Monitoring fuel quality: a case study for quinizarin marker content of unleaded petrol marketed in Greece

Fuel adulteration and cross-contamination lead to low-quality fuel products, which may cause increased environmental pollution, loss of taxes and engine problems. An establishment of a quality monitoring mechanism based on laboratory measurements may reveal problematic areas of the fuel supply chain. For the purposes of this work, 97 unleaded petrol samples were measured in order to quantify mass concentration of quinizarin, a substance used in Greece to easily mark the presence of 95 Research Octane Number unleaded petrol in other types of automotive fuels. The samples were obtained from petroleum retail stations selling different brands of fuels and located in different geographic regions of Greece. Statistical analysis of the results revealed quinizarin mass concentrations below the 3 mg L^?1 legislation specification limit and significant differences between brands and geographic regions, which may attributed to the structure of the fuel supply chain in Greece in combination with quinizarin properties and way of handling. Moreover, certain approaches were used for the calculation of decision limits for assessing compliance or non-compliance. These approaches take measurement reproducibility or estimated in-house uncertainty into account, in order to minimize the probability of false rejection.     

Visible‐light photocatalytic activity of Ag@MIL‐125(Ti) microspheres

Ag nanoparticle (NP)‐decorated MIL‐125(Ti) microspheres (Ag@MIL‐125(Ti)) were firstly fabricated via a facile hydrothermal and following photo‐reduction method. The photocatalysts were characterized using X‐ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopies, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and UV–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The characterization results indicated that Ag NPs were dispersed on the surface of MIL‐125(Ti) microspheres, and the Ag NPs had a uniform diameter of about 40 nm. The composites exhibited excellent visible‐light absorption, due to the modification with the Ag NPs. The photocatalytic activity for the visible‐light‐promoted degradation of Rhodamine B was improved through the optimization of the amount of Ag loaded as a co‐catalyst, this amount being determined as 3 wt%. Additionally, studies performed using radical scavengers indicated that O₂^? and e^? served as the main reactive species. The catalyst can be reused at least five times without significant loss of its catalytic activity. Furthermore, a photocatalytic mechanism for degradation of organics over Ag@MIL‐125(Ti) is also proposed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Super-efficiency measurement under variable return to scale: an approach based on a new directional distance function

A modified super-efficiency model based on the directional distance function (DDF) has recently been developed in order to tackle the infeasibility issue in the two exceptions of the Nerlove–Luenberger (N–L) super-efficiency model under variable return to scale (VRS). However, we find that model does not fully eliminate the infeasibility issue. This paper chooses an appropriate reference bundle in the DDF so that the resulting DDF-based VRS super-efficiency model is always feasible. The proposed new model successfully addresses the infeasibility issue of conventional VRS super-efficiency models and fully eliminates the infeasibility issue in the two exceptions of the VRS N–L super-efficiency model. Additional advantages of the new model include: it is unit-invariant and does not need to predetermine any parameter. Theoretical analyses and numerical examples support the practicality and superiority of our model when compared with other super-efficiency models.     

Microtextures Induced by Nanosecond Laser on Ni–Co Alloy Coatings

Ni–Co alloys have a wide range of applications in various fields owning to their excellent physical, chemical, and mechanical properties. In this paper, we prepare Ni–Co alloy coatings on 316L stain steel surfaces by electroplating. We present a novel approach utilizing a nanosecond laser to induce microtextures on Ni–Co alloy coatings. We study experimentally the effects of laser power and scanning rate on the surface morphologies of Ni–Co alloy coatings. The results indicate that the shape and size of induced microtextures can be controlled by the laser power and scanning rate. The size of grains increases with increase in the work current of the laser (WCL) at a certain scanning rate. With the WCL constant, the size of grains decreases with increase in scanning rate while their average height increases. It is a simple and easily-controlled method for the fabrication of microstructures on Ni–Co alloy coatings, which has promising applications in investigations of the properties of microtextured surfaces, such as friction, adhesion, and wetting.