Large Volume Production Research Articles

RAILWAY NETWORK IN ORENBURG PROVINCE AS A FACTOR OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY OF PROVINCIAL POST-REFORM MERCHANTS

The study shows how the level of development of transport communications affected the profitability and convenience of entrepreneurial activity of Orenburg merchants in the second half of the 19th - early 20th century. What is new in the work is that the state of transport and communication routes in the context of everyday work of the Orenburg post-reform merchants has not previously become a separate subject of analysis. The article shows that the commissioning of the Orenburg - Samara and Orenburg - Tashkent railway lines has significantly improved the working conditions of local entrepreneurs, diversifying the list of investment areas. In the first post-reform decades, the goods of Orenburg merchants entered the markets of the European part of Russia and the cities of Central Asia through the system of postal roads and routes of trade caravans respectively. The characteristics of the transport arteries themselves and the terrain through which they ran did not allow merchants to save money on the speed of delivery, transport large volumes of products, and also did not guarantee the safety of cargo. Since the late 1870s Orenburg flour producers, who got the opportunity to ship their goods to other regions of the country, began to build steam flour mills, and the service sector began to develop rapidly in the cities of the province.

The Industrial Revolution and the Ottoman State: Its’ Reflection on the Economic Policies of the Tanzimat Period

With the industrial revolution of the 18th century, a new world order was formed such as mechanization, large-volume production, raw material and market needs, division of labor and specialization. The Ottoman state has been in an economic structure based on agriculture, trade and small-scale workshops since the classical period. At this point, industrial production is carried out through state-controlled guilds. The Ottoman state has developed new regulatory policies since the Tanzimat period in order to adapt to this structure with the industrial revolution. It has introduced innovations and reforms in its efforts to support competition and domestic industry, such as the establishment of factory and industrial facilities, incorporation studies, the establishment of industrial schools, and the construction of railway networks. As a matter of fact, administrative weaknesses, deterioration of the timar system, inadequacy of the treasury, traditional economic mentality, capitulations granted to foreign countries, land losses and wars increased foreign dependency and caused damage to the domestic industry. In addition, the fact that the industry did not operate in an industrial order benefiting from capitalist accumulation and did not allow capital accumulation, and the accompanying competent personnel and scientific deficiencies caused the industrial revolution to have negative consequences in the Ottoman state.In this study, it is aimed to examine the effect of the industrial revolution of the Ottoman state on the economic policies of the Tanzimat period, the results it revealed and the applications made.

Ultra-broadband and highly efficient silicon nitride bi-layer grating couplers

The silicon nitride (Si3N4) waveguide platform becomes prominent in silicon photonics due to its ultralow propagation loss, negligible two-photon absorption, tolerance to phase error, and so on. Particularly, Si3N4 photonic circuits provide nonlinear opportunities as thick waveguides enable dispersion engineering, which is fundamental for frequency comb and supercontinuum generation. However, grating couplers based on thick Si3N4 waveguides, as the building block for any device, are prone to higher-order Bloch mode excitation, restricting the coupling efficiency dramatically, thus precluding practical applications that large bandwidth and are power restricted. We propose and demonstrate an 800 nm-thick Si3N4bi-layer fully etched grating coupler which is ultra-broadband and highly efficient. By applying the apodization technique, the bi-layer grating shows a conversion efficiency of −1.44 dB and a 1 dB bandwidth of 135 nm. Further integrated with a bottom reflector, a conversion efficiency of −1.01 dB with a 1-dB bandwidth of 117 nm is achieved. The proposed structures are highly fabrication tolerant and remain great performance regardless large structural parameter variations. It paves the way for a large-volume high-yield production towards fully-integrated frequency comb chip, optical beam forming network, Lidar, etc.

Geotechnical properties and microstructure of clay contaminated with urban wastewater and remediated with α-Aluminum oxide/α-Iron oxide nanohybrid

Geotechnical properties and microstructure of clay contaminated with urban wastewater and remediated with α-Aluminum oxide/α-Iron oxide nanohybrid

Enhancing user interaction with context-awareness in cultural spaces

The emergence of the Internet of Things has fueled a proliferation of smart things in many fields, including cultural spaces. Context-awareness addresses the production of large volumes of context by analyzing raw data and adding a meaning to them. Middleware systems have emerged, which perform context modelling and reasoning, supporting context-aware applications. The services provided by such applications can be personalized, automated and adapted to the current situation, thus enhancing the user interaction with the devices and the digital environment. In this work, a context-aware middleware system is presented, based on a hybrid reasoning schema, which combines multiple techniques to efficiently address each problem. The proposed middleware system is evaluated in a cultural space, where scenarios were designed and tested, using a mixture of real and artificial data. The experiments measured the accuracy, performance in terms of reaction time and scalability and the interactivity enhancement, achieved by the proposed middleware.

Reintegration of Food Industry By-Products: Potential Applications.

Numerous studies have indicated that fruits and vegetables are considered as significant sources of bioactive compounds. The generated by-products, which are derived from the food industry, reveal similar or higher antioxidant activity. On the other hand, intense industrialization results in the production of large volumes of by-products, raising serious environmental issues. Therefore, this situation creates the necessity to develop new strategies in order to exploit the generated wastes, securing the ability to develop new high-added-value products. This review aims to summarize the exploitation of fruit wastes, namely, apple and citrus, as well as vegetable by-products which are derived from tomato, potato and carrot cultivation. All the aforementioned by-products have found wide applications in the development of new high-added-value products in the food and feed industry owing to their improved nutritional profiles. Furthermore, these wastes are characterized by a strong antioxidant activity, justifying their valorization in other fields such as cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.

New Product Development of a Robotic Soldering Cell Using Lean Manufacturing Methodology

With the advent of manufacturing in Industry 4.0 and consumer demand, there has been a trend of mass customization of products. This customization requirement can only be achieved through the flexibility of manufacturing processes that are tailored to meet the quality standards of customers and the large volume of production in a short time. The increase of the production capacity is achieved through the processes of industrial automation of the manufacture which maintains the increased efficiency for the series production. This study was based on the Design for Six Sigma methodology (DMADV—Define, Measure, Analyze, Design and Verify) in order to determine the soldering process characteristics and how the soldering process can be automatized. When planning the implementation of a collaborative robot in a workstation in the production plant, the following must be taken into account: steps in operations that require the most time for the worker and/or that represent factors of physical and moral overload for him; the use of adequate precision fixing devices, delimitation of work areas, sensors as well as spaces for connecting the workstation to the electrical, hydraulic/pneumatic network and constant cycle time. The proposed solution can improve the productivity of the process by integrating advanced robotics and smart devices into the soldering line.

Immobilization of chromium bioavailability through application of organic waste to Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) under chromium-contaminated Indian soils.

Industrialization results in production of large volume of wastewaters, and disposing of them become a serious problem. The wastewaters may have range of heavy metals, which have an impact on soil and plant health. The objective was to evaluate the influence of farm yard manure (FYM) and pressmud (PM) applications on Indian mustard growth and chromium (Cr) uptake in tannery effluent irrigated Cr-contaminated soil. Soil was collected from the tannery effluent irrigated fields (chromium contaminated) of Shekhpura village of Kanpur, India. A pot culture experiment was carried out by growing Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) var. RH 749 on the Cr-contaminated soil with application of different levels and combinations of FYM and PM (at 0, 2.5, and 5gkg-1 each). Biomass yield, Cr uptake, bioconcentration factor (BCF), transfer factor (TF), transfer efficiency (TE), and Cr removal indices were examined. Higher doses of FYM and PM resulted in reduction of Cr concentrations in shoot (6.60 to 2.50µgg-1) and root (27.27 to 9.43µgg-1); and absorption in plant tissues and had improved total dry matter yield (14.56 to 30.94g pot-1). The use of FYM and PM had a substantial (p ≤ 0.05) impact on phytoremediation parameters like BCF (0.128 to 0.045), TE (59.61 to 64.51%), and Cr removal (0.65 to 0.51%). Combined application of FYM (5gkg-1) and PM (5gkg-1) had enhanced the dry matter yield of shoot (12.51 to 26.40g pot-1) and root (2.05 to 4.54g pot-1) and reduced the Cr uptake (138.54 to 108.79mg pot-1) than the individual amendment addition of FYM (138.52 to 135.89mg pot-1) and PM (126.02 to 130.52mg pot-1). Combined application of FYM (5gkg-1) and PM (5gkg-1) could be beneficial for remediation of Cr-contaminated areas for cultivation of crops.

Geri Dönüştürülmüş Polietilen Ambalaj Atıkları ile Lamine Edilmiş Denim Kumaşların Mekanik Analizi

Due to the increasing population and production rate in the world, the amount of waste accumulating in solid waste sites is increasing day by day. In particular, disposable packaging wastes go to landfills after they are used, and this situation poses a serious risk when evaluated in terms of solid waste management. On the other hand, the textile industry, which has a large production volume, causes tons of textile waste to be buried in solid waste sites. The major goal of this study is to produce 100% recycled laminated textiles by combining waste from denim fabric and polyethylene bottle caps, which are the priority waste categories for both industries. In this context, low and high density polyethylene waste bottle caps were recycled separately by the hot press method, and the matrix plates obtained were laminated to waste denim fabrics. The physical and mechanical properties of the produced laminated fabrics were tested, and the results were discussed by comparing them with the test results of polyethylene plates and denim fabrics. The findings demonstrated that high density polyethylene could be processed more easily in the lamination process and also imparted better mechanical properties to the fabric to which it was laminated compared to low density polyethylene. These laminated textiles with 100% waste content are expected to provide a sustainable substitute for value-added products that can be used especially in outdoor application areas such as awnings with their improved properties.

High Permittivity Polymer Composites on the Basis of Long Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes: The Role of the Nanotube Length.

Controlling the permittivity of dielectric composites is critical for numerous applications dealing with matter/electromagnetic radiation interaction. In this study, we have prepared polymer composites, based on a silicone elastomer matrix and Tuball carbon nanotubes (CNT) via a simple preparation procedure. The as-prepared composites demonstrated record-high dielectric permittivity both in the low-frequency range (102–107 Hz) and in the X-band (8.2–12.4 GHz), significantly exceeding the literature data for such types of composite materials at similar CNT content. Thus, with the 2 wt% filler loading, the permittivity values reach 360 at 106 Hz and >26 in the entire X-band. In similar literature, even the use of conductive polymer hosts and various highly conductive additives had not resulted in such high permittivity values. We attribute this phenomenon to specific structural features of the used Tuball nanotubes, namely their length and ability to form in the polymer matrix percolating network in the form of neuron-shaped clusters. The low cost and large production volumes of Tuball nanotubes, as well as the ease of the composite preparation procedure open the doors for production of cost-efficient, low weight and flexible composites with superior high permittivity.

(Digital Presentation) On the Effect of Sizing on Electrochemical Response and Localized Corrosion Behavior of Alumix 123 P/M Alloy

Powder metallurgy (PM) as an additive technique for fabricating parts has been used by many industries such as automotive, aerospace, and medical. However, it has been centered mostly around automotive industry which has benefited from large volume production, low cost, and near-net-shape manufacturing that comes with PM. High demand for producing fuel-efficient and light vehicles in automotive industry provides a driving force for extensive research activity on PM of aluminum alloys. Among different aluminum alloys, PM of 2xxx series are among the best choices due to their good sinterability and mechanical response. But industrial PM parts need post processing treatments such as sizing to meet the real-world applications. While sizing is widely used in industry to provide tighter tolerance, it can also help improving density, fatigue behavior, yield strength, and hardness. But there were very few studies on the effect of sizing on electrochemical response. In this study we produced Alumix 123 PM alloy using a press-and-sinter process and then sizing was applied on some of the samples to compare their long-term electrochemical behavior. The changes in the surface profile and roughness of the samples were investigated using confocal laser scanning microscopy. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) as a powerful technique for investigating long-term electrochemical behavior has been used to find the effect of sizing on corrosion response of Alumix 123 PM. In addition, effect of sizing on localized corrosion and pitting tendency was thoroughly discussed using electrochemical polarization results, scanning electron microscope images, and EIS outcomes.

S2586 Don’t Get 2 Comfortable: A Rare Case of Meckel’s Diverticulum Causing Hemorrhagic Shock in an Adult

Introduction: Meckel’s diverticulum (MD) is a true diverticulum that results from incomplete obliteration from the vitelline duct during embryonic development. It is a one of the most common congenital disorders of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Often characterized using “The Rule of 2’s”: MD occurs in approximately 2% of the population, is 2 inches long, is within 2 feet from the ileocecal valve, is twice as common in males than females, can contain 2 types of tissue (gastric or pancreatic), 2% become symptomatic, and most present before the age of 2. The majority of symptomatic MD occur as painless hematochezia in children and therefore is often lower on the differential of an adult with a GI bleed. Even when MD is suspected as an etiology for GI bleeding in an adult, the evaluation can be challenging. Case Description/Methods: A 25-year-old male with no significant past medical history was admitted to the hospital for GI bleeding and then developed hemorrhagic shock requiring resuscitation with transfusion of large volumes of blood products. The etiology of his GI bleed remained elusive for several days despite evaluation with upper endoscopy, three colonoscopies, three CT angiograms of the abdomen and pelvis, and a video capsule endoscopy. Subsequently, he underwent two separate fluoroscopic angiograms with interventional radiology. While the first angiogram was unrevealing, the second angiogram demonstrated a tortuous ileal artery branch with active extravasation that was treated with embolization. Given IR findings, a Meckel’s scan was performed which was negative. A multi-disciplinary review of the case prompted further review of the patient’s abdominal CT angiogram and a potential finding of MD was seen at the distal ileum. Ultimately, the surgery team decided to take the patient to the operating room where they found and resected a segment of small bowel with tissue examination revealing the MD (Figure 1). Discussion: A Meckel’s scan is often considered the modality of choice for diagnosing MD in children, however, its diagnostic accuracy is considered to be much lower in adults. The typical approach to GI bleeding via upper endoscopy, colonoscopy, capsule endoscopy, CT and procedural angiography may be negative, as seen in our case. Balloon assisted enteroscopy, where available, may also be a potentially useful tool for diagnosing MD. This case highlights the importance of maintaining a broad differential diagnosis for GI bleeding and the challenges with current diagnostic modalities.Figure 1.: Meckel's diverticulum at the level of distal small bowel, approximately 60 cm from the ileocecal valve.

Industrial carbon monoxide production by thermochemical CO2 splitting – A techno-economic assessment

This research presents the splitting of carbon dioxide (CO2) by Ba2Ca0.66Nb0.34FeO6 (BCNF1) at the 100 g scale and the techno-economic assessment of a carbon-neutral carbon monoxide (CO) production facility based upon this perovskite. BCNF1 was found to convert 10.1 % of CO2 to CO with 100 % selectivity at 800 °C, which was sustained for five thermochemical cycles showing little sign of degradation. This oxidation reaction was found to proceed via a zero order reaction mechanism at 800 °C, with an activation energy of 46.6 kJ/mol. This activation energy for CO2 splitting is lower than all bar one of the perovskites investigated in the literature, explaining the lower oxidation temperature required and higher CO yields of this material. Economic evaluation of an industrial scale-up system based on this data suggested profitability despite high sensitivity to electricity prices, as expected. A 150 m3/hr plant would produce CO at $0.15 per kg at the average industrial US electricity price of $0.068/kWh. This is significantly cheaper than reported costs of electrochemically produced CO in the literature. As electricity prices fall due to abundant renewables, larger production volumes become optimal, with $1.3 million a year profits for a 500 m3/hr plant at $0.05/kWh.

Using Waste Brine from Desalination Plant as a Source of Industrial Water in Copper Mining Industry

One of the main challenges of seawater desalination is a large volume of waste brine production that is commonly discharged into the sea and may threaten the marine ecosystem. This is critical in regions where conventional water resources are scarce and desalinated seawater is an alternative to meet water demand. Especially in regions where the mining industry is a key player in the economic development. The novelty of this research consists in the determination of the potential use of waste brine, discharged from the reverse osmosis process, as a source of industrial water in copper mining industry. To enable the waste brine applicability, there should be reduced calcium and magnesium ions concentration for improving copper recovery in the froth flotation process. The flotation tests were conducted in a batch cell with synthetic minerals composed of chalcopyrite, kaolinite, and quartz using different water qualities. The results showed that treated waste brine significantly improved copper recovery compared to untreated waste brine and seawater. Similar copper recovery was achieved when flotation test was performed with tap water and treated waste brine. Therefore, treated waste brine could provide a suitable water quality required in the froth flotation process as an alternative non-conventional water resource.

Solar for small-holder farmers made affordable through innovative co-design and financing – lessons learnt

A technological revolution in both the cost and performance of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has transformed the landscape of generating electricity directly from the sun in the last decade. Innovation combined with government incentives and policies led to massive investments which in turn fueled a virtuous cycle of declining PV costs with ever larger production volumes. The core electricity producing technology is scale neutral- a single solar module roughly the size of a typical door in a building, or a solar power plant with thousands of door-sized modules, all rely on the same solar cells. They are all equally efficient at converting the sun's energy into electricity. This paper describes a case study of using the solar PV technology for small farmers in Senegal to reduce their costs, carbon foot print and collaborate with other farmers. The paper also gives recommendations for farmers in other developing countries based on the lessons learnt in this study. The lessons include benefit from bulk procurement, significantly lower per module cost of installation, logistics, transaction costs and interconnection to the grid.

A simple setup for in situ alkali metal electronic spin polarimetry.

Faraday rotation is considered a gold standard measurement of the electronic spin polarization of an alkali metal vapor produced under optical pumping. However, during the production of large volumes of hyperpolarized xenon gas, transmission monitoring measurements, otherwise known as field cycling measurements, are generally employed to measure the spin polarization of alkali metal atoms in situ as this method is easier to implement than Faraday rotation on standard polarizer setups. Here, we present a simple, low-cost experimental setup to perform Faraday rotation measurements of the electronic spin polarization of alkali metal atoms that can be easily implemented on standard polarizer setups. We then compare Rb polarization measurements obtained with the Faraday rotation method to those obtained with the transmission monitoring method. To our knowledge, a direct comparison of these methods has never been made. Overall, we found good agreement between the two methods, but at low Rb density and high laser power, we found evidence of nonlinear magneto-optical effects that may prevent Faraday rotation from being used under these conditions.

ReNoteWeb – Web platform for the improvement of assembly result and annotation of prokaryotic genomes

The reduction in the cost of DNA sequencing and the total time to perform this process has resulted in a significant increase in the deposit of biological information in public databases such as the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information). The production of large volumes of data per run has culminated in the need to develop algorithms capable of handling data with this new feature and assisting in analyses such as the assembly and annotation of prokaryotic genomes. Over the years, several pipelines and computational tools have been developed to automate this task and consequently reduce the total time to know the genetic content of a given organism, especially non-model organisms, collaborating with the identification of possible targets with biotechnological applicability. In the case of automatic annotation tools, the accuracy of the results is widely observed in the literature, however, this does not excludes the manual curation process, where the information inferred in the automatic process is verified and enriched by the curators. This task requires a time which is directly proportional to the number of gene products of the target organism under study. To assist in this process, we present the ReNoteWeb web tool, endowed with a simple and intuitive interface, to perform the assembly enhancement process, with the possibility of identifying the missing products in the original genomic sequence. In addition, ReNoteWeb is capable of performing the annotation process for all products, based on information obtained from highly accurate external databases. The engine responsible for performing the data processing was developed in JAVA and the web platform uses the resources of the Yii framework. The annotation produced by this platform aims to reduce the overall time in the manual curation process. Twenty-three organisms were used to validate the tool. The efficiency was verified by comparing the annotation of these same organisms available in the NCBI database and the annotation performed on the RAST platform. The tool is available at: http://biod.ufpa.br/renoteweb/.

Influence of different curing methods on the compressive strength of ultra-high-performance concrete: A comprehensive review

Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) is a distinguishing material used in new construction and conjunction with conventional concrete. However, some issues limit the wider application of UHPC, such as high autogenous shrinkage, low workability for large-volume production, high cost, and unpredictable peak curing method. This comprehensive study aims to clarify the different effects of curing methods on the strength development of normal concrete and UHPC. The present article reviews studies that used microwave curing, autoclave curing, carbon curing, steam curing, electric curing, ambient and air curing and water to determine their effect on compressive strength. All the curing methods achieved satisfactory values of compressive strength. However, it is not practical to specify the peak curing regimes for concrete or UHPC since the best results need critical monitoring of curing parameters. The time when the samples are demolded and subjected to hydrothermal and thermal treatments varies in the literature since it depends on the binder setting time. That time should be carefully selected to avoid adverse effects and to maximise output. A combination of these curing regimes could be used together or with pressure or heat to further improve the compressive strength. In addition to the type of materials used, the curing temperature and duration significantly affect the overall performance of concrete. This review is expected to guide future research and provide an overview of the research field.

Water-soluble polysaccharides promoting production of redispersible nanocellulose

To date, the energy-intensive production and high-water content severely limits nanocellulose applications on a large scale off-site. In this study, adding water-soluble polysaccharides (PS) to achieve an integrated process of water-redispersible nanocellulose production was well established. The addition of PS, in particular carboxymethylated-galactoglucomannan (cm-GGM), facilitates fibre fibrillation enabling homogenization at a higher solid content at 1.5 wt% compared with around 0.4 wt% for neat fibre. More importantly, the addition of cm-GGM saved 73 % energy in comparison without PS addition. Good water redispersibility of thus-prepared nanocellulose was validated in viewpoints of size distribution, morphology, viscosity and film properties as compared with neat nanocellulose. The tensile strength and optical transmittance of nanocellulose films increased to 116 MPa and 77 % compared to those without PS addition of 62 MPa and 74 %, respectively. Collectively, this study provides a new avenue for large-volume production of redispersible nanocellulose at a high solid content with less energy-consumption.

Research on casing erosion in reservoir section of gas storage wells based on Gas-solid Two-phase flow

Gas storage wells are characterized by large injection and production volumes and multi-cycle high-intensity cyclic injection and production, and the high-speed flowing sand particles have a strong erosion effect on the tubular column, threatening the safety of the gas storage wells' tubular column. In this paper, gas–solid two-phase flow erosion experiments and erosion simulation are used to study the effects of sand parameters, casing materials, and formation temperature on the erosion rate of reservoir section casing during gas recovery. The results show that due to the high temperature weakening the material strength of the casing in the reservoir section, the erosion rates of N80 and P110 casings increase with the growth of environment temperature. The casing erosion rate in the reservoir section increases with the raising of gas production volume, and the casing erosion rate increases rapidly when the gas production volume of the case well exceeds 162 × 104m3/d. The increases in sand particle diameter and mass flow rate also aggravate the casing erosion. The borehole dog-leg degree affects the erosion rate of the casing by influencing the attack angle of sand particles on the casing, and the erosion rate increases significantly when the borehole dog-leg degree exceeds 3°. The study results provide theoretical guidance for the building and operation of gas storage wells and are of great practical significance.