Sharif Digital Repository

In the present study, an aqueous root-extract of Acanthophyllum laxiusculum (AREAL) was evaluated for phenanthrene removal from two samples of contaminated soil. AREAL showed a linear solubilization enhancement for phenanthrene with a weight solubilization ratio of 0.05. Batch soil washing experiments caused the removal of phenanthrene with efficiencies of 96.7% and 78% from soils with 0.78% and 2.73% organic carbon, respectively. Desorption kinetics of phenanthrene exhibited a twophase pattern, namely, a rapid release as the initial phase and a slower removal as a subsequent phase. A two-compartment exponential model could adequately represent the two phases of the kinetic pattern of... 

In the light of the novel physical-chemical properties of supercritical water as a green reaction medium, we studied the synthesis of deuterated benzene in supercritical heavy water, in the presence of sodium deutroxide, as a catalyst. The effects of operational parameters including temperature, time, pressure (density), catalyst amount and benzene/D2O volumetric ratio on the degree of deuteriation (D%) and deuterated benzene yield were investigated extensively and the conditions for the highest degree of deuteration and product yield, were optimized. Furthermore, because of the importance of the pressure of solution inside the reaction medium on the H/D exchange process as well as the... 

Modern sensors consist of arrays of detectors specially arranged to enhance precision, capabilities, and field of view (FOV). Sensor arrays can have multiple functionalities, such as the simultaneous detection of position and motion. We use a linear sensor model and develop an optimization method to design an array of photodiodes. Our objective function minimizes bias and variance estimations. We introduce a maximum likelihood technique to approximate and determine the bias caused by measurement errors, and verify our theory by statistically complete simulations. We apply our theory to design an optimal sun sensor. The sensor has a predefined conical FOV, and its accuracy is controlled by a... 

Gas turbine hot-section parts can be very expensive components with a finite lifetime. Their durability is strongly dependent on the operating service conditions which control the maintenance intervals and associated expenses. Blade damage is the most frequent reason for failures in gas turbine engines and also oxidation is one of the most critical degradation mechanisms when the power system operates in partially loading condition. This paper describes the methodology of oxidation life assessment for uncoated and coated blades with various metallic coatings in the first stage of a typical gas turbine engine. The resultant weight-change curves were validated by comparing them with the... 

After proposing a semi-analytical solution for swirl laminar flow, macroscopic characteristics of open-end pressure-swirl injector including discharge coefficient and spray cone angle are calculated. In the presence of air core of the axial region inside the injector, the laminar rotational flow equations are simplified, and with the assumption of the quasi-developed axial flow along the nozzle, the equations are iteratively solved employing separation of variables method. The accuracy of the proposed semi-analytical solution is compared by some numerical and experimental results on an open-end injector. The validity of quasi-developed flow defined in the present work is confirmed based on... 

In this article, experimental and numerical investigations are performed to study a thermogravitational column (TGC) for the separation of toluene/n-heptane mixture. This research has tried to determine the main significant parameters and their effects on the performance of the process. In experimental examinations, the influence of the main parameters such as feed flow rate, cut and temperature gradient on the performance of the TGC efficiency is studied. In addition, computational fluid dynamics is used to simulate the separation process in this review. The response surface methodology (RSM) was also applied to minimize the number of runs and investigate the optimum operating conditions.... 

The increment of using fossil fuels has caused many perilous environmental problems such as acid precipitation, global climate change and air pollution. More than 50% of the energy that is used in the world is wasted as heat. Recovering the wasted heat could increase the system efficiency and lead to lower fuel consumption and CO2 production. Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) which is a reliable technology to efficiently convert low and medium temperature heat sources into electricity, has been known as a promising solution to recover the waste heat. There are numerous studies about ORC technology in a wide range of application and condition. The main objective of this paper is to presents a... 

Nickel nanoparticles supported on MgO-Al2O3 and Al2O3 were synthesized by an impregnation method using dinitrobisethylenediamine nickel and nickel nitrate hexahydrate as precursors and were used as catalysts for CO methanation. Different MgO contents (1.5-11.25 wt %) were employed for the preparation of supports, and NiO loadings were in the range of 10-40 wt %. The optimum catalyst prepared from proper amounts of MgO (∼2 wt %) and NiO loading (20 wt %) with [Ni(en)2(H2O)2](NO3)2 as precursor and a mesoporous support with a wide range of mesopores resulted in highly dispersed nickel nanoparticles that exhibited moderate metal-support interactions, lower acidic surface sites, and enhanced... 

Asphaltene which cover range of 1% to over 10% of oil by weight, is well-known as most problematic part of oil that can deposit during production in reservoir, well tubing, and surface production lines, and consequently impose a serious restriction on production which in turn increases total cost of entire operation. Through decades an extensive research has been performed in order to identify asphaltene molecular structure, its behavior at different condition, and its separation mechanism from oil. One of most critical parameter associated with asphaltene precipitation modeling is flocculated asphaltene weight percentage in oil at given operation condition. In this study, to eliminate cost... 

Polyaniline nanofiltration membranes were synthesized to examine a potential candidate for application of solvent recovery from lube oil. An integrally skinned polyaniline membrane was cast on a woven polyester fabric and then was chemically crosslinked with glutaraldehyde in order to further increase the membranes resistant in a methyl ethyl ketone and toluene mixture. Subsequently, membrane performance was tested under different operational conditions. The operation pressure was fixed at 35 bar and was held constant for all of the tests. The membrane demonstrated a permeate flux of 10 l/(m2 h) and oil rejection of 69%. Abbreviations: PANi: Polyaniline; PI: polyimide; MEK: methyl ethyl... 

Three-dimensional analysis of combustion chambers in industrial gas turbines suffers from lack of simple and accurate reduced mechanisms for oxidation of hydrocarbon fuels. Here, an integrated procedure is introduced based on a differential evolution optimization technique. The procedure is flexible and modular and allows optimization of many rate parameters of a multistep global mechanism based on many different combustion criteria and inlet or operational conditions. The procedure uses any selected chemical reactor model and any reference combustion mechanism provided. Sample design criteria used here are flame temperature, ignition delay time, and concentration of selected species,... 

Asphaltene precipitation is known as one of the challenging problems in petroleum industries which have significant effects on production such as formation damage and wellbore plugging. To solve this problem, calculation of precipitated asphaltene becomes highlighted so in the present study a novel approach is proposed based on ANFIS algorithm to estimate precipitated asphaltene in terms of dilution ration, carbon number of precipitants and temperature. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is applied to optimize ANFIS algorithm parameters. The proposed model was evaluated based on statistical parameters and the calculated R2, AARD and RMSE for the total data are 0.90309, 9.4908 and... 

This paper deals with reconstruction of conventional combined cooling and power (CCCP) cycle for producing simultaneous power and cooling outputs for triple applications of freezing, refrigeration and air-conditioning. The proposed systems are integrated from organic Rankine cycles (ORCs) and an ejector refrigeration cycle (ERC). Single- and multi-objective optimisations of the proposed systems are conducted from energy, exergy and exergoeconomic viewpoints, using genetic algorithm (GA). The results of optimisation revealed that the thermal efficiency of the basic triple-evaporator CCP (B-TECCP) and regenerative TECCP (R-TECCP) systems can be improved by 7.48% and 6.23%, respectively,... 

This article presents a method for determination of meshing force distribution on contact region of spur gear teeth. In this method it is assumed that there are inter-connected springs on the teeth profile. These springs treat as capacitive fields. The compliance matrices of these fields are determined from the results of finite element analysis done on 3-D model of a gear. The tooth compliance matrix is used as a reference data to determine the tooth deformations for any meshing situation. The meshing force distribution is calculated using this reference data and Hertz theory for contacting bodies. The results of this analysis help in stress analysis under real operation conditions and more... 

The reliability analysis of defective pipes, which operate under creep-fatigue loading conditions has been studied. An austenitic stainless steel pipe containing an axially external semi-elliptical surface crack, subjected to variable internal pressure at elevated temperature has been considered as the benchmark problem. Different parameters in material behavior, geometry parameters, and operational condition have been assumed as random variables in the probabilistic assessments. The reliability of the cracked pipes have been evaluated at various operation times, using different reliability methods. Sensitivity analyses have been conducted to investigate the importance measure of the random... 

Polyaniline nanofiltration membranes were synthesized to examine a potential candidate for application of solvent recovery from lube oil. An integrally skinned polyaniline membrane was cast on a woven polyester fabric and then was chemically crosslinked with glutaraldehyde in order to further increase the membranes resistant in a methyl ethyl ketone and toluene mixture. Subsequently, membrane performance was tested under different operational conditions. The operation pressure was fixed at 35 bar and was held constant for all of the tests. The membrane demonstrated a permeate flux of 10 l/(m 2  h) and oil rejection of 69%. Abbreviations: PANi: Polyaniline; PI: polyimide; MEK: methyl ethyl... 

Transformer turn-to-turn fault (TTF) is one of the most difficult failures to detect. The negative sequence percentage differential current (NSPD) and extended park vectors approach (EPVA) are the two most promising methods for detection of the TTF inception. In this paper, in order to evaluate the performance of these methods, various experimental tests are carried out to detect the TTF initiation on the winding of the transformer under different operating conditions such as: No-load operation, when an external fault or an open conductor fault is also occurred. The results show that the setting of the proper thresholds plays the main role in the reliable and secure performance of NSPD and... 

Operational modal analysis techniques classically have been developed based on the assumption that the input to the system is a stationary white noise. While, in many practical cases, the systems are excited by combination of white noise and colored noises (harmonic excitations). Consequently, in conditions where non-white noises are present, the existing OMA methods cannot completely distinguish between the system poles and the induced poles due to colored noises. In order to overcome this weakness of OMA methods, some researches have been conducted in the field. In this paper, a new method is proposed for identifying the modal parameters of the system under the unknown colored noises,... 

Supersonic separators are used in gas separation processes such as dehumidification of humid air due to high performance and its good pressure recovery. In the present study, a comprehensive numerical and experimental investigation on the hydrodynamic behavior of air as working fluid and dehumidification performance of supersonic separator have been accomplished. The effect of the operational parameters on shockwave's position are examined. The outcomes show that by increasing the pressure level of supersonic separator, relative error between numerical and experimental results decreases from 20% to less than 10%. The effect of the operational parameters and humidity of inlet air on the... 

Applying series configuration of the insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) to the pulsed power supplies offers unique features such as compactness and long life time. In the high-voltage pulsed power supplies, a large number of the IGBTs are required to be serially connected. Hence, the safe operating condition provision for the series IGBTs is an important and crucial issue. The effect of the voltage unbalancing factors becomes remarkable when the number of switches in the series structure increases. There are passive and active methods to balance the voltage of the series IGBTs. In both of these methods, an amount of power must be dissipated to remove the effect of the voltage...