Sharif Digital Repository

Silica nanoparticles, which have a broad range of sizes and specific surface features, have been used in many industrial applications. This study was conducted to synthesize monodispersed silica nanoparticles directly from tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) with an alkaline catalyst (NH3) based on the sol–gel process and the Stöber method. A central composite design (CCD) is used to build a second-order (quadratic) model for the response variables without requiring a complete threelevel factorial experiment. The process was then optimized to achieve the minimum particle size with the lowest concentration of TEOS. Dynamic light scattering and scanning electron microscopy were used to analyze the... 

An efficient material is required to develop effective removal systems with high flexibility and low cost for capturing toxic ions. In this study, a synthesized lanthanum oxide-modified bentonite (B-La) adsorbent was used for the adsorption of As(V) and Pb(II). The prepared material, B-La, shows a feather shape surface with a 25 nm average particle size and was also confirmed by SEM and TEM. Texture and chemical composition confirmed by XRD and FTIR. From the XPS investigation, the underlying mechanism for Pb(II) and As(V) removal was investigated, and the production of B-La-As(V) and B-La-Pb(II) inner-sphere complexation was shown to be the dominating pathway. As per the pH effect studies,... 

Some tetra substituted derivatives of 2,2′ and 4,4′ bithiazoles have been synthesized and characterized in various solvents  

We report here a newly and facile synthesis of the phospholipids@gold nanoflowers (AuNFs) from intact cells as a new biomimetic organic-inorganic hybrid. The most appealing feature of this nanostructure is its dual-absorbing peak in near infrared (NIR) and visible region of spectra, which makes them a potential light-sensitive agent for reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced apoptosis. Here, in contrast to previous studies, proposed nanostructures are synthesized in a one-pot reaction using phospholipids present in living cell membranes (as a donor cell) with detectable micro process of AuNF formation. The properties of the resulting AuNFs were evaluated through transmission electron... 

This research presents a technique to recover the dispersion curves of guided-waves by utilizing the inherent sparsity of these signals in the frequency-wavenumber domain. The proposed methodology is a data-driven approach that combines physics-based knowledge with high-dimensional analysis to obtain the dispersion curves of the medium from experimental signals. Initially, a sparse two-dimensional dispersion matrix is constructed using sparse wavenumber analysis. Then, B-splines are fitted to non-zero elements of this matrix to establish an initial estimate of the dispersion curve parameters. These parameters are further optimized using the quasi-Newton algorithm to improve the accuracy of... 

This paper presents an effective control scheme in dc microgrids to precisely share the load current oscillatory and dc components among distributed generation (DG) units. The proposed control strategy includes current and voltage control blocks. The current control block consists of oscillatory and dc current-sharing units. The main idea of the proposed method is to share the load current oscillatory and dc components among the DG units based on their rated power, by assigning appropriate output impedance values and droop coefficients to each DG unit. The voltage control block is a multiloop voltage control unit employed to control the microgrid voltage. The detailed model of the proposed... 

Zeolitic imidazole frameworks (ZIFs) provide an exciting platform to design and fabricate non-precious-metal carbon-based catalysts for oxygen reduction/evolution reaction (ORR/OER). Herein, we elaborately design a facile enzyme-assisted synthetic strategy that enables to tailor the ZIFs precursors into structural stable decussation shape, which derived Co nanoislands grafted on decussate N-doped carbon nanoleaves (D-Co@NC) can well retain the interpenetrating nanostructure. Benefiting from the combined advantages of compositions and interpenetrating nanostructures, D-Co@NC possesses 5.2 times higher exposed electrochemical active area than the conventional dodecahedral one, thus endowing... 

The adhesion and mechanical properties of hydrogels used for vascular wound repair often deteriorate dramatically on wet surfaces, resulting in ineffective repair. In this work, a poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide-co-dopamine methacrylamide) nanogel with dopamine groups was synthesized and introduced into a polyacrylamide (PAAm) hydrogel to produce temperature-responsive hydrogels, which greatly improved mechanical and adhesive properties of PAAm hydrogels. Nanogel-reinforced PAAm (NR-PAAm hydrogel) can adhere to the surface of various solid materials and biological tissues through special physical interactions, which exhibited different mechanical and adhesion properties as temperature changes... 

In this paper, a new simple and complete technique of modeling and analysis of a matrix converter is presented based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) of modulation matrix. The proposed modeling method yields a new limitation between the matrix converter gain and its input power factor, which is more relaxed as compared to the limits reported so far in the literature. The SVD of the modulation matrix leads to a unified modulation technique which achieves the full capability of a matrix converter. It is shown that this approach is general and all other modulation methods established for a matrix converter are specific cases of this technique. The proposed modulation method can be used... 

In this paper, the reactive power control of a variable-speed permanent-magnet synchronous wind generator with a matrix converter at the grid side is improved. A generalized modulation technique based on singular value decomposition of the modulation matrix is used to model different modulation techniques and investigate their corresponding input reactive power capability. Based on this modulation technique, a new control method is proposed for the matrix converter which uses active and reactive parts of the generator current to increase the control capability of the grid-side reactive current compared to conventional modulation methods. A new control structure is also proposed which can... 

A matrix converter is a voltage/current source AC/AC frequency converter. In grid-connected operation of a variable-speed permanent magnet synchronous wind power generator, the matrix converter is normally controlled as a voltage source converter. In this control method, the generator-side voltage is synthesized from the grid-side voltage source. However, in the stand-alone mode of operation, the grid-side stiff voltage source is not available, and the input filter of the matrix converter is unstable. In this article, a new control method is presented that controls a permanent magnet synchronous wind generator in a stand-alone mode with a matrix converter as a current source converter. The... 

As an important precursor of crystalline phases, amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), especially ultrasmall ACC clusters, have been attracting great interest in fundamental research, materials chemistry, as well as industrial applications. However, it is still challenging to synthesize stable ACC clusters in water that can be isolated and concentrated without severe aggregation. Herein, we report a facile dialysis method for producing colloidally stable ACC clusters that are well dispersed in water with the protection of specific polycarboxylic acids, which could be also easily deprotected by small-molecule acids like sodium citrate. Inherent proto-calcite short-range order is found to be... 

As an important precursor of crystalline phases, amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), especially ultrasmall ACC clusters, have been attracting great interest in fundamental research, materials chemistry, as well as industrial applications. However, it is still challenging to synthesize stable ACC clusters in water that can be isolated and concentrated without severe aggregation. Herein, we report a facile dialysis method for producing colloidally stable ACC clusters that are well dispersed in water with the protection of specific polycarboxylic acids, which could be also easily deprotected by small-molecule acids like sodium citrate. Inherent proto-calcite short-range order is found to be... 

We study the asymmetric primordial fluctuations in a model of inflation in which translational invariance is broken by a domain wall. We calculate the corrections to the power spectrum of curvature perturbations; they are anisotropic and contain dipole, quadrupole, and higher multipoles with non-trivial scale-dependent amplitudes. Inspired by observations of these multipole asymmetries in terms of two-point correlations and variance in real space, we demonstrate that this model can explain the observed anomalous power asymmetry of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky, including its characteristic feature that the dipole dominates over higher multipoles. We test the viability of the... 

To investigate the gas–solid flow pattern of a combustor-style fluid catalytic cracking regenerator, a laboratory-scale regenerator was designed. In scaling down from an actual regenerator, large-diameter hydrodynamic effects were taken into consideration. These considerations are the novelties of the present study. Applying the Eulerian–Eulerian approach, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the regenerator was developed. Using this model, various aspects of the hydrodynamic behavior that are potentially effective in catalyst regeneration were investigated. The CFD simulation results show that at various sections the gas–solid flow patterns exhibit different... 

Pesticides are widely used to increase agricultural productivity, however, weak adhesion and deposition lead to low efficient utilization. Herein, we prepare a nanopesticide formulation (tebuconazole nanopesticides) which is leaf-adhesive, and water-dispersed via a rapid nanoparticle precipitation method, flash nanoprecipitation, using temperature-responsive copolymers poly-(2-(dimethylamino)ethylmethylacrylate)-b-poly(ε-caprolactone) as the carrier. Compared with commercial suspensions, the encapsulation by the polymer improves the deposition of TEB, and the contact angle on foliage is lowered by 40.0°. Due to the small size and strong van der Waals interactions, the anti-washing efficiency... 

In this study, the enhanced trichloroethylene (TCE) degradation performance was investigated by polyvinyl alcohol coated calcium peroxide nanoparticles (PVA@nCP) as an oxidant in Fe(II)-based catalytic systems. The nanoscale iron sulfide (nFeS), having an average particle size of 115.4 nm, was synthesized in the laboratory and characterized by SEM, TEM, HR-TEM along with EDS elemental mapping, XRD, FTIR, ICP-OES, and XPS techniques. In only ferrous iron catalyzed system (PVA@nCP/Fe(II)), TCE degradation was recorded at 58.9% in 6 h. In comparison, this value was increased to 97.5% or 99.7% with the addition of citric acid (CA) or nFeS in PVA@nCP/Fe(II) system, respectively. A comparative... 

In this study, the enhanced trichloroethylene (TCE) degradation performance was investigated by polyvinyl alcohol coated calcium peroxide nanoparticles (PVA@nCP) as an oxidant in Fe(II)-based catalytic systems. The nanoscale iron sulfide (nFeS), having an average particle size of 115.4 nm, was synthesized in the laboratory and characterized by SEM, TEM, HR-TEM along with EDS elemental mapping, XRD, FTIR, ICP-OES, and XPS techniques. In only ferrous iron catalyzed system (PVA@nCP/Fe(II)), TCE degradation was recorded at 58.9% in 6 h. In comparison, this value was increased to 97.5% or 99.7% with the addition of citric acid (CA) or nFeS in PVA@nCP/Fe(II) system, respectively. A comparative... 

As a problem, generally, energy security components do not interfere with the calculation of the optimal energy supply situation. Energy security indices so-called ‘passive indices’ cannot illustrate comprehensive optimal situation. In this paper, we are looking to find a solution to make a framework of the impact of energy security on energy supply in order to obtain comprehensive analysis of the economic optimal point. Method is based on the competition of energy costs to meet demand during the study period. Threats that have been addressed in the energy security are seen as risky and stochastic parameters in the model. The nature of these parameters is of uncertainty type, therefore,...