Production Campaigns Research Articles

Dividing wall column for industrial multi purpose use

Dividing wall columns (DWC) for the distillation of multicomponent mixtures have received much attention in the past 15 years and have experienced a booming development. Since DWC demand higher efforts in equipment design and process control they are predominantly used in continuously operated dedicated production plants and spread only over a limited number of chemical companies. No open literature can be found where DWC are used in multi-purpose plants. The distillation equipment in those plants, typically batch wise operated, has to show a high degree of flexibility – an attribute that hardly seems to fit for dividing wall columns. Lonza set up the worldwide first multi-purpose DWC on the production site in Visp that fully meets the demands of a steadily changing production environment characterized by several different production campaigns, processes and products produced in the same plant throughout a year.This paper reports on the equipment design and the specific technical solutions that had to be implemented in order to satisfy the harsh specifications of multi-purpose production. Particular attention is put on the modelling and simulation of the column and the control scheme that has been applied. The paper contributes a new approach for setting up a flowsheet simulation that overcomes the frequently occurring problems in convergence and enhances robustness of the simulation.Since the launch of the column several different processes were successfully operated in this equipment. In each single case we directly transferred the process concept from simulation to the plant without piloting. The launch and operation of the column are explained in detail and finally the simulation results are compared to real operation data from the production.

A Tandem [3+2] Cycloaddition-Elimination Cascade Reaction to Generate Pyrrolo-[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,3-diones

An efficient tandem [3+2] cycloaddition–elimination cascade sequence has been developed enabling assembly of the pharmacologically relevant pyrrolo-[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,3-dione chemotype. The strategy involves simple mixing of readily accessible oxazolin-2-ones and pyrrole-2,5-diones in the presence of base under mild conditions, rendering the title compounds in typically excellent yields. Of note, this route allows for installation of three points of diversity and is ideal for combinatorial applications and parallel synthesis production campaigns.

The complexities of complexion: a cultural geography of skin colour and beauty products

ABSTRACTThis article explores the discriminatory and exclusionary nature of many advertisement campaigns for skin-lightening products. It employs textual analysis to examine a television advertisement for the product ‘Fair & Lovely’. The article explains how this particular advert serves to articulate both imperial and neo-imperial discourses. Analysis of the advertisement is used as a basis for a wider discussion of India's ‘fairness complex’ and the complexities of complexion from a postcolonial perspective. The article demonstrates that imperialism – ancient and modern – and neoimperial/globalisation discourses have provided the socio-cultural framework in which associations between white skin and beauty, wealth and success have developed.

Islam , Eco-Literacy and Green Purchase : Evidence from Malaysia

This paper discusses the role of green purchase behaviour based on Islamic teachings and examines the influence of eco-literacy on willingness to purchase green products empirically among Muslim consumers in Malaysia. A survey was conducted using self-structured questionnaires on Muslim respondents of above 18 years age, working, and having green purchasing experience, selected at several major electrical outlets within central region of Malaysia. The study relates Islamic teachings with importance of green purchase behaviour, highlighting the significance of knowledge in practice/behaviour based on Islamic view, and providing an empirical investigation on eco-literacy concept in determining willingness to purchase energy-efficient home electrical products among Muslim consumers in Malaysia. The results and the findings implied that awareness of environmental problems and product characteristics had a significant positive influence on willingness to purchase energy-efficient products while awareness of eco-label did not significantly influence willingness to purchase energy-efficient products among Malaysian Muslim consumers. The study calls for improving the understanding on the importance of green purchase behaviour in protecting the environment and the significance of eco-literacy in guiding pro-environmental behaviours based on Islamic teachings. It also provides insights to policy-makers and industry players in planning interventions and promotional campaigns of green products by improving the awareness of environmental. Further research is required on effectiveness of energy-efficient eco-label as a communication tool in promoting energy-efficient home electrical products among Muslim consumers.

Pilot-scale treatment of olive oil mill wastewater by physicochemical and advanced oxidation processes

The pilot-scale treatability of olive oil mill wastewater (OOMW) by physicochemical methods, ultrafiltration and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) was investigated. Physicochemical methods (acid cracking, oil separation and coagulation–flocculation) showed high efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD) (85%), oil and grease (O&G) (>97%), suspended solids (SS) (>99%) and phenol (92%) removal from the OOMW. Ultrafiltration followed by physicochemical methods is effective in reducing the SS, O&G. The final permeate quality is found to be excellent with over 90% improvements in the COD and phenol parameters. AOPs (ozonation at a high pH, O3/UV, H2O2/UV, and O3/H2O2/UV) increased the removal efficiency and the O3/H2O2/UV combination among other AOPs studied in this paper was found to give the best results (>99% removal for COD,>99% removal for phenol and>99% removal for total organic carbon). Pilot-scale treatment plant has been continuously operated on site for three years (3 months olive oil production campaign period of each year). The capital and operating costs of the applied treatment alternatives were also determined at the end of these seasons. The results obtained in this study have been patented for 7 years by the Turkish Patent Institute.

ICare Capitalism? The Biopolitics of Choice in a Neoliberal Economy of Hope

International relations and global development just got a whole lot easier. Through the conscious choice and purchase of the “right” kind of coffee, bottled water, or t-shirt, now available at one's local supermarket, the caring relationalities of development of the “fair trade” kind can quite easily be put into practice. For some, these practices provide the space for people's “everyday” moralities let loose through their ordinary choices that then works to globalize a form of responsibility toward poor Others (Barnett, Cloke, Clarke and Malpass ). Here, the weekly grocery shopping has morphed into the first line of defense of poor farmers’ livelihoods, clean water, women's empowerment, and international development. With Brand Aid (Richey and Ponte ), with its celebrity- and corporate-brand-drenched marketing campaigns, this “causumerism” has been taken to the extreme. Now, through the purchase of Product (RED)-labeled commodities, it is instead the very real case that saving the very lives of poor, Aids-stricken Africans just got a whole lot easier. Put in rather stark, and exceedingly un-ironic and unproblematic terms, in buying a Product (RED) iPod, “you have a new iPod and you helped save a person's life.” Over time, however, the Product (RED) campaign has morphed slightly and narrowed the advertised scope of whom it saves. Now, RED provides its drugs predominantly to pregnant HIV-infected mothers in Africa in order to halt the spread of HIV to newborn children designed to usher in an “Aids-free generation” by 2015 (Joinred.org ). Thus, in the contemporary incarnation of Product (RED), “a person's life” has taken on more specific meanings and materialities in the even more stable forms of pregnant mothers and children, while the mechanisms of how they are “saved” have remained the same.

Supporting Shared Resource Usage for a Diverse User Community: the OSG Experience and Lessons Learned

The Open Science Grid (OSG) supports a diverse community of new and existing users in adopting and making effective use of the Distributed High Throughput Computing (DHTC) model. The LHC user community has deep local support within the experiments. For other smaller communities and individual users the OSG provides consulting and technical services through the User Support area. We describe these sometimes successful and sometimes not so successful experiences and analyze lessons learned that are helping us improve our services. The services offered include forums to enable shared learning and mutual support, tutorials and documentation for new technology, and troubleshooting of problematic or systemic failure modes. For new communities and users, we bootstrap their use of the distributed high throughput computing technologies and resources available on the OSG by following a phased approach. We first adapt the application and run a small production campaign on a subset of “friendly” sites. Only then do we move the user to run full production campaigns across the many remote sites on the OSG, adding to the community resources up to hundreds of thousands of CPU hours per day. This scaling up generates new challenges – like no determinism in the time to job completion, and diverse errors due to the heterogeneity of the configurations and environments – so some attention is needed to get good results. We cover recent experiences with image simulation for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), small-file large volume data movement for the Dark Energy Survey (DES), civil engineering simulation with the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), and accelerator modeling with the Electron Ion Collider group at BNL. We will categorize and analyze the use cases and describe how our processes are evolving based on lessons learned.

Estimation of operating blast furnace reactor invisible interior surface using Differential Evolution

A blast furnace reactor that transforms processed minerals into liquid iron is the most important link in a steel making process chain. Estimating the condition of refractory shield in a running furnace is important for production campaign planning and hazardous leakage prevention. A method coupling Differential Evolution with heat transfer simulations is developed for estimating refractory inner surface within process real times. The fitness value that drives this evolutionary algorithm is calculated from the differences between temperatures measured from thermocouples embedded in the refractory, and those obtained from numerical solution of the heat transfer equations. A population of different refractory inner surfaces constitutes the candidate solution set. These evolving surfaces tend to become craggy which impact variably on accuracy of numerical solution with significant consequence on the final synthesized solution. These inter-candidate accuracy variations are neutralized by transforming each physical refractory grid configuration onto identical rectangular computational domains using a set of continuity-ensuring elliptic partial differential equations. The heat transfer equation is correspondingly transformed into the computational space and solved within a finite difference framework. A set of practical constraints are imposed on the Differential Evolution algorithm to guide evolution toward the optimal surface that best represents the measured temperatures. Rigorous verification of the various stages of development facilitating industrial acceptance of the method are presented. This simulation-embedded evolutionary inverse-design approach can be used generically for online estimation of unobservable critical parameters of infrastructure, equipment and processes in diverse domains.

A micro-genetic algorithm for multi-objective scheduling of a real world pipeline network

The scheduling of activities to transport oil derivative products through a pipe network is a complex combinatorial problem that presents a hard computational solution. During the scheduling horizon, many batches are pumped from (or pass through) different areas. Pipes are shared resources. The balance between the demand requirements and the production campaigns, while satisfying inventory management issues and pipeline pumping procedures, is a difficult task. In order to reduce the complexity, this problem could be decomposed on three sub-problems according to the key elements of scheduling: assignment of resources, sequencing of activities, and determination of resource timing utilization by these activities. This work proposes a model to solve the sequencing and timing sub-problems, and its main objective is to develop a hybrid solution based on genetic algorithm (GA) and mixed integer linear programming (MILP) to drive batches of oil derivative products through the network. As both techniques (GA and MILP) can require significant computational efforts, we propose the use of micro-genetic algorithms (μGA) that generally guarantee good solutions with acceptable levels of computational effort. The μGA-MILP hybrid model has been implemented and tested on several practical cases of a Brazilian oil company. As a result, the model can provide a set of solutions that means different options of pipeline operations. This work contributes to the development of a tool to help the specialist solve the batch scheduling problem, which results in a more efficient use of the pipeline network.

Historical Origin and Realistic Enlightenment of “Nanniwan Policy” - On the Realistic and Pragmatic Scientific Spirit of Zhu De

Proposal and implementation of “Nanniwan Policy” fully reflects the scientific spirit of being practical and realistic, being innovative and realistic and pragmatic proposed by Zhu De, which has a realistic significance and enlightenment effect on construction of innovative and harmonious society and sustainable development of social economy in the current China.Keywords: Zhu De, Nanniwan policy, scientific spirit, realistic significanceDuring the formidable period of the Anti-Japanese War, in order to resolve the survival issue of soldiers and civilians involved in the war, Zhu De “personally guided development of Nanniwan, promoted the large scale production campaign and made significant contributions to development of production of security of supplies”, (Hu Yaobang, 1986). This is the so-called Nanniwan policy we are talking about.

Mixed Integer Linear Programming Formulation for Aiding Planning Activities in a Complex Pipeline Network

This paper presents an optimization model to reduce the gap between planning and scheduling activities in pipeline networks for supply of petroleum derivatives, so as to effectively operate the plans developed at higher decision levels. Most of the information taken in the petroleum supply chain is unidirectional, from the strategic level passing through the tactical level and finally reaching the operational level. However, unviable schedules are often obtained from an operational standpoint, since operational criteria are not considered when decisions are made at the strategic and tactical levels. In particular, in the supply chain of refined petroleum products, the production campaigns of the refineries are defined for different regions based on the consumer market and no operational conditions related to distribution are accounted at this stage. This fact that may lead to operational infeasibilities. To overcome this type of problem the present paper proposes a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach to validate the refineries’ production plans where operational conditions are accounted for, and as a consequence, a decrease in the existent gap between the scheduled and executed operations is obtained. The proposed methodology is applied to a real world case study of a Brazilian Oil company.

A Mixed Integer Linear Programming model for simultaneous design and scheduling of flowshop plants

Models representing batch plants, especially flowshop facilities where all the products require the same processing sequence, have received much attention in the last decades. In particular, plant design and production scheduling have been addressed as disconnected problems due to the tremendous combinatory complexity associated to their simultaneous optimization. This paper develops a model for both design and scheduling of flowshop batch plants considering mixed product campaign and parallel unit duplication. Thus, a realistic formulation is attained, where industrial and commercial aspects are jointly taken into account. The proposed approach is formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model that determines the number of units per stages, unit and batch sizes and batch sequencing in each unit in order to fulfill the demand requirements at minimum investment cost. A set of novel constraints is proposed where the number of batches of each product in the campaign is an optimization variable. The approach performance is evaluated through several numerical examples.

Planning and scheduling of multistage multiproduct batch plants operating under production campaigns

When plants are operated under stable conditions during reasonable time periods, operation with campaigns is particularly appropriate. The regular operation of the facilities simplifies the production control, the inventory management, the plant operability, etc. A campaign includes several batches of different products that are going to be manufactured and the same one is cyclically repeated over the time horizon. In this work, a mixed integer linear programming formulation is proposed for the planning and scheduling of given multiproduct batch plants operating with campaigns. The number and size of batches for each product, the campaign composition, the assignment of batches to units and their sequencing, and the number of times that the campaign is repeated over the time horizon must be determined. Taking into account this scenario, an appropriate performance measure is the minimization of the cycle time. An asynchronous slot-based continuous-time representation for modeling the assignment of batches to units and their sequencing is employed, and a novel rule for determining the maximum number of slots postulated for each unit is proposed.

Simultaneous design and scheduling of a semicontinuous/batch plant for ethanol and derivatives production

The interest on renewable fuels has greatly increased in the last years. Particularly, ethanol production arises as a good solution to many current economic-environmental problems. Yeast production from the ethanol residuals constitutes a sustainable alternative. Usually, this kind of plants is designed using single product campaigns. However, since yeast degradation is fast and a continuous supply must be assured, the mixed product campaign policy is the most appropriate. Besides, a stable context can be assumed to justify this approach that takes advantage of the special structure of the plant. Therefore, in this paper, a mixed integer linear programming model is formulated for simultaneous design and scheduling of a semicontinuous/batch plant for ethanol and derivatives production. The optimal plant configuration, unit sizes, number of batches of each product in the campaign and its sequencing is obtained in order to fulfill the ethanol and yeast demands minimizing the investment cost.

Differential Adaptive Diffusion: Understanding Diversity and Learning Whom to Trust in Viral Marketing

Viral marketing mechanisms use the existing social network between customers to spread information about products and encourage product adoption. Existing viral marketing models focus on the dynamics of the diffusion process, however they typically: (a) only consider a single product campaign and (b) fail to model the evolution of the social network, as the trust between individuals changes over time, during the course of multiple campaigns. In this work, we propose an adaptive viral marketing model which captures: (1) multiple different product campaigns, (2) the diversity in customer preferences among different product categories, and (3) changing confidence in peers’ recommendations over time. By applying our model to a real-world network extracted from the Digg social news website, we provide insights into the effects of network dynamics on the different products’ adoption. Our experiments show that our proposed model outperforms earlier non-adaptive diffusion models in predicting future product adoptions. We also show how this model can be used to explore new viral marketing strategies that are more successful than classic strategies which ignore the dynamic nature of social networks.

“A Delicious Way to Help Save Lives”: Race, Commodification, and Celebrity in Product (RED)

The Product (RED) campaign raises money to fight AIDS in Africa by helping to sell brand-name merchandise to affluent consumers. This paper examines the racialized representations of the (RED) website and the campaign's use of a consumer–celebrity fund-raising model. Through the analytical lens of critical cultural studies, I argue that (RED) commodifies Africans and “African-ness” under a celebratory guise, and reinscribes a narrative of Africa as a “problem child.” The campaign paradoxically trades on the very disparities of global capitalism that propel the AIDS crisis. It is central in (re)producing the human consequences of globalization, shoring up a symbolic and material marketplace marked by extreme poverty and extreme consumption.

Good Manufacturing Practice Production of Self-Complementary Serotype 8 Adeno-Associated Viral Vector for a Hemophilia B Clinical Trial

To generate sufficient clinical-grade vector to support a phase I/II clinical trial of adeno-associated virus serotype 8 (AAV8)-mediated factor IX (FIX) gene transfer for hemophilia B, we have developed a large-scale, good manufacturing practice (GMP)-compatible method for vector production and purification. We used a 293T-based two-plasmid transient transfection system coupled with a three-column chromatography purification process to produce high-quality self-complementary AAV2/8 FIX clinical-grade vector. Two consecutive production campaigns using a total of 432 independent 10-stack culture chambers produced a total of ∼2 × 10(15) vector genomes (VG) by dot-blot hybridization. Benzonase-treated microfluidized lysates generated from pellets of transfected cells were purified by group separation on Sepharose beads followed by anion-exchange chromatography. The virus-containing fractions were further processed by gel filtration and ultrafiltration, using a 100-kDa membrane. The vector was formulated in phosphate-buffered saline plus 0.25% human serum albumin. Spectrophotometric analysis suggested ∼20% full particles, with only low quantities of nonviral proteins were visible on silver-stained sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gels. A sensitive assay for the detection of replication-competent AAV was developed, which did reveal trace quantities of such contaminants in the final product. Additional studies have confirmed the long-term stability of the vector at -80°C for at least 24 months and for at least 24 hr formulated in the clinical diluent and stored at room temperature within intravenous bags. This material has been approved for use in clinical trials in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Detailed Design of Multiproduct Batch Plants Considering Production Scheduling

Most previous approaches for the design of multiproduct batch plants have assumed the simplest scheduling policy. In order to simplify the formulation and take into account that many times demands are uncertain, they have used single product campaigns to determine the plant configuration and select the unit sizes. From the commercial point of view, this production mode is not realistic: for example, huge inventories should be kept to support this approach. However, when a stable context can be assured, the simultaneous resolution of design and a more detailed scheduling allows assessing different trade-offs. This article presents a new mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation assuming mixed product campaigns. Now, the composition and the sequence of the batches in the campaign must be determined as well as the assignment of batches to units when parallel units are used. Taking into account that the plant configuration is simultaneously obtained, the scheduling problem must be solved without knowing the number of available units and their sizes. Several examples are presented in order to show the performance of the proposed approach.

Parameterizations and Algorithms for Oceanic Whitecap Coverage

Abstract Shipboard measurements of fractional whitecap coverage W and wind speed at 10-m height, obtained during the 2006 Marine Aerosol Production (MAP) campaign, have been combined with ECMWF wave model and Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) satellite wind speed data for assessment of existing W parameterizations. The wind history trend found in an earlier study of the MAP data could be associated with wave development on whitecapping, as previously postulated. Whitecapping was shown to be mainly wind driven; for high wind speeds (>9 m s−1), a minor reduction in the scatter of in situ W data points could be achieved by including sea state conditions or by using parameters related to wave breaking. The W values were slightly larger for decreasing wind/developed waves than for increasing wind/developing waves, whereas cross-swell conditions (deflection angle between wind and swell waves between ±45° and ±135°) appeared to dampen whitecapping. Tabulated curve fitting results of the different parameterizations show that the errors that could not be attributed to the propagation of the standard error in U10 remained largely unexplained. It is possible that the counteracting effects of wave development and cross swell undermine the performance of the simple parameterizations in this study.

The Transuranium Analytical Laboratory's Support for Production of Transcurium Isotopes during Campaign 74 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory

The Radiochemical Engineering Development Center (REDC) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the production, storage, and distribution center for the heavy-element research program of the U.S. Department of Energy. The REDC and the neighboring High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) were built to produce quantities of transuranium elements for use in national and international research programs and since 1966 has been the main center of production for transcurium elements in the United States. In 2009, REDC successfully completed Campaign 74, its latest Bk-249/Cf-252 production campaign. The Transuranium Analytical Laboratory (TAL), located within REDC, provides the needed chemical and radiochemical analyses on a wide variety of nuclear matrixes in support of these production campaigns of transcurium isotopes. Titrations, dissolutions, separations, and dilutions of high activity samples are completed in hot-cells and glove-boxes in preparation for analytical radiochemistry determinations completed at the TAL in support of the REDC's mission. Within Campaign 74, the Transuranium Analytical Laboratory implemented a quick and reliable radiochemical method for the determination of Bk-249 that was used throughout the purification process at key hold points to ensure the delivery of a final purified product.