Today's Industrial Applications Research Articles

Dual-Mode Stable Performance Phase-Shifted Full-Bridge Converter for Wide-Input and Medium-Power Applications

Power converters with an extended range of line voltage are the main requirement in today's industrial applications such as photovoltaics- and supercapacitors-based energy systems. The variation in the line voltage severely degrades the performance of power converters, because of the extended freewheeling interval, more circulation current, narrow range of zero voltage switching, and increased EMI. This article suggests a modified phase-shifted full-bridge converter that cuts the freewheeling interval and minimizes these problems. It extends the input voltage range by keeping the operational duty cycle of the converter high over the wide range of input voltage while maintaining the performance stable. The proposed converter consists of four low-profile transformers having reconfigurable interconnection structure. There are two distinct reconfigurable modes, a series mode and a parallel mode, which can be configured with changes in the operational conditions. The operation of the proposed converter with high switching frequency improves the power density. Additionally, the use of multiple transformers minimizes the heat management efforts and reduces the overall volume of the converter. The proposed work, in this article, is validated in hardware characterization for a wide range of input voltage 100-400 Vdc and up to the load power of 1 kW. The measured energy efficiency of the proposed converter remains stable over the complete range input voltage 100-400 Vdc.

Corrosive Behaviors of Crude Oils and their Effects on Ferrous Metals

Crude oil is an essential natural resource regarding the day today industrial applications within adverse experiences on some materials such as the corrosion on metals which is usually known as the formation of metal oxides, sulfides or hydroxides on the metal surface itself. In the current research there were considered the effect of elemental sulfur, mercaptans, organic acids and salts on the corrosion rates of seven different types of ferrous metals. The chemical compositions of ferrous metals were detected by XRF detector. Such corrosive properties of both crude oils were tested by standard methods and adequate instruments. A set of equal sized metal coupons from each metal type were immersed in both crude oils separately and the corrosion rates of each type of metal was determined in order to 15, 30 and 45 days from the immersion by the weight loss method while observing the corroded metal surfaces through an optical microscope. The initial hardness and the hardness after corrosion on each metal coupon were tested by Vicker’s hardness tester and the both ferrous and copper concentrations in each crude oil sample were tested by atomic absorption spectroscopy after the interaction with metals. According to the results there were observed strong corrosive tendency from Das Blend crude oil than the Murban crude oil. There were found relatively higher corrosion rates of carbon steels, relatively lower corrosion rates of stainless steels and intermediate corrosion rates form Monel in both crude oils. Most of metals showed some higher corrosion rates in Murban crude oil than the corrosion rates of the same metal in Das Blend crude oil eventually.

Multistage multiprocessor task scheduling in hybrid flow shop problems using discrete firefly algorithm

Task scheduling aims to allocate the tasks to the set of available processors. To minimise the total execution time of the application, the scheduling with proper arrangement of the tasks on each processor is important. In real time computing and industrial applications, this scheduling problem is faced frequently. By considering today's industrial applications and needs, this paper considers the multistage multiprocessor task scheduling in hybrid flow shop HFS environment. To solve such an issue, a novel discrete firefly algorithm DFA which is recently developed and motivated by social behaviour of fireflies is employed. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is tested experimentally and performance study is documented. The results of the algorithms are compared with other meta heuristics algorithms and conclusions are presented.

Object Control on Production Line with Image Processing and Five Axis Robot Arm

Developed and developing countries of the world are seeking high quality, low cost and less time parameters for products which produced with evolving industrial technology. Hence, nowadays instead of manpower machine power is preferred for many industrial applications. In today's industrial applications, robots and robotic arms are widely used because of the amount of high load, continuous operation and features such as low error. In this study, the products which are passing over production line classified with the help of the robot arm and developed embedded system software. In this study, 60 products in total which 45 of them have no manufacturing fault and 15 of them have manufacturing defect have been classified with a very high success rate with 100%.

Natural seaweed waste as sorbent for heavy metal removal from solution

Biosorption is a suitable heavy metal remediation technique for the treatment of aqueous effluents of large volume and low pollutant concentration. However, today industrial applications need the selection of efficient low‐cost biosorbents. The aim of this work is to investigate brown alga such as Fucus serratus (FS) as a low‐cost biosorbent, for the fixation of metallic ions, namely Cu2+, Zn2+, Pb2+, Ni2+, Cd2+ and Ce3+, in a batch reactor. Biosorption kinetics and isotherms have been performed at pH 5.5. For all of the studied metallic ions, the equilibrium time is about 450 min and a tendency based on the initial sorption rate has been established: Ce3+ > Zn2+ > Ni2+ > Cu2+ > Cd2+ > Pb2+. The adsorption equilibrium data are well described by the Langmuir equation. The sequence of the maximum adsorption capacity is Pb2+ ≈ Cu2+ ≫ Ce3+ ≈ Ni2+ > Cd2+ > Zn2+ and values are ranged between 1.78 and 0.71 mmol g−1. These results indicate that the FS biomass is a suitable biosorbent for the removal of heavy metals from wastewater and can be tested in a dynamic process. The selected pilot process involves a hybrid membrane process: a continuous stirred tank reactor is coupled with a microfiltration immersed membrane, in order to confine the FS particles. A mass balance model is used to describe the adsorption process and the breakthrough curves are correctly modelled. Based on these results, it is demonstrated that FS is an interesting biomaterial for the treatment of water contaminated heavy metals.

Beyond electronic commerce

E-commerce technology focused on Web-based process integration and management for business-to-consumer transactions (Web servers, HTML, common gateway interface) and business-to-business transactions (electronic data interchange, e-procurement, RosettaNet). With the emergence of XML and Web services, the focus shifted to building dynamic and adaptive e-commerce systems. Many of today's industrial applications are built upon well-known XML document exchange and open standards. Most recently, with the introduction of service-oriented architectures, grid services, and self-management architectures, e-commerce has moved into a new era: applying virtual service components to build Web-based enterprise information systems that automate business processes.

Mathematical Model for the Emulsion Polymerization Reaction Kinetics of Two Phase Latex Particles

Many of today's industrial applications of emulsion polymers require the creation of polymer particles with specifically designed structures. A fair amount of work has been done on predicting and controlling particle morphology, and it is recognized that the reaction kinetics often play an important role in determining that morphology. The present work describes a procedure to calculate the reaction rate for two‐phase latex particles by extending the classic Smith–Ewart concepts to the more complicated situation. The model involves a complete account of radical events in both polymeric phases. Eight rate parameters are necessary to completely describe the system. A particle population distribution is generated to reflect the probability of specific particles to have two distinct numbers of radicals in each phase. Simple statistics on this population allow the calculation of the average number of radicals for each polymeric phase. The model collapses to the correct answers when applied to single‐phase particles and results in the prediction of the number of radicals in each of the phases when applied to structured particles. Several examples are described for core–shell (or inverted core–shell) and hemispherical particles in which the polymer Tg, monomer concentration and radical entry rates are varied. In addition, the effects of radical transfer rates between the polymer phases are highlighted. Such effects are found to be important for some polymer systems and not so important for others. The model is readily extendible to occluded structures. Since the reaction kinetics are concluded to be significantly dependent upon the particle morphology, it is clear that morphology development and reaction kinetics are coupled processes and need to be treated simultaneously in order to produce an effective overall model for two‐phase emulsion polymers.