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Generic Transportation Model Applied To Catalytic Steam Gasification Of Poultry Litter And To Rotary Kiln Incineration Of Shredded Tires, Jennifer Fuller English

Masters Theses

Many environmental issues are related to the disposal of both poultry litter and used tires. In an effort to provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to disposal of these substances, work has been done previously at UTSI in the areas of catalytic steam gasification of poultry litter and rotary kiln incineration of shredded tires. The scope of this research is to develop a transportation model that can be used for either of these processes. The model will be used to determine their economic feasibility under changing conditions including traveling distance, feed rate, and price fluctuations in the sales price of …

Detecting Changes In Global Dynamics With Principal Curves And Information Theory, Sandeep Rajput

Doctoral Dissertations

Two approaches to characterize global dynamics are developed in this dissertation. In particular, the concern is with nonlinear and chaotic time series obtained from physical systems. The objective is to identify the features that adequately characterize a time series, and can consequently be used for fault diagnosis and process monitoring, and for improved control.

This study has two parts. The first part is concerned with obtaining a skeletal description of the data using Cluster-linked principal curves (CLPC). A CLPC is a non-parametric hypercurve that passes through the center of the data cloud, and is obtained through the iterative Expectation-Maximization (E-M) …

Molecular Modeling At Interfaces: Phase Equilibria Of Complex Fluids, And Mechanical Properties Of Nanostructures, Jose L. Rivera-Rojas

Doctoral Dissertations

Molecular simulation is a very powerful technique that allows us to predict thermodynamic and transport properties of bulk and confined phases, as well as phase equilibria and interfacial properties. These properties are often crucial to the design of chemical and related industrial processes. Molecular simulation can predict these properties over a wide range of conditions, in contrast with experiments, which at extreme conditions (e.g., high temperature and/or high pressure) are often very difficult and in some cases dangerous. Furthermore, semi-empirical and empirical engineering models can frequently only be used for the specific systems to which they are fitted – that …

Effect Of Surface Treatment On The Conductivity Of Polyurethane-Carbon Composites, Leina Barros Tocchetto

Masters Theses

The effect of plasma surface treatment on the mechanical and electrical properties was investigated by comparing untreated particulate carbon filler and treated carbon filler in a polyurethane matrix. For achieving this goal, samples of the composites were prepared with different percentages of carbon fillers (0 – 50 wt %) and conductivity measurements, dynamic mechanical analysis, mechanical properties, infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used to determine the effect of surface modification and concentration. The conductivity measurements showed that the percolation threshold was shifted to lower concentrations of carbon as compared to the predicted value especially for the untreated carbon …

Co2 Separation And Fuel Desulfurization Involving Room-Temperature Ionic Liquids, Benjamin Culbertson

Masters Theses

Imidazolium based room-temperature ionic liquids were used to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of energy-related chemical separations. The separations conducted for this work are sulfur-removal from fuels and carbon dioxide removal from flue gas emissions. In the sulfur-removal experiments, the sulfurcontaining compound dibenzothiophene was removed from octane by liquid-liquid extraction, yielding partition coefficients with ionic liquid around 1.5. Attempts to regenerate the ionic liquid using vacuum filtration were not fully successful in removing dibenzothiophene; extractions with the regenerated ionic liquid had a 50% decreased capacity. For this process to become economically feasible in comparison to the currently used hydrotreating, …