Sharif Digital Repository

Mixed-matrix membranes (MMMs) are promising candidates for carbon dioxide separation. However, their application is limited due to improper dispersion of fillers within the polymer matrix, poor interaction of fillers with polymer chains, and formation of defects and micro-voids at the interface of both phases, which all result in the decline of the gas separation performance of MMMs. In this work, we present a new method to overcome these challenges. To this end, a series of MMMs based on polyethersulfone (PES) as the continuous polymer matrix and MIL-53-derived MOFs as the dispersed filler were prepared. FTIR-ATR, XRD, TGA, FESEM, and N2 adsorption/desorption analyses were employed to... 

Supersonic gas separator is proposed for methane purification. One-dimensional analysis is performed to examine the design aspects associated with the converging-diverging nozzle and the liquid separation chamber. The results indicate that at low swirl intensities, the separation chamber length is about 100 times of the nozzle throat. Increasing the swirl intensity would lower this length sharply and it will be less than 10 for swirl intensity of unity which is equivalent to a swirl angle of 45°. In addition, a sensitivity analysis of the separator performance to the inlet conditions like the temperature, pressure, and composition of the mixture is carried out. It is observed that increasing... 

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... 

This paper presents a new algorithm for Blind Source Separation (BSS) of Instantaneous speech mixtures in under-determined case. A demixing algorithm which exploits the sparsity of speech signals in the short time Fourier transform (STFT) domain is proposed. This algorithm combines the modified k-means clustering procedure involved in the Line Orientation Separation Technique (LOST) with Smoothed l0-norm minimization (SL0) method. First procedure along with a transformation into a sparse domain tries to estimate the mixing matrix, and the second method tries to extract the sources from the mixtures. Simulation results are presented and compared to the Degenerate Unmixing Estimation Technique... 

Novel PVA/PEG cross-linked membranes were prepared with (0–20 wt. %) of silica nanoparticles. The presence of both the polymers and additive was confirmed by FTIR analysis. The thermal properties of the membranes were analyzed by TGA and DSC analysis. The morphological and mechanical properties of the membranes were studied by SEM analysis and tensile testing, respectively. The gas permeation performances of the membranes were examined using state-of-the-art gas permeability cell. It was found that permeability of all the gases increased with the increase of silica loading, whereas ideal selectivity of carbon dioxide with respect to nitrogen and methane increased up to 10 wt. % loading and... 

In this letter, we compute the variation of the mutual information, resulting from a small variation in its argument. Although the result can be applied in many problems, we consider only one example: the result is used for deriving a new method for blind source separation in linear mixtures. The experimental results emphasize the performance of the resulting algorithm  

Silica composite membranes and BaCe0.9Y0.1O3-δ (BCY) perovskite membranes were successfully synthesized to separate hydrogen in an equimolar mixture of H2, CH4, CO, and CO2 at temperature range of 500–900 °C and pressure difference of 1 bar. The phase structure of both membranes was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was used to evaluate phase stability of perovskite membrane. FESEM images confirmed graded structure of silica membrane and uniform, dense structure of perovskite membrane. H2 permeation in semi-dense silica layer deposited on alumina substrate indicated that permeation in top selective layer follows a diffusion mechanism which is based on... 

Ultrafiltration (UF) membranes were prepared from blends of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)/polyacrylonitrile (PAN) via phase inversion method induced by immersion precipitation. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) was used as pore former and hydrophilic polymeric additive. N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) and water were used as solvent and coagulant (non-solvent), respectively. The effect of different concentrations of PVP on the morphology and performance of the prepared membranes was investigated. Performance of the membranes was evaluated based on pure water flux and filtration of buffered bovine serum albumin (BSA) solution. The contact angle measurements indicated that the hydrophilicity of... 

In this paper an approach for blind source separation in bilinear (or linear quadratic) mixtures is presented. The proposed algorithm employs the same recurrent structure as [Hosseini and Deville, 2003) for separating these mixtures . However, instead of maximal likelihood, our algorithm is based on minimizing the mutual information of the outputs for recovering the independent components. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. © 2009 IEEE  

A deterministic finite automaton (DFA) separates two strings w and x if it accepts w and rejects x. The minimum number of states required for a DFA to separate w and x is denoted by sep(w,x). The present paper shows that the difference |sep(w,x)−sep(wR,xR)| is unbounded for a binary alphabet; here wR stands for the mirror image of w. This solves an open problem stated in Demaine et al. (2011) [2]. © 2017 Elsevier B.V  

When our sources are graph signals, a more efficient algorithm for Blind Source Separation (BSS) can be provided by using structural graph information along with statistical independence and/or non-Gaussianity. To the best of our knowledge, the GraphJADE and GraDe algorithms are the only BSS methods addressing this issue in the case of known underlying graphs. However, in many real-world applications, these graphs are not necessarily a priori known. In this paper, we propose a method called GraphJADE-GL (GraphJADE with Graph Learning) that jointly separates the graph signal sources and learns the graphs related to them accurately, in an alternating style. © 1994-2012 IEEE  

In this paper, a new algorithm for blind source separation in convolutive mixtures, based on minimizing the mutual information of the outputs, is proposed. This minimization is done using a recently proposed Minimization-Projection (MP) approach for minimizing mutual information in a parametric model. Since the minimization step of the MP approach is proved to have no local minimum, it is expected that this new algorithm has good convergence behaviours  

Negative magnetophoresis is a novel and attractive method for continuous microparticle sorting inside a magnetic medium. In this method, diamagnetic particles are sorted based on their sizes using magnetic buoyancy force and without any labeling process. Although this method provides some attractive features, such as low-cost fabrication and ease of operation, there are some obstacles that adversely affect its performance, especially for biological applications. Most types of magnetic media, such as ferrofluids, are not biocompatible, and the time-consuming process of sample preparation can be threatening to the viability of the cells within the sample. Furthermore, in this method, both the... 

Superparamagnetic ZnFe2O4/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) composites containing ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles (with ∼5-20 nm sizes) attached onto rGO sheets (with ∼1 μm lateral dimensions) were synthesized by hydrothermal reaction method. By increasing the graphene content of the composite from 0 to 40 wt%, the size as well as the number of the ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles decreased and the saturated magnetization of the composites reduced from 10.2 to 1.8 emu/g, resulting in lower responses to external magnetic fields. Concerning this, the time needed for 90% separation of ZnFe2O4/rGO (40 wt%) composite from its solution (2 mg/mL in ethanol) was found 60 min in the presence of an external magnetic field (∼1... 

ABSTRACT: Experimental study of the performance of a gas centrifuge can be appreciably simplified if instead of isotopic mixtures, a binary mixture of gases with large molecular weight difference is used. The current study undertook this approach by injecting a 53%–47% (w/w) mixture of “Freon12-Freon22” into a gas centrifuge. The two parameters, whose investigation was the objective of the current study were: the feed flow rate (F), and the clearance between tail scoop and the rotor wall (d). The results demonstrated that changing the scoop-wall clearance has the most significant effect on the cut (θ), so that by fixing “d”, “θ” becomes nearly invariant. The head separation factor (α)... 

In this paper, flow separation control over a NACA 4415 wing section using arrays of discrete quasi-radial wall jets is numerically investigated. This novel flow control method is studied under conditions which the wing section angle of attack is α=18 degrees and Reynolds number based on chord length is Rec=550000. Contours of mean streamwise velocity indicated that quasi-radial wall jets cover wing surface rapidly. Therefore, arranging them in a spanwise row can be an effective way in adding momentum to the near wall fluid particles. According to the results, if blowing parameters of the jets be chosen correctly, arrays of quasi-radial wall jets would lead to considerable decrease in wake... 

Particle separation has a variety of applications in biology, chemistry and industry. Among them, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) separation has drawn significant attention to itself due to its high impact on both cancer diagnosis and therapeutics. In recent years, there has been growing interest in using inertial microfluidics to separate micro/nano particles based on their sizes. This technique offers label-free, high-throughput and efficient separation and can be easily fabricated. However, further improvements are needed for potential clinical applications. In this study, a novel inertial separation technique using spiral microchannel having stair-like cross section is introduced. The...