Engineering Commons^™

Ginseng Polysaccharides Nanoparticles - Synthesis, Characterization, And Biological Activity, Kazi Farida Akhter

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

North American (NA) ginseng is a widely used medicinal plant. Polysaccharides (PS), the major medicinal fractions derived from NA ginseng root, have been shown several biological activities including anti-carcinogenic, anti-aging, immunostimulatory and antioxidant activity. This work focused on nanoprocessing of ginseng PS for enhancing their immunostimulation. Herein, we have developed a novel microfluidic approach to synthesize ginseng PS nanoparticles (NPs) from NA ginseng root. The microfluidics was found to provide unimodal PS spheres down to 20 nm with very narrow particle size distributions. In addition, the immunostimulating effect was investigated on Murine macrophage cell lines, with the results revealing an …

Analysis And Mitigation Of Temporary Over-Voltage (Tov) Phenomenon In Unintentionally Islanded Grid-Connected Photovoltaic (Pv) Inverters, Md Maruful Islam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) solar systems, like other inverter-based distributed generators, can cause temporary over-voltages (TOVs), especially subsequent to faults and unintentional islanding incidents, and can damage equipment and customers within the host distribution network. Thus, this thesis aims to study the phenomenon and propose corrective measures for it. Thus, the thesis first presents detailed models for a conventional single-stage PV system and a modified single-stage PV system. The conventional system uses a Δ/YG isolation transformer, whereas the modified system, proposed in the literature, assumes a Y/YG isolation transformer that is effectively grounded by an additional half-bridge leg energized by the …

Catalytic Conversion Of Fructose, Glucose And Industrial Grade Sugar Syrups To 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural, A Platform For Fuels And Chemicals, Sadra Souzanchi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) as a versatile and polyfunctional compound derived from dehydration of biomass has attracted increasing attentions in research over the past decades. HMF is an important intermediate and platform chemical, which can be converted into different useful chemicals as well as the promising biofuels. It can be obtained from acid-catalyzed dehydration of different C₆-based carbohydrates such as glucose, fructose, sucrose and cellulose.

In this thesis, a cost-effective process for catalytic conversion of simple sugars (particularly glucose and fructose) and industrial grade sugar syrups to HMF was studied in a novel biphasic continuous-flow tubular reactor using inexpensive heterogeneous …

Controlled Delivery Of Angiogenic And Arteriogenic Growth Factors From Biodegradable Poly(Ester Amide) Electrospun Fibers For Therapeutic Angiogenesis, Somiraa S. Said

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Therapeutic angiogenesis relies on the delivery of exogenous growth factors to stimulate neovessel formation. However, systemic administration of angiogenic factors results in rapid clearance from the site of interest due to their short biological half-life. In this work, we are reporting controlled delivery of a ‘cocktail’ of growth factors, an angiogenic factor −fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2), and an arteriogenic factor −fibroblast growth factor-9 (FGF9), from biodegradable poly(ester amide) (PEA) electrospun fibers towards targeting neovascular formation and maturation. FGF2 and FGF9 were dual loaded into PEA fibers using a mixed blend and emulsion electrospinning technique. Matrigel tube formation and Boyden chamber …

Microwave And Ultrasound Assisted Zeolitization Of Coal Fly Ash, Syed Salman Raza Bukhari

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Coal fly ash (CFA) is a major bi-product of coal fired power plants and is a liability for coal power industry. Coal fly ash has been accumulating rapidly around the globe and has been known to be accident prone, resulting in $1.65 billion in clean-up costs and fines. Given the environmental damage CFA is capable of causing, it is a great interest for scientists to recycle this material. Utilization of novel energy such as microwave and ultrasound has been of research interest for the zeolitization of coal fly ash.

This research produced zeolites from CFA utilizing microwave and ultrasound power. …

Direct Conversion Of Wet Microalgae And Oleaginous Yeast To Biodiesel Using Ionic Liquids, Valerie Orr

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examined the development of an oleaginous yeast or microalgae based biorefinery process. First, improvements were made to the Nile Red assay, a high-throughput method for monitoring lipid accumulation in oleaginous organisms resulting in a significantly more reproducible and accurate assay. This assay was then used to optimize lipid production during heterotrophic cultivation of microalgae on glucose using response surface methodology resulting in microalgae with high lipid content (37.6% wt.). In order to improve the renewability of heterotrophic lipid production, both oleaginous yeast and microalgae were cultivated using pyrolytic sugars, produced via fast pyrolysis of pinewood waste. The effects …

Hydrothermal Liquefaction Of High-Water Content Biomass And Waste Materials For The Production Of Biogas And Bio-Crude Oil, Laleh Nazari

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Growing interest in renewable energies due to shrinking reserves of fossil fuels and climate change concerns have led to extensive research towards gaseous and liquid fuels production from renewable energy resources such as biomass and wastes. Energy generation from municipal and industrial wastes such as wastewater sludge is also environmental friendly way to deal with large volume of waste disposal with the additional advantage of eliminating part of the indirect greenhouse gas emissions from energy crops-derived biofuels.

In this thesis, a novel process for co-production of biogas and bio-crude oil from high-water-content wastewater sludge through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) treatments is …

Particle Agglomeration In A Slurry Bubble Column Due To Interparticle Liquid Bridging, Shona Macintyre

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Particle agglomeration in heavy oil upgrading may occur due to the formation of a secondary liquid phase, known as carbonaceous mesophase. This secondary liquid phase is denser and more viscous compared to the continuous phase and may cause operational challenges. The experimental system in this work consisted of biodiesel (continuous liquid), aqueous glycerol (secondary liquid), glass beads, and nitrogen in a cold-flow, non-reacting slurry bubble column. The effects of the secondary liquid loading, secondary liquid viscosity, and particle diameter on the fluid dynamic behaviour are examined. Overall the addition of a denser and more viscous secondary liquid phase was found …

Mechanism Of Ethanol Partial Oxidation Over Titania Supported Vanadia Catalysts: Geometric And Electronic Structure Consequences On Reaction Kinetics, Dongmin Yun

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Supported vanadium oxide catalysts (VO_x) are used for a wide range of industrial processes. A significant amount of research has been carried on this specific system with the aim to identify the critical parameters involved in catalytic activity. The results on this relative large body of research indicate that the catalyst support plays a critical role in determining the catalytic activity of vanadia and the use of titanium dioxide as support renders a catalyst with superior activity. Studies on supported vanadia on titanium oxide (VO_x/TiO₂) have provided an understanding on support interactions that result …

Efficient And Virtualized Scheduling For Ofdm-Based High Mobility Wireless Communications Objects, Mohamed Hussein Abdelwahab Ahmed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Services providers (SPs) in the radio platform technology standard long term evolution (LTE) systems are enduring many challenges in order to accommodate the rapid expansion of mobile data usage. The modern technologies demonstrate new challenges to SPs, for example, reducing the cost of the capital and operating expenditures while supporting high data throughput per customer, extending battery life-per-charge of the cell phone devices, and supporting high mobility communications with fast and seamless handover (HO) networking architecture. In this thesis, a variety of optimized techniques aimed at providing innovative solutions for such challenges are explored. The thesis is divided into three …

Studies On Nanocomposite Coating Produced By Laser-Assisted Process To Prevent Silicone Hydrogels From Bio-Fouling, Vishnuvardhana Wuppaladhodi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, silver nanoparticles incorporated into polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) were deposited on silicone hydrogel to improve the hydrophilicity of the silicone hydrogel and prevent the growth of bacteria. Two different processes were employed to produce Ag nanoparticles: (1) Process-A is a photochemical reduction; (2) Process-B is laser ablation in liquid. Following that, MAPLE process was employed to deposit the Ag-PVP nanocomposites on the surface of silicone hydrogel. A solid-state pulsed laser (Nd:YAG) with a wavelength of 532 nm at a fluence of 50.4 mJ/cm² was used in the MAPLE system to deposit Ag-PVP nanocomposite coating. Our results indicate that …

Optimal Scheduling Of Energy Storage For Energy Shifting And Ancillary Services To The Grid, Hadi Khani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is mainly focused on developing optimization-based models for scheduling of energy storage units. At first, a real-time optimal scheduling algorithm is developed seeking to maximize the storage revenue by exploiting arbitrage opportunities available due to the inter-temporal variation of electricity prices. The electricity price modulation is proposed as an approach to competitively offer incentive by the utility regulator to storage to fill the gap between current and a stable rate of return. Subsequently, the application of large-scale storage for congestion relief in transmission systems as an ancillary service to the grid is investigated. An algorithm is proposed for …

Fractionation Of Cornstalk Into Cellulose And Lignin For The Production Of Sodium Carboxymethyl Cellulose, Tao Shui

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis project aimed to fractionate cornstalk into cellulose and lignin, and utilize the crude cornstalk-derived cellulose for the production of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose and the lignin for the sybthesis of bio-based phenol-formaldehyde resole resins as wood adhesives. In this thesis work, cornstalk was efficiently fractionated into crude cellulose and crude lignin in mixed solvents of acetic acid, formic acid and water at a solid/agent ratio of 1:5 (g/mL) at 80-100 °C for 120-240 min. The best conditions for organosolv fractionation of cornstalk among the test conditions were determined as follows: mixed solvent of acetic acid/formic acid/water (3:6:1, v/v/v), HCl …

Fermentative Processes Requiring Low Solubility Feed Gases: An Investigation Into Gas-Dependent Microorganisms, Eric W. Doerr

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Two bioprocesses were separately investigated based on their common interest of using gaseous substrates that have low solubility. The first process involved the development of a mixed culture using two organisms capable of utilizing glycerol and carbon monoxide separately to increase biobutanol production, while the second process involved an investigation of different production media used in aerobic xanthan production of Xanthomonas campestris with pressurization effects. It was determined that Clostridium pasteurianum should be used with an organism like Clostridium carboxidivorans or Eubacterium limosum in order for butyrate uptake at 3 g/L to occur with a minimum 0.1 g/L butyrate production. …

Silicon Anode Materials For Next Generation Lithium-Ion Batteries, Qizheng Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Lithium Ion Batteries (LIBs) are a promising green energy storage system with application toward portable electronic devices, electronic vehicles (EVs) and smart grid energy storage. High energy density is one of the most important advantages for LIB, however, improvements toward performance measures, such as energy density, power and rate capability, cycling life, safety and cost, need to meet the different requirements for various applications. It is well known that battery performance is highly dependent on the type of electrode material that is employed. Currently most LIBs are predominantly fabricated using graphite as an anode material. Therefore, finding a qualified candidate …

Hybrid Magneto-Rheological Actuators For Human Friendly Robotic Manipulators, Masoud Moghani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, many developments in the field of the physical human robot interaction (pHRI) have been witnessed and significant attentions have been given to the subject of safety within the interactive environments. Ensuring the safety has led to the design of the robots that are physically unable to hurt humans. However, Such systems commonly suffer from the safety-performance trade-off. Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluids are a special class of fluids that exhibit variable yield stress with respect to an applied magnetic field. Devices developed with such fluids are known to provide the prerequisite requirements of intrinsic safe actuation while maintaining the …

Application Of Molecular Layer Deposition For Graphite Anodes In Lithium-Ion Batteries And Porous Thin-Film Materials, Craig L. Langford

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With climate change occurring because of greenhouse gas emissions, the demand for emission free transportation has led to the development of electric vehicles. Improving the batteries’ cycling stability, capacity and safety have been the leading challenges to compete with gasoline and diesel engines. With advances in thin-film deposition techniques via atomic and molecular layer deposition, ultrathin films can be deposited to control the surface chemistry of the battery’s active materials. This thesis aims to understand two main aspects of molecular layer deposition. First, how it can influence solid electrolyte interface formation on the graphite surface during cycling in a lithium-ion …

Short-Term Deflections Of Reinforced Concrete Beams, Caitlin Mancuso

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Excessive deflection of concrete beams is a recurring serviceability problem. Provisions in current building codes, CSA A23.3-14 and ACI 318-14, account for some but not all of the contributing factors. The effect of loading concrete members at very young ages on the associated deflections remains uncertain.

Concrete stress-strain data reported by others are used to investigate if conventional stress-strain relationships, and empirical equations in A23.3-14 for tensile strength and elastic modulus are accurate for young concretes. Moment-curvature analyses based on conventional simplifying approximations used for flexural analysis are performed. For concretes less than one day old, the conventional relationships and …

Passive Acoustic Emissions In A V-Blender, Allison Crouter

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The pharmaceutical manufacturing process consists of a number of batch steps; each step must be monitored and controlled to ensure quality standards are met. The development of process analytical technologies (PAT) can improve product monitoring with the aim of increasing efficiency, product quality and consistency and creating a better understanding of the manufacturing process.

This work investigates the feasibility of using passive acoustic emissions (PAE) to monitor particulates in a V-blender. An accelerometer was attached to the lid of a V-blender to measure vibrations from the tumbling solids. A wavelet filter removed the oscillations in the signals from the motion …

A Novel Composite Material-Based Computational Model For Left Ventricle Biomechanics Simulation, Seyyed Mohammad Hassan Haddad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To model cardiac mechanics effectively, various mechanical characteristics of cardiac muscle tissue including anisotropy, hyperelasticity, and tissue active contraction characteristics must be considered. Some of these features cannot be implemented using commercial finite element (FE) solvers unless additional custom-developed computer codes/subroutines are appended. Such codes/subroutines are unavailable for the research community. Accordingly, the overarching objective of this research is to develop a novel LV mechanics model which is implementable in commercial FE solvers and can be used effectively within inverse FE frameworks towards cardiac disease diagnosis and therapy. This was broken down into a number of objectives. The first objective …

Production Of Bio-Based Phenol Formaldehyde Foams, Bing Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Considering the declining non-renewable fossil resources, there is increasing interest in the development of more environmentally conscious, sustainable and cost-effective substitutes for chemical production. Lignin, a main component in lignocellulosic biomass, has been considered to be a potential substitute for petroleum-based phenol due to its phenolic structure.

This PhD dissertation aimed at producing bio-based phenol formaldehyde (BPF) foams using bio-phenols, including but not limited to, kraft lignin (KL), organosolv lignin (OL), hydrolysis lignin (HL), and bio-crude oil from white birth bark. The challenge of the existing process of producing BPF foams is that a low phenol substitution ratio, generally less …

A Digital Game Maturity Model, Saiqa Aleem

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Game development is an interdisciplinary concept that embraces artistic, software engineering, management, and business disciplines. Game development is considered as one of the most complex tasks in software engineering. Hence, for successful development of good-quality games, the game developers must consider and explore all related dimensions as well as discussing them with the stakeholders involved.

This research facilitates a better understanding of important dimensions of digital game development methodology. The increased popularity of digital games, the challenges faced by game development organizations in developing quality games, and severe competition in the digital game industry demand a game development process maturity …

Climbing Up Cloud Nine: Performance Enhancement Techniques For Cloud Computing Environments, Mohamed Abusharkh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With the transformation of cloud computing technologies from an attractive trend to a business reality, the need is more pressing than ever for efficient cloud service management tools and techniques. As cloud technologies continue to mature, the service model, resource allocation methodologies, energy efficiency models and general service management schemes are not yet saturated. The burden of making this all tick perfectly falls on cloud providers. Surely, economy of scale revenues and leveraging existing infrastructure and giant workforce are there as positives, but it is far from straightforward operation from that point. Performance and service delivery will still depend on …

Electrokinetics And Vacuum Combined Dewatering Of Oil Sand Tailings, Rui Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the challenges faced by the oil sand industry is the dewatering of mature fine oil sands tailings (MFT) due to the low permeability. Vacuum pressure or electrokinetic (EK) dewatering is effective to meet this objective. This research was focused on the experimental study and analytical modelling to explore the influence of combined vacuum and EK treatment on MFT. In this study, systematical experiments on MFT recovered from the northern Alberta were carried out. At first, the characterization and EK cell tests were conducted to measure the basic properties and the coefficient of electroosmotic permeability (ke) of MFT. Secondly, …

The Effect Of Mesh-Type Bubble Breakers On Two-Phase Vertical Co-Flow, Alan Kalbfleisch

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It is proposed that mesh-type bubble breakers can be used in two-phase gas-liquid vertical cocurrent pipe flow to enhance the heat and mass transfer rates. Two experimental studies were performed to investigate the effect of mesh-type bubble breakers with varying geometries on two-phase flow behaviour. The first used highspeed imaging to measure bubble size and observe the resulting flow regime for two-phase vertical co-flow consisting of air and water. A Froude number correlation that can be used to predict the bubble size generated by mesh-type bubble breakers is proposed. Flow regime maps for two-phase flow in the presence of bubble …

Spectrally Efficient Cooperative Relay Networks Using Signal Space Diversity, Muhammad Ajmal Khan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cooperative relaying has received widespread attention in recent years from both academic and industrial communities. It offers significant benefits in enabling connectivity as well as in increasing coverage, power saving, spatial diversity and channel capacity. However, one of the main limitations of the conventional cooperative relaying system is the repetition of the received data by the relays, which reduces the spectral efficiency and the data rate. In this thesis, signal space diversity (SSD) based technique is proposed to incorporate into the conventional relaying system to enhance spectral efficiency, data rate and system performance.

Firstly, SSD is introduced into a two-way …

Improvements To Tracking Pedestrians In Video Streams Using A Pre-Trained Convolutional Neural Network, Marjan Ramin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Safety has been a very crucial aspect in our lives and much attention has been paid to this issue since we need to remain safe everywhere.

In 2010, about 270,000 pedestrians were killed on the roads globally, which shows the importance of investigation of different approaches to reduce traffic fatalities.

One way to decrease the number of car accidents with pedestrians is to equip vehicles with cameras that detect and track pedestrians in the road. Many applications have been presented to improve the performance of pedestrian tracking.

However, it has remained a very challenging topic over the past few decades. …

Treatment Process For Removal Of Naphthenic Acid From Oil Refinery Wastewater, Martin W. Flatley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis covers the sources, chronic fish toxicity and treatment of naphthenic acid in an oil refinery wastwewater system.

Identification Of Groundwater Discharge Along The Shoreline Of Large Inland Lakes In Southern Ontario, Tao Ji

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Groundwater discharge may be an important pathway for delivering pollutants into nearshore waters of large inland lakes, including the Great Lakes and Lake Simcoe in Southern Ontario, Canada. This pathway however is poorly understood and quantified. While field methods for evaluating groundwater discharge to surface waters in tributary and marine settings have been widely applied and are well tested, there are limited field methods available for evaluating groundwater discharge to large inland lakes, particularly at the regional scale (i.e. 5-100 km). The objective of this thesis was to evaluate suitable field methods for quantifying groundwater discharge into large inland lakes …

Electrically Conductive Cotton Textile And Its Applications, Sicong Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Electronic textiles (e-textiles) have been considered as important applications in wearable electronics, which can combine the functionality of smart electronic devices with the comfort and flexibility of stylish clothing. Herein, we have successfully prepared a conductive textile via electroless deposition onto cotton textiles by using a three-step treatment process. The cotton textiles are first dipped in P4VP-SU8 solution to form a uniform layer for the subsequent absorption of silver ions. Then, the cotton textiles are immersed in silver nitrate solution in preparation for the next step electroless deposition. The sheet resistance can be as low as 0.05 Ωsq^-1. …