Sharif Digital Repository

The capacity factor is an important wind turbine parameter which is ratio of average output electrical power to rated electrical power of the wind turbine. Another main factor, the AEP, the annual energy production, can be determined using wind characteristics and wind turbine performance. Lower rated power may lead to higher capacity factor but will reduce the AEP. Therefore, it is important to consider simultaneously both the capacity factor and the AEP in design or selecting a wind turbine. In this work, a new semi-empirical secondary capacity factor is introduced for determining a rated wind speed at which yearly energy and hydrogen production obtain a maximum value. This capacity factor... 

Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP), as a renewable source heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) technology, has the highest energy efficiency among different heat pump types. One of the major drawbacks of GSHPs is the long-term ground temperature variations as a result of heat accumulation or depletion in the ground. This contribution puts forward a novel ground thermal recovery system for horizontal ground heat exchangers in a hot climate. The proposed recovery system consists of open-loop horizontal Ground-Air Heat Exchangers (GAHEs) that are buried between the horizontal Ground-Water Heat Exchangers (GWHEs). A fan supplies ambient air to the GAHE pipes when the soil around GWHE... 

Alkaline flooding is one of the newest chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. Alkaline generates in situ surfactants when in reacts with acid content of the oil. This economic surfactant generated in oil-water interface, reduces interfacial tension (IFT) significantly that leads to increase in oil recovery by extracting oil from tiny pores. In this study, three alkaline i.e. Na2CO3, NaOH and KOH in various concentrations were flooded in a glassy micromodel to detect displacement mechanisms and compare oil recovery. According to the results, increase in alkaline concentration leads to increase in recovery. However, in this case, alkaline type does not play a significant role. In... 

Today, the production of energy and electricity is one of the major concerns of mankind. Electricity generation by solar energy is considered as one of the alternatives to fossil fuels. Solar chimneys mechanism is based on a natural phenomenon. In this process the solar energy heat up the earth's surface and the surrounding air. Due to the density difference between cold air and warm air, heated air ascends and causes air circulation. In this study, mathematical modelling of solar chimney and governing equations of this system will be discussed. In order to validate the numerical results, upwind velocity in chimney has been compared with a reliable reference results. As well as, the... 

In this study, the authors investigate the performance of optical code-division multiple access (OCDMA) systems with belief propagation (BP)-based receivers. They propose three receivers for the optical fibre channel that provide a trade-off between detecting complexity and system performance. The first proposed receiver achieves a performance very close to the so-called known interference lower bound. The second receiver exhibits a considerably less complexity at the expense of a slight degradation in performance. They show that the third BP-based receiver, which is a simplified version of the second receiver, is surprisingly the same as the so-called multistage detector in OCDMA systems.... 

In this paper, we consider a code-shifted reference (CSR) for the previously introduced internally coded time hopping UWB communication systems in order to avoid channel estimation. We evaluate the performance of our proposed scheme and compare the results with those of the uncoded coded-shifted reference (CSR) UWB system. Our numerical results show the substantial performance improvement when using the proposed scheme compared to the uncoded CSR system. ©2008 IEEE  

On-time delivery of network flows is crucial to ensure the quality of service of deadline-constrained applications. Today, real time applications have various uses in multimedia communications, the Internet of Things (IoT), and 5G (5th generation mobile network) technology. In Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture, the controller has a global view of the network. Hence, it is possible to enrich the features of the controller and/or forwarding devices to support real time communication. In this paper, we propose a firm real time software-defined approach (FRT-SDN) for real time communication and present a novel solution for the real time forwarding/routing of time-sensitive applications... 

This paper proposes a novel and efficient real time network architecture, named RT-TelSurg, for one of the most appealing tactile Internet applications, i.e., Telesurgery. In telesurgery, the patient's vital signs and status and the required robotic commands during the surgery should be received on time. Otherwise, the life of the patient or the safety of the operation is endangered. Hence, transmitted packets should meet their respective relative deadlines. Software-defined networking is a relatively new architecture for computer and telecommunications networks in which the network control plane is separated from the data plane. One way to achieve real time telesurgery is to employ cloud... 

Software-defined network (SDN) is an emerging network architecture in which the network control task is separated from packet forwarding. This architecture can be considered as a suitable infrastructure for fifth-generation mobile network (5G) and Internet of things due to its flexibility and dynamism. In real-time networks, time-sensitive packets that miss their deadlines are considered useless or less worthy. As with traditional networks, SDN is expected to support real-time communications and handle a variety of failures (including local controller, switch, and link failures) simultaneously. This study focuses on real-time communication of time-sensitive applications that operate on... 

As efficiency of PV modules decreases with temperature rise, cooling methods can increase the power output and efficiency. One of the strategies for this purpose is passive cooling by implementing fins to the backside of a module. In the present study, annual energy output of a 50 W panel is analytically calculated in two unfinned and pin-finned cases based on hourly meteorological data for Shiraz, Iran. The results show that with the installation of 2-cm, 4-cm and 6-cm aluminum pin fins with finned-to-total-backside-area ratios of 0.17, 0.27 and 0.55, the power output increases by 1.24–4.16%, compared to the unfinned case. This increase is equivalent to 1.04–3.50 kWh more electrical energy... 

Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer flooding is one of the most novel chemical enhanced oil recovery methods in the petroleum industry. This method has attracted interest due to its remarkable advantages. In this work, a series of ASP floods are conducted on fractured/non-fractured carbonate rocks. The performance of the tests was investigated by various ASP floods consisting of five types of polymers, two surfactants and one common alkaline. ASP was flooded simultaneously and sequentially in four defined scenarios after water flooding. The results showed that although using hydrolysed polymers increases the recovery factor in the fractured medium, sulfonated polymers increase oil recovery even more... 

Background: Nutrigenomic has revolutionized our understanding of nutrition. As plants make up a noticeable part of our diet, in the present study we chose microRNAs of edible plants and investigated if they can perfectly match human genes, indicating potential regulatory functionalities. Methods: miRNAs were obtained using the PNRD database. Edible plants were separated and microRNAs in common in at least four of them entered our analysis. Using vmatchPattern, these 64 miRNAs went through four steps of refinement to improve target prediction: Alignment with the whole genome (2581 results), filtered for those in gene regions (1371 results), filtered for exon regions (66 results) and finally... 

Background & objectives: Malaria is the most important mosquito-borne disease in Iran. It is endemic in south to southeastern part of the country. Knowledge about bio-ecology of vectors will support authorities for appropriate management of the disease. Bashagard district is one of the main endemic areas for malaria in south of Iran. This study was conducted to determine anopheline fauna, diversity and affinity in the area, characterization of larval habitats, and mapping their potential distribution across the district. Methods: The potential aquatic habitats for Anopheles larvae were extracted from Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) image and digital elevation model of the area using... 

CdS nanoparticles were grown using CdSO4 and Na 2S2O3 as the precursors and thioglycerol (TG) as the capping agent. TG was shown to exhibit a catalytic role in the reaction and also acted as a capping agent. It was demonstrated that size growth is linearly related to the temperature of the reaction, i.e.the sizes can be controllably adjusted by temperature. The crystalline phase of the nanocrystals was also dependent on the temperature of growth: higher temperature favours the cubic phase. The pH also plays an important role in nanoparticle growth, as lower pH leads to a higher release rate of sulfur species. At pH as high as 10, the growth rate remains slow even at boiling temperature. This... 

Three-dimensional graphenic adsorbents have been successfully synthesized by hydrothermal reduction and applied for deep removal of dibenzothiophene (DBT) from model fuel. The nanoporous spongelike structure of the graphenic compounds was confirmed using various characterization techniques. Reduced graphene oxide (rGO), carbon black-graphene composite (CB-G), and nickel-impregnated graphene (Ni-G) showed adsorption capacities of 41.8, 46.9, and 43.3 mg of DBT g-1, respectively, and the DBT concentration in the model fuel was diminished to less than 10 ppm. Thermodynamic parameters for the adsorption process evidenced feasible and exothermic adsorption on rGO and CB-G with negative enthalpy... 

We report a new method of growing Mn-doped CdS (CdS:Mn) nanoparticles in an aqueous solution at boiling temperature. The idea is to use precursors that react only at high temperature, in order to gain crystalline luminescent nanoparticles. CdSO4, Mn(NO3)2 and Na 2S2O3 were used as the precursors, and thioglycerol was employed as the capping agent and also the reaction catalyst. Na2S2O3 is thermally sensitive and it releases S2- ions upon heating. The CdS:Mn nanoparticles obtained are about 4 nm in size and show both cubic and hexagonal crystalline phases with a ratio of 35% to 65%. The luminescence of nanoparticles contains a peak at 580 nm, which is related to Mn2+ ions. Prolonged reaction... 

Karst features have caused serious problems in many engineering projects because of their permeability and high leakage potential; a clear example is Lar Dam, 84 km northeast of Tehran in which normal water level has never been reached since the filling of its reservoir in 1980. Sometimes conventional methods of studying karst features (e.g., borings and sampling) fail to precisely reveal their underground structure and this may result in inaccurate design, extensive leakage and creation of sinkholes. In the present paper, an under-study dam site in Lajamgir, Zanjan province, northern Iran is investigated. Ground observations indicated the possibility of presence of Karst caves while borings... 

Bashagard district is one of the important malaria endemic areas in southern Iran. From this region a total of 16,199 indigenous cases have been reported in recent years. The aim of this study was to determine the situation of the disease and provide the risk map for the area. ArcGIS9.2 was used for mapping spatial distribution of malaria incidence. Hot spots were obtained using evidence-based weighting method for transmission risk. Environmental factors including temperature, relative humidity, altitude, slope and distance to rivers were combined by weighted multi criteria evaluation for mapping malaria hazard area at the district level. Similarly, risk map was developed by overlaying... 

Although alkaline-surfactant-polymer flooding is proved to be efficient for oil recovery from heavy oil reservoirs, the displacements mechanism/efficiency of this process in fractured systems needs to more discussion, especially in five-spot patterns. In this work, several ASP flooding test were performed on fractured micromodels which were initially saturated with heavy oil at constant flow rate and different fracture geometrical characteristics conditions. The ASP solutions are constituted from 5 polymers i.e. four synthetic polymers include three hydrolyzed polyacrylamide with different molecular weight as well as a non-hydrolyzed polyacrylamide and a biopolymer, 2 surfactants i.e. a... 

Microscopic and macroscopic displacements of polymer flooding to heavy oil at various levels of salinity and connate water saturation have been investigated. Both oil-wet and water-wet conditions in fractured five-spot micromodel systems, initially saturated with the heavy crude oil are utilized. The primary contribution is to examine the role of salinity, wettability, connate water, and fracture geometry in the recovery efficiency of the system. The microscopic results revealed that the increase in the connate water saturation decreases the oil recovery, independent of the wettability conditions. Moreover, the increase in salinity of the injected fluids lowers the recovery efficiency due to...