Process Point Of View Research Articles

Realization of Bio-Coal Injection into the Blast Furnace

The steel industry accounts, according to the International Energy Agency, for ~6.7% of global CO2 emissions, and the major portion of its contribution is from steelmaking via the blast furnace (BF) route. In the short term, a significant reduction in fossil CO2 emissions can be achieved through the introduction of bio-coal into the BF as part of cold bonded briquettes, by injection, or as part of coke. The use of bio-coal-containing residue briquettes was previously demonstrated in industrial trials in Sweden, whereas bio-coal injection was only tested on a pilot scale or in one-tuyere tests. Therefore, industrial trials replacing part of the pulverized coal (PC) were conducted. It was concluded that the grinding, conveying, and injection of up to 10% of charcoal (CC) with PC can be safely achieved without negative impacts on PC injection plant or BF operational conditions and without losses of CC with the dust. From a process point of view, higher addition is possible, but it must be verified that grinding and conveying is feasible. Through an experimentally validated computational fluid flow model, it was shown that a high moisture content and the presence of oversized particles delay devolatilization and ignition, lowering the combustion efficiency. By using CC with similar heating value to PC, compositional variations in the injected blend are not critical.

Global Supply Chain Operations for Investment Locations Selection in Climate Change Variation

A livable city is a city where people can live comfortably and peacefully. The success of a livable city is achieved not only by physical advantage factors but also by social and economic factors. Livable cities must be investment-friendly to support economic functions. Investment-friendly cities will be the preferred locations for multinational corporations. Urban planners, designers, and managers need to devise urban development strategies that attract investors. This research aims to identify pivotal factors that drive investors' decision-making in selecting investment locations. This study focuses on the influence of global supply chain operations on investment location selection in the era of climate change, which is still relatively rare as it attempts to formulate regional development policies based on a demand-side approach. A demand-based approach requires identifying the investor's point of view in the investment location selection process. The Electronics and Automotive industry in the JABABEKA Industrial Area, Jakarta, Indonesia, is used as a case study. Primary data was collected from the respondents' perceptions and analyzed using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) method, applied in the software Smart PLS 3.2.8. The structural model used in this approach is formative. On a global scale, the choice of Indonesia as an investment location is influenced by (i) aspects of physical, social, and economic advantages related to cross-border trade and (ii) aspects of the supply chain related to the impact of climate change.

An egalitarian talent selection model to support learning organizations

PurposeThis study aims to develop a talent selection model for learning organizations capable of connecting two groups, candidates in a talent hiring process and managers of the hiring company, in a reliable process, promoting organizational learning and increasing employee satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThis paper integrates egalitarian principles, an artificial intelligence mechanism founded on stable matching algorithms, and evaluating critical soft skills to enhance recruitment practices within learning organizations. The authors conduct a numerical real-world application in Python to showcase the model’s effectiveness. Five candidates were evaluated for five job positions. Moreover, 26 soft skills were analyzed by the five company leaders, relating them to the requirements of each job position and by all candidates, as a self-assessment process.FindingsThe model promoted egalitarian talent management because it motivates the candidates to choose the preferred position in a company, and the employers hire the best candidate. It is satisfactory for all participants in a company’s hiring process if the parties intend to be fair and egalitarian. The benefits of the process can be considered isolated (parties’ satisfaction) or a part of a company’s effort to stimulate an egalitarian culture in organizational values.Practical implicationsThe information generated by the model is used to refine its selection process and improve its understanding of the job requirements and candidate profiles of the company. The model supports this idea, using the concepts of indifference, stability, egalitarianism and the soft skills required and identified to be more effective and learn about themselves.Social implicationsThis paper discusses an egalitarian point of view in the recruitment process. It is satisfactory for all participants in a company’s hiring process if the parties intend to be fair and egalitarian. The process’s benefits can be considered part of a company’s effort to stimulate an egalitarian culture in organizational values.Originality/valueThis paper brings an excellent future perspective and points to the company’s development of talent retention. The model simultaneously solves the evolution of talent management processes through new technologies and soft skills emerging in the postpandemic scenario.

Towards a knowledge-based decision support system to foster the return to work of wheelchair users

Accidents at work may force workers to face abrupt changes in their daily life: one of the most impactful accident cases consists of the worker remaining in a wheelchair. Return To Work (RTW) of wheelchair users in their working age is still challenging, encompassing the expertise of clinical and rehabilitation personnel and social workers to match the workers’ residual capabilities with job requirements. This work describes a novel and prototypical knowledge-based Decision Support System (DSS) that matches workers’ residual capabilities with job requirements, thus helping vocational therapists and clinical personnel in the RTW decision-making process for WUs. The DSS leverages expert knowledge in the form of ontologies to represent the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). These taxonomies enable both workers’ health conditions and job requirements formalization, which are processed to assess the suitability of a job depending on a worker’s condition. Consequently, the DSS suggests a list of jobs a wheelchair user can still perform, exploiting his/her residual abilities at their best. The manuscript describes the theoretical approach and technological foundations of such DSS, illustrating its development, its output metric, and application. The developed solution was tested with real wheelchair users’ health conditions provided by the Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work. The feasibility of an approach based on objective data was thus demonstrated, providing a novel point of view in the critical process of decision-making during RTW.

Matheuristic for the lot-sizing and scheduling problem in integrated pulp and paper production

Vertical pulp and paper production is challenging from a process point of view. Managers must deal with floating bottlenecks, intermediate storage levels, and by-product production to control the whole process while reducing unexpected downtimes. Thus, this paper aims to address the integrated lot sizing and scheduling problem considering continuous digester production, multiple paper machines, and a chemical recovery line to treat by-products. The aim is to minimize the total production cost to meet customer demands, considering all productive resources and encouraging steam production (which can be used in power generation). Production planning should define the sizes of production lots, the sequence of paper types produced in each machine, and the digester working speed throughout the planning horizon. Furthermore, it should indicate the rate of by-product treatment at each stage of the recovery line and ensure the minimum and maximum storage limits. Due to the difficulty of exactly solving the mixed integer programming model representing this problem for real-world instances, mainly with planning horizons of over two weeks, constructive and improvement heuristics are proposed in this work. Different heuristic combinations are tested on hundreds of instances generated from data collected from the industry. Comparisons are made with a commercial Mixed-Integer and Linear Programming solver and a hybrid metaheuristic. The results show that combining the greedy constructive heuristic with the new variation of a fix-and-optimize improvement method delivers the best performance in both solution quality and computational time and effectively solves realistic size problems in practice. The proposed method achieved 69.41% of the best solutions for the generated set and 55.40% and 64.00% for the literature set for 1 and 2 machines, respectively, compared with the best solution method from the literature and a commercial solver.

Improving Carbon Nanotube-Based Radiofrequency Field-Effect Transistors by the Device Architecture and Doping Process.

The semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) has been considered a promising candidate for future radiofrequency (RF) electronics due to its excellent electrical properties of high mobility and small capacitance. After decades of development, great progress has been achieved on CNT-based RF field-effect transistors (FETs). However, almost all elevations are owing to advancement of the CNT materials and fabrication process, while the study of device architecture is seldom considered and reported. In this work, we innovatively combined device architecture and related doping processes to further optimize CNT-based RF FETs by guiding process or materials with collaborative optimization for the first time and explore their effect on device performance carefully and statistically. Based on more mature random-oriented CNT materials, we fabricated CNT-based RF FETs having three different gate positions of device architecture variation accompanied by suitable doping schemes. The optimized FETs obtained 2-3 times of current density (transconductance) and 1.3 times the cutoff frequency and maximum oscillation frequency compared with unoptimized devices at the same channel length. After transistor-level verification of effect, we further built a CNT RF amplifier and demonstrated almost 10 dB of transducer gain improvement operating at 8 GHz for X-band application. The achieved results from this work would help further improve CNT RF performance beyond the materials and process point of view.

Influence of SLM block support design on geometrical quality of AISI 316 l cantilever features and its impact on post-processing

In Selective Laser Melting, the design of efficient support structures is the key to enable the production of high-quality functional parts exhibiting complex shapes with improved geometrical accuracy. Nonetheless, from a process point of view, supports are waste material that must be minimized to reduce production costs and post-processing. Despite the recent technological advances, support optimization is based on time- and resource-consuming trial-and-error experimental campaigns, while support removal is primarily a manual operation which requires a consistent human effort and consumable consumption. Nowadays, the industry is demanding a tool capable to optimize support design and placement based on part geometry and building orientation, by ensuring high part geometrical accuracy along with reduced timing for post-processing operations. Specifically, the purpose of this experimental campaign, is to evaluate the influence of support thickness and tooth length on the dimensional accuracy of AISI 316 l cantilever specimens in order to form a solid baseline of knowledge for the future realization of an automated algorithm for optimized support structure generation based on both part and process requirements. The experimental results show that the support thickness strongly affects the final part distortion, reducing the as-built geometrical deviation by 72.6% when wall thickness increases up to 0.7 mm, whereas tooth length has a higher impact on post-processing when decreased from 0.7 mm to 0.3 mm, reducing support time removal and consumables usage respectively up to 40.5% and 72.7%. The achieved results highlight that the implementation of optimized support structures ensuring low geometrical deviation and involving reduced resource consumption in post-processing is feasible. These findings provide the starting design rules for the engineering of an empirical methodology, based on thermomechanical modelling, enabling optimized design and implementation of SLM support structures.

Biomass pellets with organic binders - before and after torrefaction

Given the current energy situation in the world, torrefaction offers a promising technique to produce fuel that can be used as a substitute for coal in combustion. The pelletization process can be simplified by the addition of a binder. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of the binders on the mechanical and energetic properties of the pellets before and after torrefaction. The initial material was meadow hay. The hay was crushed and three binders (lignosulfonate, wheat flour, starch) were added – 2 and 15 wt% The basic powder characterisation (compressibility, internal friction, and angle of repose) were performed on all binders. Lignosulfonate had the best flowability and therefore appeared to be the most suitable from a process point of view. Testing were also carried out on non-torrefied and torrefied pellets. The mechanical-physical properties (hardness, mechanical resistance, wettability) were also determined. Hardness and mechanical resistance for non-torrefied pellets was increased by adding lignosulfonate (15 wt%) and flour (2 wt%). After torrefaction, hardness and pellet durability index of the pellets decreased significantly, but still the best pellets were those with lignosulfonate (15 wt%) and flour (2 wt%). Non-torrefied pellets do not have a good resistance to water absorption, but lignosulfonate in ratio of 15 wt% and as well as flour in ratio of 2 wt% have a positive effect on this feature. Moreover, torrefaction has a positive effect on the pellet's resistance to water absorption. The results were supported by FTIR analysis. Last but not least, a simple calculation of the consumption of pellets for heating and hot water heating for a family home is given.

Coaxially oriented PVDF/MWCNT nanofibers as a high‐performance piezoelectric actuator

AbstractControlling the orientation of the carbon nanotubes inside a polymer matrix essentially improves their reinforcement effect even at small loading levels, which is attractive from the processing point of view. We inform the utilization of electrospinning to produce highly aligned small‐diameter polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanofibers where the multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) are coaxially aligned inside the PVDF nanofibers. The coaxially aligned MWCNTs arrange large numbers of contact sites with the polymer chains, thereby providing enhanced interfacial interactions, resulting in the superior effect of the MWCNTs on the crystalline structure and actuator response of the PVDF at low loading levels (0.06 wt.%). An effective α‐ to β‐phase conversion occurred through the synergistic effects of the electrospinning and MWCNTs, the β‐phase content reached 94%. Also, the degree of crystallinity increased up to 50% respecting the pure nanofibers. The bending actuation of the nanofibers was analyzed as the active layer of soft piezoelectric actuators in a unimorph configuration. The well‐aligned nanofibers showed better actuator deflection than the randomly oriented nanofibers. Comparing the PVDF nanofiber‐based actuators in the literature, our actuators exhibited excellent piezoelectric performance with high potential for practical applications.Highlights Highly aligned small‐diameter PVDF/CNT nanofibers produced by electrospinning. Axially aligned CNTs induce a great piezoelectric effect at low‐loading levels. The F(β) was 94%, and the crystallinity increased by 50% at only 0.06 wt% CNTs. Well‐aligned nanofibers showed better actuator response than the random ones. The soft actuators showed a higher performance than those in the literature.

56‐3: Invited Paper: Immersive Gaming Display: 49‐inch Ultra‐Wide (32:9) Curve (R=1000mm) and High Frame Rate (360Hz)

The world's 1st ultra‐wide immersive 49”DQHD (32:9) 360Hz gamming display was developed. In gaming application, not only the higher frame rate, but also gamer experience is taken into consideration. To have immersive picture quality, we proposed ultra‐wide curve with high contrast ratio (>5000:1), and combined gaming feature as fastest gray to gray (GtG) response (1ms), and low flickering performance. In this article, we are discussing the challenges and the solutions from design and process point of view. In addition, advanced structure be introduced to maintain the transmittance and picture quality.

Structure, Process and Outcome Evaluation of Central Public Health Laboratory Performance About Neonatal Screening Program in Karbala in 2022

Background: Neonatal screening is a preventive medical act aims to early detecting neonates affected byspecific disorders that endanger their lives or cause long-term health problems and require prompt intervention. This canresult in significant reductions in morbidity, death, and related costs and disabilities. The panel of neonatal screened disordershas been gradually expanded. Expansion has been empowered with the introduction of tandem mass spectrometry, whichallowed for the screening of up to 40–50 diseases with a single blood spot. Part of the implementation of neonatal screeningprogram must include, just like any other program, monitoring and evaluation task in order to identify difficultiesor barriers to improve procedures and methodologies. This study aimed to evaluate the Central Public Health Laboratory/Karbala Directorate of Health performance in Neonatal Screening program. Method: The evaluation method has beencarried out in Holy Karbala Governorate for the period between the first of September 2021 and the end of June 2022using a check list of standards taken from the National Guideline for Newborn Screening for Care Providers inPrimary Health Care Centers in Iraq. This was to evaluateCentral Public Health Laboratory by meeting the manager employee and evaluate theCentral Public Health Laboratory room.

(Extreme) Polymorphism in Occitan Verb Morphology

Polymorphism has long been recognized as a crucial dimension of the nature of language. One of the merits of dialectology and dialectologists is emphasis on the inherently variable and polymorphic nature of linguistic systems, which are always in a state of relative equilibrium and stability. The most striking features of the Occitan data that will be discussed lies in the possibility of finding various forms in a given cell in certain paradigms; more strikingly, it will be shown that two or three (even four) paradigms for one and the same (tense) verb may coexist in the same variety. It will be argued that if polymorphism is the natural state of linguistic systems, it is also anti-economic from a cognitive and processing point of view. It follows that the diachronic evolution of languages tends to develop adaptive solutions to circumvent the potential drawbacks of extreme polymorphism: “natural selection” leads to the reduction or elimination of morphological proliferation. Of course, before reduction or elimination take place, a more or less extended period of time may elapse during which a preference for some paradigmatic options may arise.

Brief Report on the Advanced Use of Prolog for Data Warehouses

Data warehouses have demonstrated their applicability in numerous application fields such as agriculture, the environment and health. This paper proposes a general framework for defining a data warehouse and its aggregations using logic programming. The objective is to show that data managers can easily express, in Prolog, traditional data warehouse queries and combine data aggregation operations with other advanced Prolog features. It is shown that this language provides advanced features to aggregate information in an in-memory database. This paper targets data managers; it shows them the direct writing of data warehouse queries in Prolog using an easily understandable syntax. The queries are not necessarily in an optimal form from a processing point of view, but a data manager can easily use or write them.

76‐1: Invited Paper: MicroLED Display with Tiling Technology

A 27″ tiling display by using LTPS TFT active matrix structure is demonstrated. With a novel pixel design and tiling technology, the seamless feature is realized by 4 pieces 13.5″ panels with 625um pixel pitch. In this article, we will discuss the challenges and solutions of different seamless tiling technologies from process point of view.

Data Governance Model To Enhance Data Quality In Financial Institutions

ABSTRACT The author concentrates on data governance in research and practice. The author has developed a strong knowledge of data governance through numerous case studies of electricity, retail, telecom, banks, or insurance companies. With more than nine years of experience from both technical and process point of view, the author has become a Data Governance specialist with focus on design and implementation of governance frameworks. The author has given numerous training courses to improve knowledge of the data to derive maximum value from it. Data governance in financial institutions has been significantly driven by regulatory requirements. Data governance standards are complex and lack implementation details. This paper proposes Data Governance Model used in a financial institution. Data Governance Model is based on BCBS 239 and DAMA methodology. The Model enhances practices of DAMA and tailors them to the needs of financial institution. The scope of the Data Governance Model is limited to data governance, data quality, and metadata management.

Turkish EFL Learners’ Acquisition of Psych Verbs and Unaccusative Verbs: A Replication Study on Underpassivization and Overpassivization

The processability account anticipates that learners will make more underpassivization errors than overpassivization errors since passivization entails more processing. Although one study on psych-verbs and a few on unaccusatives examined Turkish L2 learners’ acquisition, no research compared a single set of learners’ acquisitions of these verbs together from a processing point of view. In this regard, the current study aims to investigate whether the processing complexity of passivization influences acquisition of psych and unaccusative verbs. It also questions whether general accuracy levels in Grammaticality Judgement Task (GJT) and degree of familiarity with target verbs are related to their level of accuracy with individual psych and unaccusative verbs. 33 undergraduate-level university students performed on the GJT and a Word Familiarity Rating Task (WFRT). The GJT included 38 items with 12 sentences for psych-verbs, 12 sentences for unaccusative-verbs, 12 sentences for distracters and 2 sentences for examples. The WFRT was a survey questioning familiarity with 6 psych and 6 unaccusative verbs. To analyse the data, a set of nonparametric tests and descriptive statistics were used. The results revealed that learners performed mor
 The processability account anticipates that learners will make more underpassivization errors than overpassivization errors since passivization entails more processing. Although one study on psych-verbs and a few on unaccusatives examined Turkish L2 learners’ acquisition, no research compared a single set of learners’ acquisitions of these verbs together from a processing point of view. In this regard, the current study aims to investigate whether the processing complexity of passivization influences acquisition of psych and unaccusative verbs. It also questions whether general accuracy levels in Grammaticality Judgement Task (GJT) and degree of familiarity with target verbs are related to their level of accuracy with individual psych and unaccusative verbs. 33 undergraduate-level university students performed on the GJT and a Word Familiarity Rating Task (WFRT). The GJT included 38 items with 12 sentences for psych-verbs, 12 sentences for unaccusative-verbs, 12 sentences for distracters and 2 sentences for examples. The WFRT was a survey questioning familiarity with 6 psych and 6 unaccusative verbs. To analyse the data, a set of nonparametric tests and descriptive statistics were used. The results revealed that learners performed more accurately on unaccusatives than on psych-verbs. They did more underpassivization errors by accepting ungrammatical active constructions of psych verbs. Their performances on psych and unaccusative verbs went parallel with their general accuracy levels in GJT while their degree of familiarity with and accuracy level for two verbs do not correlate with each other.The results suggest that such factors as processability and L1 transfer seem to impact the acquisition.
 Keywords:Second language acquisition; psych verbs; unaccusative verbs; underpassivization; overpassivization.
 e accurately on unaccusatives than on psych-verbs. They did more underpassivization errors by accepting ungrammatical active constructions of psych verbs. Their performances on psych and unaccusative verbs went parallel with their general accuracy levels in GJT while their degree of familiarity with and accuracy level for two verbs do not correlate with each other.The results suggest that such factors as processability and L1 transfer seem to impact the acquisition.
 Keywords:Second language acquisition; psych verbs; unaccusative verbs; underpassivization; overpassivization.

Defining the digital workplace: A systematic literature review

There have been a significant number of publications about digital workplace transformation. This is due to technological developments in the last decades as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is no adequate overall definition of the term. This leads to misunderstandings and confused interpretation of the digital workplace, sometimes even narrowing it down to a set of tools or a platform. Given the complexity of digital workplace transformation, there is a need to have an integrated prospective and analyze it not just from a technological perspective, but from an organizational and processes point of view as well. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to review the concept and offer a comprehensive definition of the digital workplace. This includes all the important aspects of the transformation including tools and platforms as well as personal issues, organization, processes and management. The paper provides a systematic literature review of the publications in leading bibliographic and citation bases, starting from Web of Science and Scopus to SpringerLink, IEEE Xplore and Association for Information Systems eLibrary. The review includes not only journal papers, but also leading proceedings, books and other referent publications. It addresses the authors' approaches, perspectives, terminologies, focusses and understanding of workplace transformation over the last decade by a comprehensive review of the state of art of the literature in the field of digital workplace. Finally, a set of recommendations are made to further research in increasingly important subject of digital workplace transformation.

Degradable benzyl cyclic acetal epoxy monomers with low viscosity: Synthesis, structure-property relationships, application in recyclable carbon fiber composite

Degradable thermosets can address the recycle issue of conventional thermosets and downstream materials like carbon fiber composites. Significant advances have been achieved on their recyclability even on high performance, but their processability was neglected. Herein, for the first time, from the processing point of view, degradable epoxy monomers with low viscosity were designed. Ethyl or methyl group was incorporated into the benzyl cyclic acetal structure to obtain three acetal epoxy monomers by the acetalization between p-hydroxybenzaldehyde analogues and triols to achieve diols, followed by reacting with epichlorohydrin. Two benzyl cyclic acetal epoxy monomers with ethyl group are liquid. The viscosity and structure-property relationship of epoxy monomers were systematically investigated from experiments to simulate computation. The cured epoxies possessed favorable thermal properties, mechanical properties and controllable degradability. Furthermore, the epoxy monomer with suitable viscosity was used to prepare carbon fiber composites with excellent performance via vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) process. Meanwhile, the non-destructive recovery of carbon fiber was realized by taking advantage of the degradability of the acetal epoxy matrix.

Exploration of pros and cons of polyetherimide solutions with varying concentrations as the sizing agents for graphite fibers in graphite fabric-PAEK composites

Some specialty polymers such as polyetheretherketone (PEEK), Polyaryletherketone (PAEK), polyetherketoneketone (PEKK), polyetherimide (PEI), polyamideimide (PAI), and polyimide (PI) are the ideal choices for developing high performance bidirectionally reinforced composites that would excel in specific strength performance. However, these polymer composites are extremely challenging from a processing point of view and have limited choices. Most of the time, a lot of compromises are to be made on the fiber-matrix wetting issues. The current research elaborated on a method to exploit two techniques together to opt for advantages from both. Polyetherimide (PEI) solutions of various concentrations/viscosities were used as sizing agents for the fibers so as to wet the cross-over points on graphite fabric and inter-tow filaments. It was expected that the PEI and PAEK would form a blend at the interface, although fiber would necessarily be covered with only PEI. It was also anticipated that there could be an optimum amount of PEI on the fibers’ surface for the best performance properties. Based on the in-depth studies on the performance properties, it was concluded that PEI solution in the range of 5–10 wt. % would lead to the best combination of performance properties. Compared to the classical method of developing PAEK-graphite fabric composites by film technique, the current method of combination of impregnation and film technique led to excellent results.

Complex Crystallization Kinetics of a Mg-Al Hydrotalcite and Their Practical Implications from the Process Point of View.

Hydrotalcites are an important class of layered materials, displaying ion-exchange, adsorption, and base catalytic properties. The crystallization kinetics for hydrotalcites are however hardly available. Nevertheless, as their reconstruction from the oxides (also called as “memory effect”) is considered a synthesis route, this can be used to study the crystallization phenomena. This note looks at the reconstruction kinetics of a Mg–Al hydrotalcite using previously reported kinetic expressions. It was found that high temperature is beneficial if the process is controlled by nucleation. The temperature effect is less obvious when the process reaches a diffusional control regime. For example, temperature is beneficial to shorten the processing time in a nucleation-regime conversion (e.g., 40%). However, to achieve a high conversion (e.g., 98–99%), an intermediate temperature shows the optimal condition, i.e., shortest processing time. The work shows useful side effects of diffusional control. It also highlights the importance of obtaining the kinetics over the entire range for process optimization and, finally, emphasizes that both parameters in the Avrami–Erofe’ev model impact the time required to achieve a given conversion. Directions for further studies to understand the kinetic-process relationships have been highlighted.