Advanced Production Techniques Research Articles

Impact of Different Technology Interventions on Agronomical Traits of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

The study conducted over three consecutive Rabi seasons (2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23) in the Lalburra block of Balaghat sought to promote advanced chickpea production techniques among farmers. A total of 15 demonstrations spanning 6.0 hectares showcased the benefits of adopting improved agricultural practices. This included the use of the high-yielding chickpea variety JG-16, soil test-based nutrient management, and targeted pest and disease control measures. Over the past three years, the demonstration plots achieved an average yield of 11.98 q ha⁻¹, while traditional farming methods produced only 8.01 q ha⁻¹. This leads to a remarkable yield enhancement of 47.48%. Additionally, the study recorded an average technology gap of 6.07 q ha-1, an extension gap of 3.86 q ha-1, and a technology index of 33.36%. The study underscores the effectiveness of advanced chickpea production techniques, increased yield while highlighting the need to bridge technology and extension gaps for enhanced productivity in the Lalburra block.

Adoption level of advanced cocoon production techniques in Aizawl, district of Mizoram

Adoption level of advanced cocoon production techniques in Aizawl, district of Mizoram

Copolymers and Blends Based on 3-Hydroxybutyrate and 3-Hydroxyvalerate Units.

This review presents a comprehensive update of the biopolymer poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), emphasizing its production, properties, and applications. The overall biosynthesis pathway of PHBV is explored in detail, highlighting recent advances in production techniques. The inherent physicochemical properties of PHBV, along with its degradation behavior, are discussed in detail. This review also explores various blends and composites of PHBV, demonstrating their potential for a range of applications. Finally, the versatility of PHBV-based materials in multiple sectors is examined, emphasizing their increasing importance in the field of biodegradable polymers.

Driving Growth and Innovation: Exploring Foreign Direct Investment in the Manufacturing Sector (The Case of Lithuania)

Recent geo-economic transformations have led to new challenges for countries in their economic development. The evolving global landscape has emphasized regional competitiveness and attractiveness in terms of capital, labor force, and information. Scholars widely agree that countries receiving foreign direct investment (FDI) gain new knowledge, management skills, and advanced production techniques, leading to increased competitiveness and economic growth (Bayar, et. al., 2020). Changing conditions have also influenced investors’ behavior. Globalization and digitalization have shaped international economic relations, focusing not only on resource acquisition, but also on leveraging human capital, knowledge, institutional structures, and networking for firm efficiency. This shift is reflected in changing investors’ preferences: the importance of natural resources, cheap labor, and the size of the national market has decreased, with greater attention given to service- and technology intensive manufacturing markets (Sadeghi, et. al., 2020).
 The aim of this study is to identify the factors that determine the attraction of foreign direct investment in the Lithuanian manufacturing sector and assess their impact. To accomplish this objective, several main tasks were formulated:
 1) Highlight the necessity for assessing FDI attraction in the manufacturing sector.
 2) Identify the factors that influence the attraction of foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector.
 3) Provide empirical evidence of the impact of these factors.
 
 The article is structured as follows: Firstly, a review of the scientific literature was conducted to address the research problem, which is the lack of literature on foreign direct investment at the sectoral level. Based on this literature analysis, the factors influencing investment attractiveness at the regional and sectoral levels were identified and compared. Additionally, the factors that determine the attractiveness of the manufacturing sector for investment were also identified. 
 In the second part of the study, a research methodology was developed to assess the impact of these factors on foreign direct investment in the Lithuanian manufacturing sector. The results of the third part of the study indicated that although the Granger causality test did not reveal any causal relationship between FDI in Lithuanian manufacturing and variables such as exports, imports, gross domestic product, the number of educated individuals, government gross debt, government R&D expenditure in manufacturing, the number of FDI enterprises in manufacturing, the wage index, and labor productivity, the correlation analysis demonstrated that exports, gross domestic product, and labor productivity have a significant influence on attracting FDI to the industrial sector. These macroeconomic indicators were statistically significant both in the short term and in the long run.
 Empirical findings indicated that labor productivity has the greatest impact on the attractiveness of foreign direct investment in the Lithuanian manufacturing sector, both in the short and long term. To maintain the viability and promote the development of the manufacturing industry, Lithuania should focus on the factors that affect labor productivity in this sector.
 Keywords: investment attractiveness, foreign direct investment, manufacturing sector, sectoral determinants of investment.

Bioturbation changing porosity, permeability, and fracturability in chalk? Insights from an Upper Cretaceous chalk reservoir (Buda Formation, Texas, USA)

The continuous rise in hydrocarbon demand, the production decline in conventional oilfields, and the remarkable improvement in extraction methods have allowed the hydrocarbon industry and subsequently, geoscientists, to turn to studies on both unconventional and mature fields with untapped potential. In such reservoirs, the application of advanced drilling, completion, and production techniques must be preceded by the identification of permeable stratigraphic intervals that favour commercial exploitation. Accordingly, bioturbated deposits can play a key role in providing permeable pathways for enhanced production. Herein, we analyse the effects of bioturbation on the porosity and permeability of the Buda Formation, a highly bioturbated, tight (low-porosity matrix) Upper Cretaceous chalk reservoir from the Texas Gulf Coast Basin, which has been commercially exploited because of the occurrence of natural fractures. Our results show that (in addition to the natural fractures) burrows (and borings) substantially increased the porosity and permeability of this formation, thus, potentially contributing to enhanced hydrocarbon (or groundwater) storage and production. These biogenic structures might also have favoured the development of natural fractures and stylolites in the Buda Formation. However, further studies are required to prove this hypothesis.

Microfluidic Fabrication of Natural Polymer-Based Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering Applications: A Review

Natural polymers, thanks to their intrinsic biocompatibility and biomimicry, have been largely investigated as scaffold materials for tissue engineering applications. Traditional scaffold fabrication methods present several limitations, such as the use of organic solvents, the obtainment of a non-homogeneous structure, the variability in pore size and the lack of pore interconnectivity. These drawbacks can be overcome using innovative and more advanced production techniques based on the use of microfluidic platforms. Droplet microfluidics and microfluidic spinning techniques have recently found applications in the field of tissue engineering to produce microparticles and microfibers that can be used as scaffolds or as building blocks for three-dimensional structures. Compared to standard fabrication technologies, microfluidics-based ones offer several advantages, such as the possibility of obtaining particles and fibers with uniform dimensions. Thus, scaffolds with extremely precise geometry, pore distribution, pore interconnectivity and a uniform pores size can be obtained. Microfluidics can also represent a cheaper manufacturing technique. In this review, the microfluidic fabrication of microparticles, microfibers and three-dimensional scaffolds based on natural polymers will be illustrated. An overview of their applications in different tissue engineering fields will also be provided.

An overview of recent trends and challenges of post treatments on magnesium alloys

The rise in manufacturing and operating expenses in the oil and gas sector, especially in the impact of corrosive environments and wear influences, has triggered technologists to concentrate more on effectual surface modification strategies on the machines and equipment being produced in recent days. Magnesium alloys are attractive metals in the lightweight materials group due to their lower density and higher specific strength. Even though the corrosion and tribological performance of magnesium alloys are not satisfactory and surface modification techniques are adopted with various coating methods such as electroplating, thermal spray, arc spray, and plasma spray methods to overcome these limitations. Recently, post-spraying technologies have been extensively used to enhance the whole performance of coatings, particularly those developed through the electro deposition, plasma spraying technique, high-velocity oxygen fuel spraying, PVD coatings, electro plating, laser cladding, anodizing, metal cladding, and friction stir processing methods. The development of lightweight components is one of the primary concerns of the automobile, aerospace, and electronics industries. Even though most efficient design procedures contribute to lightweight component development, the usage of lightweight materials plays a significant role. The current review investigates the enhancement of various type of coatings by the various types of post treatments. The purpose of this article is to quickly address future developments, the rising use of magnesium alloys with consideration of explosive environments, and post-treatment effects. Thus, it was concluded that the magnesium-based alloys clearly demonstrate a substantial improvement in their performance in terms of mechanical and corrosion resistance, creating a potential for their use in advanced production techniques for the automotive and aerospace industries. In addition, friction stir process was suggested as a novel post treatment method for metals and alloys. This comprehensive review has been motivated by these advantages of all the post-treatments methods.

Techno-economic assessment of the biodiesel production using natural minerals rocks as a heterogeneous catalyst via conventional and ultrasonic techniques

The pollution problems and limited availability of diesel fuel urge the world to substitute it with clean biodiesel. The biggest obstacle to use biodiesel as a fuel is its high price. Using waste feedstock, cheap catalysts, and advanced production techniques can decrease the biodiesel price to be reasonable. This research can be divided into a technical part and an economic part. The technical one investigates biodiesel production from used cooking oil (UCO) and heterogeneous natural minerals rocks (NMR) catalyst via two different techniques conventional and ultrasonic. The technical study reveals that the ultrasonic technique has many advantages over the conventional one, as it does not need any feedstock pretreatment steps (one-step reaction), and uses a lower catalyst loading, methanol, and reaction time to produce the same biodiesel yield of about 99%. The second part relates to an economic study performed on a biodiesel plant with a capacity of 150 thousand tons per year based on the optimum operating conditions obtained from the technical part. The economic assessment proves that biodiesel production using NMR and UCO is very profitable, and the ultrasonic process achieves a higher net profit than the conventional one. The economic study concludes that the cost of the biodiesel that is produced via the ultrasonic method is 0.63 $/L and via the conventional method is 0.72 $/L, and both values are below the biodiesel selling price (0.78 $/L).

Wheat Consumption Determinants and Food Security Challenges: Evidence from Pakistan

This study aims to explore the wheat consumption determinants in Pakistan as well as to analyze the own price, cross price, and income elasticity of demand for wheat. For estimation purpose, time series data were used based on annual observations covering the period from 1972-2020. Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach (ARDL) econometric technique was applied to analyze the existence of a long-term connection among wheat demand and wheat consumption determinants. Based on empirical analysis, the results of wheat prices, real GDP, and population show that wheat is a necessity staple food in Pakistan. Futher, results of rice prices and corn consumption reveal that rice and corn commodities are substitutes to wheat with less elastic demand in Pakistan. The estimated result of wheat imports exhibits a direct and significant impact on wheat consumption. Overall, the results suggest that domestic efforts required to reduce the wheat demand and supply gap such as, through advanced innovative production techniques, latest wheat varieties, land expansion, and exploring the additional water resources for irrigated agriculture. Additionally, this study recommends policy makers, Pakistan government and stakeholders to pay attention on increasing domestic wheat production in order to lessen the wheat imports, saving useful foreign exchange, and to resolve the food security issues in Pakistan.

Review on Development of Thermoelectric Air cooler

Abstract: With rising global temperatures leading to an increase in average temperatures throughout the year making people living in areas with high power outages very busy and difficult. As a modern cooling system that combines Coolers and Airconditioners does not work in the inverter for energy-saving purposes which makes them useless thus during high temperature hours. Therefore, in terms of combating the problem with portability, savings and cost-effectiveness in the concept of another climate it uses TEC while using the grid and re-charging. Although it is common knowledge that the efficiency of TEC cooperation is low compared to the air-cooled air cooler used today but with advanced production techniques and forced delivery of cold liquid that increase effective device cooling and humidity control using humidity. suction and capillary tube as a heat sink to reduce heat in the hot sink instead of air fin to reduce the surrounding heat radiation. Basically in this study we tried to increase the performance coefficient of Peltier Module using various techniques. The module also does not save energy, so over time we will not be able to use many or two or three and we need to create a cooling effect. So we keep everything in mind using the right module to achieve the goal and make it a mass production model. Keywords: Fans, Forced Convection, Peltier Module, TEC (Thermo-Electric Cooling) etc.

Gelatin methacryloyl-alginate core-shell microcapsules as efficient delivery platforms for prevascularized microtissues in endodontic regeneration

Combined injectable cell-laden microspheres and angiogenesis approaches are promising for functional vascularized endodontic regeneration. However, advanced microsphere designs and production techniques that benefit practical applications are rarely developed. Herein, gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA)-alginate core-shell microcapsules were fabricated to co-encapsulate human dental pulp stem cells (hDPSCs) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) based on a coaxial electrostatic microdroplet technique. This technique enables high-throughput production, convenient collection, and minimal material waste. The average diameter of core-shell microcapsules was ∼359 µm, and that of GelMA cores was ∼278 µm. There were higher proliferation rates for hDPSCs and HUVECs co-encapsulated in the GelMA cores than for hDPSCs or HUVECs monoculture group. HUVECs assembled to form 3D capillary-like networks in co-culture microcapsules. Moreover, HUVECs promoted the osteo/odontogenic differentiation of hDPSCs in microcapsules. After 14 days of cultivation, prevascularized microtissues formed in microcapsules that contained abundant deposited extracellular matrix (ECM); no microcapsule aggregation occurred. In vivo studies confirmed that better microvessel formation and pulp-like tissue regeneration occurred in the co-culture group than in hDPSCs group. Thus, an effective platform for prevascularization microtissue preparation was proposed and showed great promise in endodontic regeneration and tissue engineering applications. Statement of significanceCell-laden microspheres combined with the proangiogenesis approach are promising in endodontic regeneration. We proposed GelMA-alginate core-shell microcapsules generated via the coaxial electrostatic microdroplet (CEM) method, which utilizes a double-lumen needle to allow for core-shell structures to form. The microcapsules were used for co-culturing hDPSCs and HUVECs to harvest large amounts of prevascularized microtissues, which further showed improved vascularization and pulp-like tissue regeneration in vivo. This CEM method and the microcapsule system have advantages of high-throughput generation, convenient collection, and avoid aggregation during long-term culturing. We proposed a high-effective platform for mass production of prevascularized microtissues, which exhibit great promise in the clinical transformation of endodontic regeneration and other applications in regenerative medicine.

Implementation of Taguchi and Genetic Algorithm Techniques for Prediction of Optimal Part Dimensions for Polymeric Biocomposites in Fused Deposition Modeling.

Additive manufacturing has gained popularity among material scientists, researchers, industries, and end users due to the flexible, low cost, and simple manufacturing process. Among number of techniques, fused deposition modeling (FDM) is the most recognized technology due to easy operation, lower environmental degradation, and portable apparatus. Despite numerous advantages, the limitations of this technique are poor surface finish, dimensional accuracy, and mechanical strength, which must be improved. The present study focuses on the implementation of the genetic algorithm and Taguchi techniques to achieve minimum dimensional variability of FDM parts especially for polymeric biocomposites. The output has been measured using standard testing techniques followed by Taguchi and genetic algorithm analyses. Four response variables were measured and were converted into single variable with combination of different weightages of each response. Maximum weightage was given to width of FDM polymeric biocomposite parts which may play critical role in biomedical and aerospace applications. The advanced optimization and production techniques have yielded promising results which have been validated by advanced algorithms. It was found that layer thickness and orientation angle were significant parameters which influenced the dimensional accuracy whereas best fitness value was 0.377.

Establishing standard allowed minutes and sewing efficiency for the garment industry in Tanzania

Purpose The garment factories focus on improving their production systems by involving innovative and advanced production methods and/or techniques to cope with fast-changing trends. Accordingly, this study aims to establish the standard allowed minutes (SAMs) and sewing efficiencies for Tanzania’s sewing industry, thus improving the production processes. Design/methodology/approach The research deployed a quantitative method. A stopwatch measured each operation for shirts and trousers to compute SAMs and efficiency. The shirt manufacturing processes involved 40 operations. Ten measurements were taken from different SL and LL industries operators for each operation. The trouser comprised 42 operations with 10 measurements taken from a different operator at the same garment factories for each operation. Findings SAMs for shirts at SL and LL factories were 29 and 31 min, respectively, while trousers were 30 and 34 min. The sewing efficiencies for shirts at both SL and LL factories were 83.98% and 81.93%, respectively. Similarly, the sewing efficiencies for trousers at both SL and LL factories were 81.25% and 80.95%, respectively. Research limitations/implications Since SAMs results are not established through literature rather a quantitative approach, the findings thus place crucial information for similar factories to benchmark from. Such information are crucial as factories could increase productivity and operational efficiency, reduce costs and non-value adding activities and estimate lead times. Notwithstanding the findings gathered, the study only established SAMs for two garments. Originality/value Although the garment industry has been developing over the years, this study was probably among the first studies in Tanzania that established SAMs. Theoretical underpinnings indicate that the factories use the experience to assemble garments, thus the need for this study.

Evaluating sustainable green development through advanced production techniques by using MDEMATEL technique

Evaluating sustainable green development through advanced production techniques by using MDEMATEL technique

Evaluating sustainable green development through advanced production techniques by using the MDEMATEL technique

Evaluating sustainable green development through advanced production techniques by using the MDEMATEL technique

Self-Propelled Chemical Garden Tubes.

Synthetic autonomous locomotion shows great promise in many research fields, including biomedicine and environmental science, because it can allow targeted drug/cargo delivery and the circumvention of kinetic and thermodynamic limitations. Creating such self-moving objects often requires advanced production techniques as exemplified by catalytic, gas-forming microrockets. Here, we grow such structures via the self-organization of precipitate tubes in chemical gardens by simply injecting metal salts into silicate solutions. This method generates hollow, cylindrical objects rich in catalytic manganese oxide that also feature a partially insulating outer layer of inert silica. In dilute H2O2 solution, these structures undergo self-propulsion by ejecting streams of oxygen bubbles. Each emission event pushes the tube forward by 1-2 tube radii. The ejection frequency depends linearly on the peroxide concentration as quantified by acoustic measurements of bursting bubbles. We expect our facile method and key results to be applicable to a diverse range of materials and reactions.

Progress in the Use of Biobutanol Blends in Diesel Engines

Nowadays, the transport sector is trying to face climate change and to contribute to a sustainable world by introducing modern after-treatment systems or by using biofuels. In sectors such as road freight transportation, agricultural or cogeneration in which the electrification is not considered feasible with the current infrastructure, renewable options for diesel engines such as alcohols produced from waste or lignocellulosic materials with advanced production techniques show a significant potential to reduce the life-cycle greenhouse emissions with respect to diesel fuel. This study concludes that lignocellulosic biobutanol can achieve 60% lower greenhouse gas emissions than diesel fuel. Butanol-diesel blends, with up to 40% butanol content, could be successfully used in a diesel engine calibrated for 100% diesel fuel without any additional engine modification nor electronic control unit recalibration at a warm ambient temperature. When n-butanol is introduced, particulate matter emissions are sharply reduced for butanol contents up to 16% (by volume), whereas NOX emissions are not negatively affected. Butanol-diesel blends could be introduced without startability problems up to 13% (by volume) butanol content at a cold ambient temperature. Therefore, biobutanol can be considered as an interesting option to be blended with diesel fuel, contributing to the decarbonization of these sectors.

Screening and optimization of [formula omitted]-WAG injection and fish-bone well structures in low permeability reservoirs using artificial neural network

Low permeability oil reservoirs yield low production rates and recovery factors because of their low porosity, low permeability, and low oil mobility. The low production from low permeability reservoirs prohibits many reservoirs from being economically producible. For those reservoirs to be considered for production, advanced production techniques are needed to increase the recovery rates. Previous research efforts concluded that utilizing advanced well structures and Carbon Dioxide based Water Alternating Gas (CO2 -WAG) injection are the most successful techniques to improve oil production from low permeability oil reservoirs. However, evaluating the implementation of a combination of those two production techniques to a low permeability reservoir is an expensive process due to the long run time needed to acquire the results using numerical simulation. Furthermore, optimization and history matching processes for these complicated production plans require more time and high computation power.In this study, we developed a reliable Artificial Neural Network-based toolbox (ANN-Based toolbox) to evaluate, optimize and history match the implementation of CO2 -WAG injection to a reservoir including a fish-bone structure producing well in low permeability oil reservoirs. The developed ANN-Based toolbox provides the results faster than the Numerical Simulation (few minutes compared to several hours) and requires lower computational power. This speed in acquiring the results helps to study more scenarios to optimize the production schemes.The ANN toolbox is developed to perform three tasks; production forecasting, production schemes design, and history matching. The production forecasting proxies are employed as a screening and forecasting toolbox to predict the time-based production rates for the reservoir under consideration when different production schemes are applied. The production schemes prediction proxies are employed to predict the production scheme that would fulfill desired production rates. Finally, the history matching proxy is developed to update the reservoir characteristics based on the production data. The developed proxies are validated using an extensive blind testing dataset, and the results of the testing dataset are presented to validate the capabilities of the developed toolbox. Furthermore, the developed toolbox was used to optimize a CO2 -WAG design scheme for a case study reservoir from Sirri A field. The results provided by the ANN toolbox showed the capabilities of the proposed EOR technique to increase the production in Sirri field by 10%.

RETRACTED: Industrial structure technology upgrade based on 5G network service and IoT intelligent manufacturing

Abstract A network-based physical manufacturing system, manufacturing intelligence trends, and is widely recognized worldwide. Throughout the development trend of CPMS, the critical question is the Internet industry automation, intelligent connection, real-time monitoring, coordination, and control of one of the characteristics. Also, a large amount of data in the manufacturing process and the permeate producing advanced technology applications. However, the third generation mobile networks (3G) CPMS is required due to the high data rate, high reliability, high coverage, and low latency, which hinders the development by the 4G communication technology and the other embodiments of CPMS. In the future, as advanced radio transmission techniques, 5G has a great potential to promote IoT and CPMS. Depending on the architecture and 2.5G wireless communications technologies' characteristics, the 5G-IIoT based architecture has been proposed three general application modes. 5G, namely, how to implement advanced manufacturing solutions and production techniques, differ because of the different environment. It will be introduced. Mobile Broadband, mass model communication are used to improve ultra-high reliability and low latency communication. Also, analyze the characteristics based on the 5G IoT, a significant technology, and challenges.

Greatest Hits-Innovative Technologies for High Throughput Identification of Bispecific Antibodies.

Recent years have shown a tremendous increase and diversification in antibody-based therapeutics with advances in production techniques and formats. The plethora of currently investigated bi- to multi-specific antibody architectures can be harnessed to elicit a broad variety of specific modes of actions in oncology and immunology, spanning from enhanced selectivity to effector cell recruitment, all of which cannot be addressed by monospecific antibodies. Despite continuously growing efforts and methodologies, the identification of an optimal bispecific antibody as the best possible combination of two parental monospecific binders, however, remains challenging, due to tedious cloning and production, often resulting in undesired extended development times and increased expenses. Although automated high throughput screening approaches have matured for pharmaceutical small molecule development, it was only recently that protein bioconjugation technologies have been developed for the facile generation of bispecific antibodies in a ‘plug and play’ manner. In this review, we provide an overview of the most relevant methodologies for bispecific screening purposes—the DuoBody concept, paired light chain single cell production approaches, Sortase A and Transglutaminase, the SpyTag/SpyCatcher system, and inteins—and elaborate on the benefits as well as drawbacks of the different technologies.