Sharif Digital Repository

Emission factors (EFs) are fundamental, necessary data for air pollution research and scenario implementation. With the vision of generating national EFs of the Iranian transportation system, a portable emission measurement system (PEMS) was used to develop the basic EFs for a statistically significant sample of Iranian gasoline-fueled privately owned light duty vehicles (LDVs) operated in Tehran. A smaller sample size of the same fleet was examined by chassis dynamometer (CD) bag emission measurement tests to quantify the systematic differences between the PEMS and CD methods. The selected fleet was tested over four different routes of uphill highways, flat highways, uphill urban streets,... 

Feed-in tariff (FiT) is one of the most efficient ways that many governments throughout the world use to stimulate investment in renewable energies (REs) technology. For governments, financial management of the policy could be challenging as it needs a considerable amount of budget to support RE producers during the long remuneration period. In this paper, it has been illuminated that the early growth of REs capacity could be a temporary boost. And the socio-economic structure of the system will backlash the policy if some social mechanisms are not considered. Social tolerance for paying REs tax and potential investors’ trust emanated from budget-related mechanisms -which have rarely been... 

Demand forecasting plays an important role as a decision support tool in power system management, especially in smart grid and liberalized power market. In this paper, a demand forecasting method is presented by using support vector regression (SVR). The proposed method is applied to practical hourly data of the Greater Tehran Electricity Distribution Company. The SVR parameters are selected by using a grid optimization process and an investigation on different kernel functions. Moreover, correlation analysis is used to find exogenous variables. Acceptable accuracy of load prediction is shown by comparing the result of SVR model to that of the artificial neural networks and the actual data,... 

The secretary problems are of types of the optimal stopping theory problems and are also distinguished as well known problems in applied probability, statistics and decision theory fields. The importance of these kinds of problems defines many new conditions which have been discussed till now. The significance of these types of problems in social issues causes to define many conditions which are vastly discussed. In this paper, a new condition of this problem is considered. These conditions which have been performed using a real time method are based on Multi-Agent Systems techniques. In this paper, after evaluating this method, the resulted answers are examined using Multi-Agent system... 

The isomerization of D-glucose to D-fructose using the immobilized glucose isomerase, as a typical model system of solid-liquid enzyme reactions has been carried out in a novel type of two-impinging-jets reactor (TIJR), which is characterized by a rotating inner cylinder in a stationary one. Because of the impinging process, turbulence, and complex trajectory of the solid particles within the reactor, the fractional conversion of glucose obtained in the TIJR increased dramatically compared to that obtained by conventional reaction systems. A compartment model was considered to describe the pattern of flow [residence time distribution (RTD) of solid particles] within the TIJR. Considering... 

A compartment model was developed to describe the flow pattern of gas within the dense zone of a membrane-assisted fluidized-bed reactor (MAFBR), in the bubbling mode of operation for steam reforming of methane both with (adiabatic) and without (isothermal) entering oxygen. Considering such a flow pattern and using the experimental data reported elsewhere [Roy S, Pruden BB, Adris AM, Grace JR, Lim CJ. Fluidized-bed steam methane reforming with oxygen input. Chem Eng Sci 1999; 54:2095-2102.], the parameters of the developed model (i.e., number of compartments for the bubble and emulsion phases) were determined and fair agreements were obtained between model predictions and experimental data.... 

In this article, the transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) to biodiesel fuel (BDF) has been studied using KOH loaded on millimetric γ-Al2O3 particles in a novel type of two-impinging-jets reactor (TIJR). The effects of various parameters such as KOH loading (wt %), catalyst loading, and methanol-to-oil molar ratio on the BDF yield were studied. The catalyst particles with a KOH loading of 25 wt % at appropriate reaction conditions (i.e., catalyst loading = 4 wt % and methanol-to-oil molar ratio = 15:1) and at 65 °C were used in the TIJR. The influences of various operating and design parameters such as jet Reynolds number value, feed flow rate, jet diameter, and the internozzle... 

Mixed-convection flow of nanofluids inside a vertical rectangular channel partially filled with open-cell metal foam and subject to a constant wall-heat flux was investigated experimentally and numerically. Al2O3-water nanofluids with different concentrations were prepared and their stability was examined using UV-Vis spectroscopy. Dynamic light scattering method was used to determine particle size distribution of the nanofluid feedstock. The outlet temperature and pressure drop were measured for different nanofluid flow rates (i.e., Reynolds number values). In the numerical section, a two-dimensional volume-averaged form of the governing equations was used. The velocity and temperature... 

In this article, transient hydrodynamic and heat-transfer behavior of Newtonian fluid flow in vertical parallel-plate channels partially filled with a porous medium has been investigated numerically. In this regard, the influences of macroscopic local inertial term and the viscous heating due to the viscous dissipation were taken into account in the momentum equations of porous region and the thermal energy equations, respectively. Moreover, Forchheimer-Brinkman extended Darcy model was used to model fluid flow in the porous region. In addition, an analytical solution was obtained in the case of negligible Brinkman and Forchheimer number values at the steady-state conditions. The predicted... 

In this article, adsorption of p-xylene, m-xylene, o-xylene, and ethylbenzene on Na-BETA type zeolite in liquid phase at 15, 25, and 35 °C has been studied and the single adsorption isotherms have been obtained and reported. The Langmuir isotherm model was used to describe the experimental adsorption isotherm data. It was found that p-xylene is more strongly adsorbed component followed by ethylbenzene, m-xylene and o-xylene. This means that this adsorbent is selective for p-xylene. Using Langmuir isotherm model, the saturation adsorption capacities of the adsorbent were obtained as follows 143 mg/g for p-xylene, 105 mg/g for ethylbenzene, 83 mg/g for m-xylene, and 68 mg/g for o-xylene at 25... 

The mass-transfer characteristics of a new type of two-impinging-streams reactor (TISR) was studied by means of sodium sulfite solution as the liquid phase and air as the gas phase, in the presence and absence of various types of surface-active agents (SAAs). The influences of anionic, cationic, and nonionic SAAs on the specific interfacial area and overall volumetric mass-transfer coefficient obtained in the TISR were investigated. It was found that the presence of a little amount of the above-mentioned contaminants increases the specific interfacial area and decreases the overall volumetric mass-transfer coefficient. On the basis of the experimental results obtained for various types of... 

Heterogeneous solid catalysts comprising CaO and ZrO 2 mixed oxides with various Ca-to-Zr molar ratios were synthesized by means of coprecipitation method. These synthesized mixed oxide catalysts were used for the transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) as feedstock with methanol to produce biodiesel fuel (BDF) at 65 °C and 1 atm. The influences of Ca-to-Zr molar ratio, catalyst loading, methanol-to-oil molar ratio, and the reaction time on the BDF yield were carefully investigated. In addition, the stability of prepared solid catalysts was studied. These catalysts were characterized by using techniques of X-ray diffraction, X-ray florescence, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, surface... 

In this article, mixed-convective heat transfer of nanofluids in a vertical channel partially filled with highly porous medium was studied. In the porous region, the Brinkman-Forchheimer extended Darcy model was used to describe the fluid flow pattern. Different viscous dissipation models were also applied to account for viscous heating. At the porous medium-fluid interface, interfacial coupling conditions for the fluid velocity and temperature were used to derive the analytical solution using a two-parameter perturbation method. The model used for the nanofluids incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. With constant wall temperature, velocity and temperature profiles... 

In this article, 3D modeling and simulation of bubbling fluidized beds has been conducted using various drag models, and the model predictions were validated against reported experimental data and 2D simulation results. In this regard, different drag models reported in the literature including Gidaspow, Syamlal-O'Brien, Hill-Koch-Ladd, and Wen-Yu were applied. A standard Two-Fluid Model (TFM) closed by the Kinetic Theory of Granular Flows (KTGF) was used to simulate bubbling gas-solid fluidized beds. Excellent agreements between the simulation results and experimental data, concerning bed expansion ratio, gas volume fraction, and time-averaged particles velocity, were found over a wide range... 

A numerical study was conducted on the transient behavior of a hydrodynamically fully developed, laminar flow of power-law fluids in the thermally developing entrance region of circular ducts with taking into account the effects of viscous dissipation, axial conduction, and variations of viscosity with temperature. In this regard, the unsteady-state thermal energy and momentum equations were solved numerically using a finite-difference method, whereas the steady-state thermal energy equation with constant wall heat flux as the boundary condition was solved analytically as the initial condition of the former. The numerical procedure used in the present work was validated with an analytical... 

The aim of this research was to synthesize barium sulfate nanoparticles using a spinning disk reactor. Barium sulfate was produced by continuously pumping two aqueous solutions of BaCl2 and Na2SO 4, respectively, into the chamber of spinning disk reactor, where a liquid-liquid reaction took place to form BaSO4. The influences of various operating and design parameters such as the initial supersaturation, disk rotation speed, free ion ratio, and the disk diameter on the size of barium sulfate nanoparticles were carefully investigated. By varying the supersaturation and disk rotation speed, a broad range of particle size ranging from micrometer sizes down to nanoparticles smaller than 100 nm... 

In this article, a standard 2D Two-Fluid Model (TFM) closed by the kinetic theory of granular flow (KTGF) has been applied to simulate the behavior of tapered-in and tapered-out fluidized bed reactors. In this regard, two types of chemical reactions with gas volume reduction and increase were considered to investigate the effects of initial static bed height on the fractional conversion and bed pressure drop. To validate the CFD model predictions, the results of hydrodynamic simulations concerning bed pressure drop and bed expansion ratio were compared against experimental data reported in the literature and excellent agreement was observed. The obtained simulation results clearly indicate... 

In this article, the effects of nonuniform magnetic fields on the hydrodynamics and heat transfer from a heated sphere to its surrounding ferrofluid flow have been investigated. Kelvin body forces originate from the nonuniformity of the applied magnetic field and can generate the vortices behind the sphere leading to a considerable change in the velocity and temperature fields. The applied magnetic field disturbs the thermal boundary layer and decreases heat-transfer resistance, leading to a significant enhancement in the heat-transfer coefficient. Variations of the local and average Nusselt number value (Nu), separation angle, recirculation length, and drag coefficient were considered to...