Sharif Digital Repository

In this work, a new control strategy for controlling the particle size distribution (PSD) in emulsion polymerization has been proposed. It is shown that the desired PSD can be achieved by controlling the free surfactant concentration which in turn can be done by manipulating the surfactant feed rate. Simulation results show that the closed-loop control of free surfactant concentration results in a better control of PSD compared to open-loop control strategy, in presence of model mismatch and disturbances. Since the on-line measuring of ionic free surfactant concentration is difficult, conductivity which is related to it is measured instead and used for control purposes. The closed-loop... 

We studied the effects of the surrounding liquid environment on the size and optical properties of silver nanoparticles prepared by laser ablation by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser operated at 1.064 nm. The silver targets used were kept in acetone, water and ethanol. TEM observations and optical extinction were employed for characterization of particle size, shape and optical properties, respectively. Nano silver in acetone showed a narrow size distribution with a mean size of 5 nm and the colloidal solution was stable. In deionised water a rather narrow size distribution with a mean size of 13 nm was observed and nanoparticles were precipitated slowly after about two weeks. In ethanol, a broadening... 

Europium-doped yttrium silicate nanoparticles were grown inside a porous silicon oxide matrix by chemical impregnation of porous silicon layers, followed by heat treatments. The average size of the nanoparticles is 50 nm and they are dispersed almost uniformly within the whole porous layer. Local composition measurements demonstrate that Y and Eu are found only in nanoparticles, indicating a good phase separation efficiency. There is indirect evidence that yttrium silicate nanoparticles are nucleated around Eu ions. The crystalline phase of the particles is pure α-Y2Si2O7, with no trace of Y2O3 or Y2SiO5 or other Y2Si2O7 polymorphs. Structural purity is an advantage for this method, as in... 

Patterns formed by the flow of an inhomogeneous fluid (suspension) over a smooth inclined surface were studied. It was observed that fractal patterns form. There exists a threshold angle for the inclination above which global fractal patterns are formed. This angle depends on the particle size of the suspension. We observed that there are two fractal dimensions for these patterns, depending on the area from which the pattern is extracted. If the pattern is taken from the top which only consists of the beginning steps of the pattern forming, one finds two fractal dimensions, i.e. 1.35-1.45 and 1.6-1.7, in which the first one is dominant while, if the entire pattern is taken, then a fractal... 

The effects of powder particle size on the densification and microstructure of iron powder in the direct laser sintering process were investigated. Iron powders with particle sizes ranging from 10 to 200 μm were used. It was found that the sintered density increases as the laser energy input is increased. There is, however, a saturation level at which higher density cannot be obtained even at very intensive energy input. This saturation density increases as the size of the iron particles decreases. Meanwhile fine powders with narrow particle size distributions have a tendency toward agglomeration, and coarse powders with broad particle size distributions have a tendency toward segregation,... 

Particle size distribution determines the major end-use properties of latex produced by emulsion. Therefore simulation and control of particle size distribution are important in emulsion polymerization. The investigated system is styrene polymerization. The model for determination of particle size distribution is based on population balance, accounting for nucleation and growth phenomena. The population balance equation (PBE) is discretized respect to particle radius. The ordinary differential equations obtained from discretization of PBE, initiator and monomers mass balances and algebraic thermodynamic equations are solved simultaneously via MATLAB programme. The accuracy of the model has... 

In this paper, we have studied the evolution of quantum electronic features with the size of silicon nanoparticles embedded in an ultra-thin SiO 2 layer. These nanoparticles were synthesized by ultralow energy (1 KeV) ion implantation and annealing. Their size was modified using the effect of annealing under slightly oxidizing ambient (N2+O2). Material characterization techniques including transmission electron microscopy (TEM) Fresnel imaging and spatially resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) have been used to evaluate the effects of oxidation on structural characteristics of nanocrystal layer. Electrical transport characteristics have been measured on few (less than two... 

This paper is devoted to the study of some asymptotic behaviors of Poisson-Voronoi tessellation in the Euclidean space as the space dimension tends to ∞. We consider a family of homogeneous Poisson-Voronoi tessellations with constant intensity λ in Euclidean spaces of dimensions n = 1, 2, 3,... First we use the Blaschke-Pètkantschin formula to prove that the variance of the volume of the typical cell tends to 0 exponentially in dimension. It is also shown that the volume of intersection of the typical cell with the co-centered ball of volume u converges in distribution to the constant λ-1 (1-e-λu). Next we consider the linear contact distribution function of the Poisson-Voronoi tessellation... 

Colloidal copper nanoparticles were prepared by pulsed Nd:YAG laser ablation in water and acetone. Size and optical properties of the nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy and UV-visible spectrophotometry, respectively. The copper particles were rather spherical and their mean diameter in water was 30 nm, whereas in acetone much smaller particles were produced with an average diameter of 3 nm. Optical extinction immediately after the ablation showed surface plasmon resonance peaks at 626 and 575 nm for the colloidal copper in water and acetone, respectively. Time evaluation showed a blue shift of the optical extinction maximum, which is related to the change of... 

Zinc oxide is used in functional devices, catalysts, pigments, optical materials and many other important applications. ZnO nanopowders can be produced mechanochemically or solochemically. The synthesis of ZnO nanopowder has been carried out via solochemical processing from an aqueous solution of a zinc containing complex in this research. This is the newest economic method for synthesis of ZnO nanopowder. The results obtained from XRD and TEM show that the nanoparticles are single crystals and the mean particle size is 45.3 nm. TEM micrographs of ZnO nanopowder reveal that the particles have elongated particulate shape with a narrow size distribution. Solochemical processing can thus be an... 

The evolution of primary and secondary γ′ precipitates in the high γ′ volume fraction Rene 80 Ni based superalloy has been examined during aging at elevated temperatures for periods up to 1750 h. While the increase in average dimension of particles followed the cube rate Lifshitz, Slypzof and Wagner (LSW) law, rt-3-r0 -3=kt, there were significant discrepancies between the experimental and theoretical particle size distributions (PSDs) and inconsistency with the kinetic constants associated with the two populations of particles. These differences are attributed to the influence of elastic coherency strains which have not been considered in conventional capillarity driven coarsening models.... 

A photochemical approach on the size control of CdS nanoparticles is presented. CdS nanoparticles were grown using the photo-induced reaction of sodium thiosulfate with Cadmium sulfate, in the absence of any surfactant. Particles of 5.5-11 nm were obtained by changing the illumination time. The dark growth of nanoparticles was negligible, however we found by optical scattering measurements that a ripening phenomenon occurs and the size of nanoparticles slightly increases with time. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved  

Patterns formed by the flow of an inhomogeneous fluid (suspension) over a smooth inclined surface were studied. It was observed that fractal patterns are formed. There exists a threshold angle for the inclination above which global fractal patterns are formed. This angle depends on the particle size of the suspension. We observed that there are two fractal dimensions for these patterns, depending on the area from which the pattern is extracted. If the pattern is taken from the top which only consists of the beginning steps of the pattern forming, one finds two fractal dimensions, i.e. 1.35-1.45 and 1.6-1.7, in which the first one is dominant. And if the entire pattern is taken, then fractal... 

A deterministic model based on the discrete population balance equation (PBE) is used to examine the precipitation of barium sulfate nanoparticles in nonionic inverse microemulsion systems. It is shown that coagulation can have a significant effect at low initial reactants concentration. The simulation results show that a bimodal particle size distribution (PSD) observed in experimental analysis reported in the literature cannot be predicted by neglecting the coagulation effect. A coagulation kernel is proposed that takes into account the effect of interparticle forces through the Fuchs' stability ratio. The effect of electrolyte concentration on the surfactant headgroup area is also... 

In this paper we developed a new mathematical model for the flow inside cascade impactors and via this simplified model, we determined the particle size distribution by a fast and low cost computational method. Using cascade impactors for determining the particle size distribution, one can use comprehensive CFD methods to fully simulate the particle traces. Although the results from those CFD analyses can be very accurate, usually that is not a time and cost efficient routine. In contrast, we showed that by using our proposed calculation we can estimate the particle size distribution very fast and yet with the slight error -comparing to the results from CFD method. Cascade impactors are... 

The effect of α-Al 2O 3 seeds and MgO on the densification behavior and microstructure of the nanocrystalline γ-Al 2O 3 powder was investigated. The required α-Al 2O 3 seeds were produced by 'autogenous seeding' where the seeds were obtained by calcination of the initial nanosized γ-Al 2O 3 powders above its transformation temperature and incorporated into γ-Al 2O 3 matrix. The seeds were characterized by means of laser particle size analyzer, X-ray diffraction, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface analyzer. The simultaneous influence of α-Al 2O 3 seeds and MgO on γ-Al 2O 3 behavior was evaluated by differential thermal analysis, densitometry, and electron microscopy. The results showed that... 

A detailed pseudo-bulk model has been used for prediction of conversion and particle size distribution (PSD) of vinyl acetate in a continuous emulsion polymerization reactor. Finite volume (FV) and moment techniques are applied for solving population balance equation under continuous operation. It is found that both methods can predict sustained oscillations in the monomer conversion, however the FV method matches the experimental data better than the moment method. The monomer conversion and free surfactant concentration are controlled via two single control loops. In this work, a new control strategy for controlling monomer conversion has been proposed. It has been shown that monomer... 

In this paper, the effect of aluminum content on the formation mechanism, volume fraction, morphology and particle size distribution of graphite has been investigated. Addition of aluminum on ductile iron causes some fundamental changes in iron-carbon phase-diagram and as a result, improves the graphite formation during eutectic transformation. The results reveals that aluminum compounds have been formed in the core of graphite nodules, thus aluminum plays an important role in the formation of graphite nodules. Furthermore, it is indicated that an increase in the aluminum content also leads to an increase in the number of graphite nodules and a decrease in the nodules size. By using EPMA,... 

Recently, it was found that ultrasonic wave technology can be used as a method for asphaltene deposits removal from the near wellbore region. However, ultrasounds can affect asphaltene resolution.In this work, asphaltene resolution in several crude oil samples exposed to ultrasonic waves for different time intervals is studied by confocal microscopy. The colloidal structure of flocks is described by analysis of asphaltene particle size distribution to investigate ultrasonic application in solving asphaltene deposition problems.. The results show that for the first 90 minutes of flocculation time, the size of aggregates increases rapidly, and reaction limited aggregation model matches well... 

Dental composites of A2 color using Bis-GMA, urethane dimethacrylate and triethyleneglycol dimethycrylate resins (70/20/10), and silica filler (70 wt%, 75 wt%, and 80 wt%), a hybrid of nano- and microsilica particles, are made and subjected to the following tests: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), particle size analyzer, scanning electron microscope (SEM), and also cytotoxicity. FTIR results show that an increase in filler amount yields to a decrease in degree of conversion. Therefore, there should be a compromise between degree of conversion and the filler amount. SEM images manifest the uniformity of silica particles. It is shown from the cytotoxicity tests that as the...