Low-cost Appliance Research Articles

Scrap Gold Recovery: Recycling, Fabrication and Electrochemical Characterization of Low-Cost Gold Electrode

As a noble metal, gold is considered the most popular material in electrocatalysis. In spite of that, this metal is a highly expensive material in the manufacture of low-cost appliances. In the present work, scrap gold, produced in jewellery as waste, is introduced as a low-cost resource of gold to be recycled. A gold electrode was fabricated by connecting the tablet shaped recycled gold with copper wire inserting into a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) tube. The manufactured electrodes are easily renewable, modifiable with nanomaterials and show excellent electrochemical characteristics in presence of redox species. The CV (cyclic voltammetry), DPV (differential pulse voltammetry), and EIS (electrochemical impedance spectroscopic) analysis data also infer that the developed recycled gold-based electrodes would be suitable for the development of low-cost electrocatalytic sensors devices.

Fenômica

Computer vision and image processing procedures could obtain crop data frequently and precisely, such as vegetation indexes, and correlating them with other variables, like biomass and crop yield. This work presents the development of a computer vision system for high-throughput phenotyping, considering three solutions: an image capture software linked to a low-cost appliance; an image-processing program for feature extraction; and a web application for results' presentation. As a case study, we used normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from a wheat crop experiment of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation. Regression analysis showed that NDVI explains 98.9, 92.8, and 88.2% of the variability found in the biomass values for crop plots with 82, 150, and 200 kg of N ha1 fertilizer applications, respectively. As a result, NDVI generated by our system presented a strong correlation with the biomass, showing a way to specify a new yield prediction model from the beginning of the crop.

Design, Modeling and Prototyping a Flat Switched Reluctance Machine for Direct-Drive Systems

In this paper, a flat-type 24 by 16 SRM, is considered for the application of direct-drive washing machine. Firstly, the structure is introduced and using the nonlinear equivalent circuit, the researchers present a design for the SRM. Then, using the three-dimensional finite element method, the electromagnetic characteristics of the proposed configuration are analyzed to evaluate the motor’s performance. The motor prototype is fabricated and tested experimentally to authenticate the theoretical and simulation analysis, and subsequently to prove the applicability. Finally, the performance of this proposed motor is compared with an SRM that has the same condition. Since a direct drive motor does not require a reduction gear, the drive system can be made simple without harmonic gears, and therefore it can be used in high-precision, more reliable, and low cost appliances.

Low-cost Appliance Switching Circuit for Discarding Technical Issues of Microcontroller Controlled Smart Home

As technological advancement in recent years is bringing ease to our everyday life, smart home systems based on wireless networks and sensors are rapidly gaining importance. Research on microcontroller controller smart home systems has become popular due to its low cost and reliability. However, appliance switching capacity of microcontroller is quite low which limits the widespread use of such sort of systems. This paper introduces an external appliance switching circuit for microcontroller controller automated home which has the ability to control 208 appliances. This large appliance switching capability has been obtained by demultiplexing digital signals obtained from microcontroller board using a complex array of 4 to 16 line decoders. The proposed appliance switching circuit can be implemented with 60-70% less wiring cost in real time compared to the typical wiring technique in microcontroller controlled smart homes. Also, hardware implementation expenditure in this research has been reduced significantly compared to the existing designs. Moreover, the issue associated with existing microcontroller appliance switching scheme in case of incorporating manual switch has been solved. The proposed circuit is incorporated with a smart phone application by which the user sends commands to the microcontroller board using Bluetooth as the medium of wireless transfer. The proposed microcontroller controlled smart home system with external appliance switching circuit is quite cheaper than the existing systems which allows consumers to afford smart living with limited budget. Due to reduction of implementation cost and solution of major technical design issues incorporated with the existing microcontroller-based system been solved in this research work, microcontroller based smart home systems is expected to become a potential product in the market in near future.

Robust Position Sensorless Technique for a PMBLDC Motor

The main objective of this paper is to present a new mechanical sensorless control technique of a permanent magnet brushless dc (PMBLDC) motor, which relies on the speed independent H functions. Two major challenges in the sensorless operation of PMBLDC motor drive are the starting the motor and driving it from a low speed to the rated speed. A speed independent H function is used to decide the commutation instant. Due to speed independence, the commutation instant is predicted even at low speed. The H function depends only on line voltages, which makes the overall system simple and cost effective. The proposed technique does not require any analog filter circuit or any phase compensation circuit. To eliminate the commutation ripple from the line voltages, digital low-pass filters and digital phase compensators are used. This makes the system compact, simple, and cost effective. This cost-effective solution proves perfect for low-cost appliances such as fan, air-conditioner, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, and other home appliances. The proposed algorithm is implemented on a low-cost DSP (TMS320F28377S) to justify the effectiveness of the proposed sensorless technique for wide speed variation.

Inkjet 3D Printing – Studies on Applicability for Lab-on-a-chip Technique

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has the potential to transform science and technology by creating bespoke, low-cost appliances that previously required dedicated facilities in order to be made. 3D printing has long been used in manufacturing industries to produce prototypes, however it is only relatively recently that technology has developed to the degree where 3D printing can produce functional devices in their own right, such as tissue growth scaffolds, electronics, pneumatics and recently microstructures. An attractive and booming research field is the use of 3D printing to create microfluidic structures. In this paper, a discussion on applicability of inkjet 3D printing for lab-on-a-chip technique is presented on the base of authors’ works.

Integrated 3D-printed reactionware for chemical synthesis and analysis

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has the potential to transform science and technology by creating bespoke, low-cost appliances that previously required dedicated facilities to make. An attractive, but unexplored, application is to use a 3D printer to initiate chemical reactions by printing the reagents directly into a 3D reactionware matrix, and so put reactionware design, construction and operation under digital control. Here, using a low-cost 3D printer and open-source design software we produced reactionware for organic and inorganic synthesis, which included printed-in catalysts and other architectures with printed-in components for electrochemical and spectroscopic analysis. This enabled reactions to be monitored in situ so that different reactionware architectures could be screened for their efficacy for a given process, with a digital feedback mechanism for device optimization. Furthermore, solely by modifying reactionware architecture, reaction outcomes can be altered. Taken together, this approach constitutes a relatively cheap, automated and reconfigurable chemical discovery platform that makes techniques from chemical engineering accessible to typical synthetic laboratories.

Avaliação de um gerador de calor de fluxo descendente, acoplado a um secador tipo camada fixa

A batch dryer for agricultural products was built and tested. The set comprises a tank to accommodate the appliance, with an adequate size for the required volume, two fans and two firewood heated generators. Primary air for combustion was supplied by a small fan. Tests were performed with peanuts (Leguminosae-Faboideae). Suggested system is a simple, low-cost appliance that may be built by the farmers

Database systems management and Oracle8

Oracle's corporate mission is to enable the Information Age through network computing , a vision of broader access to information for all and the empowerment and increased productivity that can result. The technology implications of the network computing vision are ubiquitous access via low-cost appliances to smaller numbers of larger databases, accessed via professionally managed networks compliant with open internetworking protocols. The latest release of the Oracle data server, Oracle8, provides new technology for management of very large databases containing rich and user-defined data types, and is continuing to evolve to make it economically beneficial to store all forms of digital information in a database.

4818884 Low cost appliance for continuously monitoring levels of ionizing radiation in premises for human occupation

4818884 Low cost appliance for continuously monitoring levels of ionizing radiation in premises for human occupation