Digital Commons Network^™

High Temperature Resistant Crosslinked Phenol, O-Chlorophenol And Formaldehyde Copolymer Fiber, Suh Joon Han

Theses

Phenolic copolymer fibers which possess clearly distinguishable physical and chemical properties from other synthetic and natural fibers were prepared. Acid catalyzed condensation polymerization of phenol, formaldehyde and o-chiorophenol was carried out by a two-stage polymerization. Initially, phenol-formaldehyde and o-chlorophenol-formaldehyde oligomers were separately prepared by refluxing the corresponding monomers at 100°C under strong agitation. At the second stage, these two oligomers were combined and vacuum-distilled to form a block copolymer which was then melt spinned into fibers and subsequently cured by succinyl chloride in a mineral spirit. Using a flame test and thermogravimetric analysis, it was found that these cured fibers …

Thermal Decomposition Of 1,1,2- Trichloroethane In Hydrogen In Tubular Flow Reactors At Atmospheric Pressure, Chen-Chung Yeh

Theses

The decomposition of 1,1,2-trichloroethane in a hydrogen gas bath was carried out at 1 atmosphere total pressure in three different surface to volume ratio flow reactors. Temperature ranged from 440 to 850 °C and the residence times studied were in the range 0.2 - 2.3 seconds. Application of the first order rate expression to this data yields a linear relationship for each temperature studied and thus global rate constants for loss of reactant were determined.

It was found that conversion of the reagent was a function of both temperature and residence time. The major products observed are 1, 2-dichloroethylene (CHClCHCl), …

Application Of Microwave Energy To Remediation Of Soils Contaminated With Chromium, Chih-Ju Jou

Theses

A process based upon microwave treatment has been developed to render soil non-hazardous after that soil had been classified as hazardous due to heavy metal contamination. It has been applied to chromium-contaminated soil. The object of the present regulations is to prevent damage to water supplies as a result of the leaching of heavy metal ions from the soils. This object is expressed in the standard test for leaching, namely, the EPA EP Leachate test. This process can be used to immobilize metal ions sufficiently to meet the aforementioned standard. The present standard is based upon acid leaching, and not …

A Computer Program On The Economics Of Collection And Sortation Of Recyclable Materials In Municipal Solid Wastes, Ara Nigogos Kahyaoglu

Theses

The first version of the economic of recyclable materials in municipal solid waste analysis program was developed in interpretive BASIC by Rutgers the State University of New Jersey. Since BASIC is a line interpretative language several restrictions were encountered, the major one being the language size restriction.

The first objective was to obtain a truly portable program that would not be dependent on specific compilers and operating systems. The second objective was to generate a program that had the capability for expansion.

The C language was used over other high level languages such as PASCAL and FORTRAN because it had …

The Evaluation Of Polysulfone Composites As Structural Implants In Orthopaedic Surgery, Howard L. Scalzo

Theses

Two polysulfone composites were evaluated to determine their use as structural implants in orthopaedic surgery. The first composite, carbon fiber reinforced polysulfone (C/PS), was evaluated for environmental degradation in an in vivo and in vitro study. The C/PS composites were implanted subcutaneously in the abdomen of rabbits for the in vivo study and immersed in saline solution at 32° C for the in vitro study. The second composite, hydroxylapatite coated polysulfone (HA/PS), was evaluated for bone ingrowth in an in vivo study, and for attachment strength between the HA and the PS in an in vitro study. Also, two surface …

Thermal Desorption Of Hazardous And Toxic Organic Compounds, Manuel S. Nolau

Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to study the thermal desorption behavior of toxic organic compounds, specifically o-xylene, p-xylene, ethyl benzene, p-chlorotoluene, and anthracene, from soil with respect to temperature and time, and to develop a mathematical model that will describe this desorption behavior. The model will allow prediction of the concentration of an organic contaminant in commercial soil desorption system over time given a known set of parameters of the specific chemical as well as flow rate and temperature. For this purpose, two sets of experiments were done: These are identified as 1. Thermal desorption and 2. plug flow …

Study Of An Analytical Method For Benzo(A)Pyrene Metabolites In Human Urine, Zheng Ouyang

Theses

A method developed by Becher and Bjorseth for analysis of PAH metabolites in urine was employed to investigate human exposure to benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) - an ubiquitous environmental carcinogen. Preliminary results are presented showing the relationship between exposure to BaP and urinary elimination. Although the correlation between the two variables is not statistically significant, there appears to be a positive association with selected exposure varibles such as smoking. The identification of an association may establish urinary BaP as a marker of exposure.

However, detailed study of the analytical procedure indicated that recoveries with this method were as low as 3-8% for …

A Study Of Volatile Organic Compound Emissions In The Ambient Air Of A Sanitary Landfill In Richard W. Dekorte State Park, New Jersey, Minsen Gao

Theses

A study was made of 15 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the ambient air emissions of a sanitary landfill located at Richard W. DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst, New Jersey. The samples were collected from July 1986 to September 1987 at 10 designated landfill sites over the selected time period from 4 to 24 hours by drawing the air to be analyzed through a Tenax trap. An average 10 to 15 liters of air sample was collected each time. Sample analysis is done on a Varian Gas Chromatograph (GC) combined with a Tekmar Thermal Desorber. A standard gas mixture of the 15 …

Reactor Design For Hazardous Waste Treatment Using Immobilized Phanerochaete Chrysosporium, Ikram Ul Haq

Theses

The degradation of 2-Chlorophenol by Phanerochaete chrysosporium, a white rot fungus, was studied in three different reactor configurations, namely a batch reactor, a chemostatic reactor with the fungus immobilized on a silica based porous biocatalyst, and a packed bed reactor utilizing balsa wood chips as packing.

Preliminary experiments indicated that the use of porous solid support improved the degradation rate in batch reactor and chemostatic reactor. However, the packed bed configuration was found to be superior, and was studied in greater detail. The apparent Michaelis-Menten kinetic constants were obtained for the packed bed reactor.

Thermal Decomposition Of 1,1,1-Thrichloroethane-Methane-Oxygen Mixture In Tubular Flow Reactor, Yo-Ping Wu

Theses

The thermal decomposition of 1,1,1-trichloroethane in methane/oxygen mixtures and argon bath gas was carried out at 1 atmosphere total pressure in a tubular flow reactors. The thermal degradation of 1,1,1-trichloroethane and methane were analyzed systematically over temperature ranges from 500 to 800°C, with average residence times in the range of 0.05 to 2.5 seconds. Five reactants ratio sets in three different size flow reactors were studied.

It was found that the complete decay (99%) of the 1,1,1-trichloroethane at 1 second residence time occurs at about 600°C for all the reactants ratio sets. The major product for 1,1,1-trichloroethane decomposition are 1,1-dichloroethylene …

Organics In Ambient Air By Collection On Tenax, Thermal Desorption,And Capillary Chromatography With Parallel Fid/Ecd Analysis, Chih-Hsiang Liao

Theses

Volatile organics in ambient air were regularly collected on Tenax cartridges at high (10 ml/min) and low (5 ml/min) intake flows. These Tenax samples were analyzed by using a Tekmar Automatic Thermal Desorber and capillary GC system with parallel flame ionization (FID) and electron capture detectors (ECD). A series of quality assurance procedures has been established to improve and assure the accuracy and precision of sample collector and analysis. These procedures relate to performance of the Tekmar thermal desorber, recovery efficiency from the Tenax, and include studies on breakthrough and co-elution. The results demonstrate (1) that from ambient air data …

Determination Of Benzo(A)Pyrene Metabolites In The Bile Of Winter Flounder From The New York Bight, Xingmin Liu

Theses

A method for detecting the concentration of BaP Metabolites in fish tissues has been developed. The analytical procedure includes extraction of PAH and BaP Metabolites from fish bile, liver extract and muscle extract; reduction of metabolites to BaP using hydriodic acid; and subsequent analysis of the BaP by thin layer chromatography with fluorescence detection. The method is applied to tissues from fish collected from polluted as well as clean reference waters and experimental tanks with dilutions of treated industrial wastewater. Experimental results on one kind of bottom-dwelling fish, winter flounder, which comes from the Hudson-Raritan Estuary, NY, where the water …

Prediction And Correlation Of Liquid-Liquid Equilibria, Jose Simonetty Jr.

Theses

The NRTL, LEMF, and UNIQUAC models are used in the prediction and correlation of liquid-liquid equilibrium data for ten type I systems. The results indicate that best predictions are obtained with the LEMF equation, with an overall average absolute percentage error in distribution coefficients of 19.5 as compared to 23.0 and 24.7 with the NRTL and UNIQUAC equations, respectively. Good correlation of liquid-liquid equilibrium data alone is obtained with all three models; the LEMF equation is slightly better with an overall average absolute percentage error in distribution coefficients of 5.5 as compared to 6.7 and 5.9 for the NRTL and …

Scanning Electron Microscopy And X-Ray Energy Dispersive Spectroscopic Analysis Of Selected Sorbent Materials, Elhamy Amin Sedhom

Theses

A previous study⁽¹⁾ showed that a combination of acidic and basic sorbents in a layered system is required to reduce to safe levels the contaminants present in the leachates emanating from industrial landfills. The sorbents used were fly ash, vermiculite, kaolinite, illite, zeolite, apautagite, bentonite, activated carbon and bauxite.

The purpose of this investigation is to study the physical properties, elemental composition and the distribution of the aforementioned solid sorbents. Properties of interest are particle size, shape and distribution and also the chemical composition and the distribution of the elements within the sample particles.

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and …

Unified Study Of Trellis Encoded Correlative-Fm, K. Narendra Bhat

Theses

Trellis encoding of correlative-FM is studied from the point of view of the overall structure, performance, bandwidth occupancy, and complexity. Here, correlative (partial-response) coding is used to improve the bandwidth efficiency of MSK (Minimum-Shift Keying) at the expense of performance. Then, trellis codes are used to improve the error-rate performance of the corresponding correlative-FM scheme with little or no increase in bandwidth occupancy (compared to uncoded MSK). In a sense, this is similar to Ungerboeck's coding for (memoryless) PSK modulation.

A new encoding approach, called matched encoding, is used here that produces trellis coded modulations achieving greater coding gains than …

Thermal Desorption Of Hazardous And Toxic Organic Compounds From Soil Matrices, Sarah Calandra

Theses

The purpose of this research project was to determine feasiblity to remove organic contaminants from various soil matrices by thermal desorption and gas purge. The volatization and gas purge of organic contaminants from the soil increases under the influence of heat and inert gas.

The work was done in two parts. First, under isothermal conditions, organic compounds were injected as a plug unto columns that contained real or simulated soil matrices. These columns were continuously purged with a carrier gas (nitrogen) and a gas chromatogragh equipped with Flame Ionization Detector but no added column other than the soil was used …

Non Invasive Monitoring Of Cardiovascular Dynamics Through A Microwave Interferometer, Suresh Chakravarthi

Theses

The microwave interferometer is utilized to pick up vibrations of the anterior (front) chest wall, produced by cardiac activity. This instrument is capable of remotely measuring the vibrations at distances up to four feet through clothing, by using low level microwave energy at 9.3 Ghz. The vibrations picked up from subjects are filtered, and processed through a PC to correlate with EKG signals, and thereby evaluate the instrument as a non-invasive, non-contacting cardiac monitor.

The subjects lie on their back with the microwave energy illuminating their chest, and their cardiovascular dynamics are recorded simultaneously with EKG signals. The EKG is …

Investigation Of Benzo(A)Pyrene In Outdoor Air, Indoor Air And Personal Inhalation Air, Hsiu-Wen Chen

Theses

The assessment of human exposure to an environmental contaminant requires the measurement of the concentrations levels present in each pathway of possible contact.

This was an investigation of human exposure to an environmental pollutant, benzo(a)pyrene, in outdoor air, indoor air and personal inhalation air samples. The analytical procedure involved extraction by ultrasonic and separation by thin layer chromatography, and detection by fluorescence. The resulting data was used to develop a profile of indoor and outdoor human exposure to B(a)P during the year.

Investigation Of Surface Formation In Abrasive Waterjet Cutting, Shy-Shyan Chen

Theses

This study is concerned with experimental and numerical investigation of the dynamics of surface generation during the impingement of the abrasive waterjet on a workpiece.

A series of erosion zones were generated by the abrasive waterjet on the polished surface of stainless steel samples. The impingement was carried out at different traverse speeds and abrasive flow rates. An optical, a scanning electron microscope and a laser displacement sensor were used to investigate the developed surface.

The microscopical examination of the surface enabled determination of the shape of asperities created by individual particles, distribution of asperities on the surface and the …

Anaerobic Biodegradation Of Trichloroethylene By Activated Carbon Fluidized-Bed, Yeam-How Chin

Theses

Abstract - The biodegradation of Trichloroethylene by using anaerobic activated carbon fluidized bed has been investigated in the present study. High quality effluent was obtainable when the TCE influent concentration was up to 2.4 ppm in the first stage. Glucose was introduced as a cosubstrate to determine the effects of glucose/TCE ratio on the COD, Glucose and TCE removal. The experimental data indicates that the overall TCE removal efficiency was only slightly affected by TCE loading, but the first stage performance was significantly influenced by TCE loadings. It was also found that the microbial activities were affected by TCE loadings …

Obstacles To Women Seeking Management Careers : What They Are, And How American Companies And Women Confront Them, Lih-Fang Chiou

Theses

The thesis focuses on the obstacles faced by women who enter management. It is understood from the literature that the obstacles facing women can be attributed to societal issues or external factors, and to internal obstacles which arise from the perception women have of themselves and their position in the labor force.

The purpose of this research is not to identify all of the obstacles. The focus, instead, is on how women and management respond to the obstacles and how they have created access to senior management positions.

In choosing a managerial career, the critical mission for women executives is …

Implementation Of The Sliding Dictionary Data Compression Algorithm On An At&T Dsp 32 Digital Signal Processor, Shu Fang

Theses

Compared with other data compression algorithms, the sliding dictionary is more practical for implementation in hardware. After a comprehensive study of the algorithm, an on line data compression scheme which uses AT&T DSP 32 Digital Signal Processor has been developed. Assembly language programs for encoder and decoder have been written and tested. The whole compression system has been simulated in a real-time environment and results have been obtained. A quantized coding scheme has been used to increase compression ratio. Separate assembly language programs have been written to implement the quantized coding scheme and tested. Results obtained from real-time simulation are …

Robotic Safety Utilizing A Safety Engineering Approach, Brian Gallagher

Theses

Robotic safety is examined and explained using a safety engineering perspective. After reviewing robot fundamentals and defining the need for safety, hazard assessment and risk analysis techniques are studied. Reasons for a comprehensive robot safety program are discussed. Currently available accident statistics are examined to better understand the hazards associated with robot installations. Robotic safety procedures and methods are listed which can help reduce the severity or frequency of hazards. Various safeguarding sensors and types are analyzed for they are the "last line of defense" to reduce hazards to an acceptable level. The American Robot Safety Standard, ANSI/RIA R15.06 - …

One-Dimensional Parametric Inverse Scattering For Lossless Dispersive Media, Frank Gangi

Theses

In this thesis, the effects of high frequency noise on a perturbational inversion algorithm for a stratified dispersive medium are investigated. It is shown that the perturbational algorithm becomes unstable under high frequency noise. The physical origin of this instability is discussed.

In order to enhance the robustness of the perturbational inverse scattering solution, a parametric inversion algorithm is implemented. The improvement by the use of a parametric inversion is given quantitatively by the profile-to-error ratio (PER). Examples of the two-pole and the three-pole reflection coefficients are compared and contrasted.

A Computer-Aided Instruction Electrical Safety Course, Edward John Gusciora

Theses

It is the purpose of this thesis to show how computerized training can be used in helping to create an effective safety program. Through example, a complete electrical safety program will be developed for workers whose jobs do not pertain directly to electrical installations, but who use them through the course of their daily work activities. A computer-aided instruction module on electrical safety will be developed for presentation to workers on an IBM compatible computer.

Importance of Thesis

Too often safety factors go into the design criteria of a piece of equipment or a manufacturing process and do not extend …

Thermal Decomposition Of Dichloromethane In Hydrogen/Oxygen/Argon Mixtures And In Pure Oxygen, Wen-Pin Ho

Theses

The thermal decomposition of Dichloromethane in hydrogen/oxygen mixtures and argon bath gas was carried out at 1 atmosphere total presure in tubular flow reactors of varied surface to volume (S/V) ratio. The thermal degradation of dichloromethane was analyzed systematically over temperature ranges from 610 to 820°C, with average residence times in range of 0.1 to 2.0 seconds. Five reaction sets in three different size flow reactors were studied.

It was found that the complete decay ( 99% ) of the dichloromethane at 1 second residence time occurs at about 810°C for all the reactants ratio sets. The major products for …

A Decomposition Algorithm For The State Transition Lattices Of Certain Non-Product Queueing Protocols, Cheng-Kuo Hong

Theses

In this thesis, an algorithm is developed to decompose the state transition lattice of a class of non-product form queueing models. Here only the lattices of regular type A structure are considered. By applying the algorithm, the lattice is decomposed into solvable subsets which can be solved sequentially.

Modelling And Parameter Estimation In Clinical Electrooculography, Shengche Hsu

Theses

The Corneoretinal potential (CRP) was discovered in 1848. Its response to changes in light intensity can provide information relevant in the diagnosis of some retinal degenerative disorders. The indirectly measured CRP is referred to as electro-oculography (EOG). A system for automatic data acquisition and modelling, providing graphic presentation, data processing and file management, has been developed. A linear feedback model is proposed to represent the dynamics of the EOG signal. Model parameters are estimated by the nonlinear least-square method. The effect of measurement time on the reliability of parameter estimation is discussed.

An Interactive Graphics Capability For Numerical Design Optimization, Abbay P. Joshi

Theses

Hierarchical Object Oriented Program Software [HOOPS] is used here to develop an interactive graphical interface for the design optimization program CADOP5. A preprocessor provides the user with button menu options. Using various buttons like Variable Button, Obj Button, Parameter Button, etc. the user can interactively define problem variables, parameters and limits as well as interactively modify the behavior and the constraint functions. The post processor displays variable values for three consecutive design cycle in the form of bar charts. Objective function values are plotted against the number of design cycle. Using this information the user can determine if the solution …

Variations Of Alkalinity, Ph, Oxidation Reduction Potential, And Conductivity In Single And Multi-Stage Sludge Digestion Systems, Nasser M. Kamazani

Theses

Anaerobic digestion is used at many municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants. Recent increase in the cost of energy and search for an alternative source of energy for the future have prompted renewed interest in anaerobic digestion for energy recovery by production of methane from waste materials, including wastewater sludges and agricultural and municipal solid wastes. Accordingly, a large literature exist on the subject, most of it dealing with more physical aspects of different process design. Little or not enough attention has been paid to its highly complex biochemical characteristics.

The purpose of this study is a preliminary investigation regarding …