particle sizes and gas pressures and compared the diffusion coefficients of the three models. The UDD model exhibited good fitting results, and both the UDD and bidisperse models fitted the experimental data better than the unipore model. In addition, the dynamic diffusion coefficient (D_De) decreased rapidly in the initial stage but gradually decreased to a stable level in the later stage. All the effective diffusion coefficients of the three models negatively correlated with the particle size. In the unipore model, the diffusion coefficient of coal samples with three particle sizes increased with gas pressure. In the bidisperse and UDD models, the diffusion coefficients (D_ae, D_ie, and D_De) of 0.25–0.5 mm and 0.5–1.0 mm coal samples increased with gas pressure. However, D_De and D_ae of 1.0–1.25 mm coal samples increased first and then decreased. Furthermore, D_ie decreased first and then increased, with no sign of significant pressure dependence. Finally, the correlation and significance between the constant and diffusion coefficient in the UDD model was investigated. Full article

By integrating gas, electricity, and cooling and heat networks, multi-energy system (MES) breaks the bondage of isolated planning and operation of independent energy systems. Appropriate scheduling of MES is critical to the operational economy, and it is essential to design scheduling strategies to achieve maximum economic benefits. In addition to the emergence of energy conversion systems, the other main novelty of MES is the multivariate of load, which offers a great optimization potential by changing load replaceability (flexibly adjusting the composition of loads). In this paper, by designing load replaceability index (LRI) of composite load in MES, its interaction mechanism with scheduling optimum is systematically analyzed. Through case studies, it is proven that the optimum can be improved by elevating load replaceability. Full article

Pipeline end termination (PLET) installation is an essential part of offshore pipe-laying operation. Pipe-laying operations are sensitive to pipe-laying barge motion and marine environmental conditions. Monitoring the field environment can provide a reasonable basis for planning pipe-laying. Therefore, the measurement and analysis of sea wave motion is helpful for the control and operational safety of the pipeline and vessels. In this study, an environmental monitoring system was established to measure wave motion during PLET operation. Fourier transforms were used to process images that were acquired by ultra-high-frequency X-band marine radar to extract wave parameters. The resulting wave spectra, as measured each minute, were used to simulate real-time wave data and calculate wave characteristics and regressed wave frequency and direction spectrum throughout the PLET operation. The regressed frequency, spectral density, and direction spectra were compared with the theoretical spectra to evaluate their similarity and find the most similar spreading function in the operational area (the South China Sea). Gaussian fitting of real-time wave data was tested while using a classical method. The marginal distribution and joint density of the wave characteristics were estimated and then compared with theoretical distributions to find the most suitable model for improving marine environmental forecasting. Full article

It is significant to analyze the blend homogeneity of cohesive powders during pharmaceutical manufacturing in order to provide the exact content of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for each individual dose unit. In this paper, an online monitoring platform using an MEMS near infrared (NIR) sensor was designed to control the bin blending process of cohesive powders. The state of blend homogeneity was detected by an adaptive algorithm, which was calibration free. The online control procedures and algorithm’s parameters were fine-tuned through six pilot experiments and were successfully transferred to the industrial production. The reliability of homogeneity detection results was validated by 16 commercial scale experiments using 16 kinds of natural product powders (NPPs), respectively. Furthermore, 19 physical quality attributes of all NPPs and the excipient were fully characterized. The blending end time was used to denote the degree of difficulty of blending. The empirical relationships between variability of NPPs and the blending end time were captured by latent variable modeling. The critical material attributes (CMAs) affecting the blending process were identified as the particle shape and flowability descriptors of cohesive powders. Under the framework of quality by design (QbD) and process analytical technology (PAT), the online NIR spectroscopy together with the powder characterization facilitated a deeper understanding of the mixing process. Full article

The ecological efficiency (EE) of the remanufacturing process occupies an important position in the whole index system of remanufacturing because it will directly affect the economic and environmental benefits of remanufacturing. Therefore, in order to study the EE of the remanufacturing process, a method is proposed to optimize and evaluate the EE of the remanufacturing process. In this method, firstly, the original remanufacturing sub-schemes of used components are designed according to the extracted fault characteristics; secondly, a set of optional process schemes are integrated by using directed graph (DG) to reduce the process schemes; thirdly, the objective function of EE is established, and then an ant colony algorithm with elite strategy (ES-ACO) is proposed to optimize the process schemes. After obtaining the optimal value of EE, the quality coefficient of used components can be calculated, and then numerical simulations (NS) are used to analyze the correlation between the quality coefficient and the optimized EE, after that, polynomial function fitting (PFF) is applied to construct the evaluation model of EE oriented to the quality coefficient, then, the evaluation model is utilized to analyze the range of quality coefficient of used components suitable for remanufacturing under cost constraints. Finally, the feasibility of this method is verified by the example of the used lathe spindle remanufacturing; and the case study shows that in the optimization phase, ES-ACO can not only optimize the process schemes but also has better performance than ACO; in the evaluation stage, the probability of deviation of the evaluation function established by using PFF is 5%, meeting the small probability event. (i.e., the occurrence of very low-frequency events), that is, the accuracy of the evaluation meets the requirements. Full article

Given that the equipment for the semiconductor packaging line adopts the fixed grouping production method, thus failing to dynamically match the processing task demand capacity, in the present study, we proposed a semiconductor bonding equipment-grouping method based on processing task matching. This method sets the device group closed position constraint and the matching constraint between the device type and the processing type and uses the graph theory method to establish the device grouping model. The dynamic grouping of equipment under the capacity demand of different processing tasks was achieved by changing the relationship matrix between devices. The drawback of this grouping method is rather large grouping deviation, which we tried to solve with the clustering by fast search and find of density peaks (CFSFDP) that was added to cluster the sets of attribute information of the devices so as to obtain the maximum number of grouping groups obtained to reduce the grouping deviation. Simulation comparison experiments were carried out under different circumstances considering the size of the formation, the distribution of demand capacity, and the coefficient of difference in demand capacity. Compared with the standard device grouping method, the grouping method based on semiconductor bonding equipment and CFSFDP algorithm for dynamic matching according to processing tasks had better performance in solving the dynamic grouping problem. Full article

The result of an adsorption experiment indicated that the pure magadiite (MAG) and the modified MAG via cetyltrimethylammonium-bromide (CTAB-MAG) possessed pronounced affinity to the Rhodamine-B (Rh-B) dye molecules. CTAB-MAG was synthesized with an ion-exchange method between MAG and cetyltrimethylammonium-bromide (CTAB) in an aqueous solution. The adsorption capacities of CTAB-MAG and MAG on Rh-B were 67.19 mg/g and 48.13 mg/g, respectively; while the pH and the time were 7 and 60 min, respectively; however, the initial concentration of Rh-B was 100 mg/L, and adsorbent dosage was 1 g/L. Whereas, the adsorption capacity of CTAB-MAG was increased by 40% over MAG which indicated that CTAB-MAG can be used as an efficient low-cost adsorbent. Adsorption kinetics were consistent with the pseudo-second-order kinetic equation; the adsorption processes were dominated by film diffusion process which belonged to monomolecular layer adsorption. Full article

Spray cooling with liquid nitrogen is increasingly utilized as an efficient approach to achieve cryogenic cooling. Effects of injection mass flow rate fluctuations on the evaporation, temperature distribution, and droplet distribution of a spray field were examined by employing a validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical model. The numerical results indicated that injection fluctuations enhanced the volume-averaging turbulent kinetic energy and promoted the evaporation of the whole spray field. The strengthened mass and heat transfer between the liquid nitrogen droplets and the surrounding vapor created by the fluctuating injection led to a lower temperature of the whole volume. A relatively smaller droplet size and a more inhomogeneous droplet distribution were obtained under the unsteady inlet. The changes of the frequency and the amplitude of the fluctuations had little effects on the overall spray development. The results could enrich the knowledge of the relation between the inevitable fluctuations and the overall spray development and the cooling performance in a practical spray cooling system with cryogenic fluids. Full article