Study on Viscous Fluid Flow in Disordered-Deformable Porous Media Using Hydro-mechanically Coupled Pore-Network Modeling

Transport in Porous Media - We investigate viscous fluid flows and concurrent fluid-driven deformations in porous media. The hydro-mechanically (H-M) coupled pore-network model (PNM) is developed,...     

An improved SPE method for fractionation and identification of phospholipids

This work reports an efficient and universal SPE method developed for separation and identification of phospholipids derived from complex biological samples. For the separation step, sequential combination of silica gel‐aminopropyl‐silica gel SPE cartridges is applied. This setup enables separation of phosphatidylcholine, lysophosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidic acid, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylserine, cardiolipin, and sphingomyelin into four fractions according to the polarity of their headgroups. Sample acquisition of the SPE fractions is performed by a high‐resolution LC‐MS system consisting of a hybrid linear IT Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer coupled to RP‐HPLC. The unequivocal advantage of our SPE sample preparation setup is avoidance of analyte peak overlapping in the determination step done by RP‐HPLC. Overlapping phospholipid signals would otherwise exert adverse ion suppression effects. An additional benefit of this method is the elimination of polar and nonpolar (e.g. neutral lipids) contaminants from the phospholipid fractions, which highly reduces contamination of the LC‐MS system. The method was validated with fermentation samples of organic waste, where 78 distinct phospholipid and sphingomyelin species belonging to six lipid classes were successfully identified.     

A mass-conservative switching algorithm for modeling fluid flow in variably saturated porous media

Numerical solutions of flow equation in fluid content-based form or in fluid pressure head-based form are often tradeoffs between speed, accuracy, and convenience. The fluid-content based form can be solved quite rapidly with low CPU time and perfect mass balance. However, it cannot be used in saturated regions (as diffusivity function becomes infinite) and strictly becomes invalid in composite, layered, and real heterogeneous porous materials, due to singularity and discontinuity in fluid content profile. This formulation also gives misleading impression that gradient in fluid content causes the flow of fluid in porous materials, where in reality gravity and fluid pressure potential gradient produce the motion. The pressure head-based form, on the other hand, is more flexible but due to its highly nonlinear nature is much more time-consuming and produces poor global mass balance for dry initial conditions. Very fine spatial and temporal discretizations are needed to maintain mass balance property for these scenarios. The mixed form of the flow equation partially solves these issues as it maintains acceptable mass balance and is applicable to layered, heterogeneous, and composite fractured foundations. However, it is only applicable in unsaturated zones. In this study, a switching algorithm was proposed and implemented in which the mass conservative mixed form and the pressure head-based form were, respectively, used in the unsaturated and saturated zones of an initial-boundary value flow problem involving a variably saturated porous medium. The algorithm showed excellent agreement with a reference solution, obtained on a very fine spatiotemporal mesh. The simulator was then calibrated with several real-world large-scale experimental datasets. In all cases, the proposed algorithm exhibited close agreements with the experimental time–space series. The algorithm poses excellent mass balance property and can easily be used in both saturated and unsaturated regions without special treatment of fluid content discontinuities in heterogeneous and layered porous media. The proposed algorithm can also be extended to simulate multiphase and multidimensional flow problems.     

A bad network problem for the simplex method and other minimum cost flow algorithms

For any integern, a modified transportation problem with 2n + 2 nodes is constructed which requires 2 ⁿ + 2 ^n–2–2 iterations using all but one of the most commonly used minimum cost flow algorithms.As a result, the Edmonds—Karp Scaling Method [3] becomes the only known good (in the sense of Edmonds) algorithm for computing minimum cost flows.     

Air‐assisted liquid–liquid extraction coupled with dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and a drying step for extraction and preconcentration of some phthalate esters from edible oils prior to their determination by GC

In this work, a new, cheap, simple, fast, and low organic solvent consuming procedure is proposed for isolation, enrichment, and gas chromatographic determination of some phthalate esters in edible oils. The method is based on a combination of air‐assisted liquid–liquid extraction and dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction followed by a drying step under N₂ gas. Several experimental parameters affecting both extraction and preconcentration steps were investigated and optimized. Under the optimum conditions for the proposed method, wide linear ranges (0.05–800 μg/L) and low detection limits (0.007–0.023 μg/L) were observed. The ranges of enrichment factors and extraction recoveries were 68–340 and 14–68%, respectively. Eventually, the target analytes were successfully determined in different edible oils using the proposed method.     

Thermodynamic behavior of complexation process between dibenzo-18-crown-6 and K+, Ag+, NH 4 + , and Hg2+ cations in ethylacetate-dimethylformamide binary media

The complexation reactions between K⁺, Ag⁺, NH₄⁺, and Hg²⁺ cations and the macrocyclic ligand, dibenzo-18-crown-6 (DB18C6), were studied in ethylacetate (EtOAc)-dimethylformamide (DMF) binary mixtures at different temperatures using the conductometric method. The conductance data show that the stochiometry of all the complexes is 1:1. A non-linear behavior was observed for the variation of log K _f of the complexes versus the composition of binary mixed solvents, which was discussed in terms of heteroselective solvation and solvent-solvent interactions in binary solutions. It was found that the stability order of the complexes changes with changing the composition of the mixed solvents. The sequence of stabilities for the K⁺, Ag⁺, NH₄⁺, and Hg²⁺ complexes with DB18C6 in EtOAc-DMF binary solutions (mol. % DMF 25.0) and (mol. % DMF 50.0) at 25°C is (DB18C6-Ag)⁺ > (DB18C6-K)⁺ > (DB18C6-Hg)²⁺ > (DB18C6-NH₄)⁺, but in the cases of pure DMF and a binary solution of EtOAc-DMF (mol. % DMF 75.0) is (DB18C6-K)⁺ > (DB18C6-Hg)²⁺ > (DB18C6-Ag)⁺ ≈ (DB18C6-NH₄)⁺. The values of thermodynamic quantities (ΔH _c ^o, ΔS _c ^o) for these complexation reactions have been determined from the temperature dependence of the stability constants, and the results show that the thermodynamics of the complexation reactions is affected by the nature and composition of the mixed solvents and, in all cases, positive values of ΔS _c ^o characterize the formation of these complexes. In addition, the experimental results show that the values of entropies for the complexation reactions between K⁺, Ag⁺, NH₄⁺, and Hg²⁺ cations and DB18C6 in EtOAc-DMF binary solutions do not change monotonically with the solvent composition. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Lamb wave extraction of dispersion curves in micro/nano-plates using couple stress theories

In this paper, Lamb wave propagation in a homogeneous and isotropic non-classical micro/nano-plates is investigated. To consider the effect of material microstructure on the wave propagation, three size-dependent models namely indeterminate-, modified- and consistent couple stress theories are used to extract the dispersion equations. In the mentioned theories, a parameter called ‘characteristic length’ is used to consider the size of material microstructure in the governing equations. To generalize the parametric studies and examine the effect of thickness, propagation wavelength, and characteristic length on the behavior of miniature plate structures, the governing equations are nondimensionalized by defining appropriate dimensionless parameters. Then the dispersion curves for phase and group velocities are plotted in terms of a wide frequency-thickness range to study the lamb waves propagation considering microstructure effects in very high frequencies. According to the illustrated results, it was observed that the couple stress theories in the Cosserat type material predict more rigidity than the classical theory; so that in a plate with constant thickness, by increasing the thickness to characteristic length ratio, the results approach to the classical theory, and by reducing this ratio, wave propagation speed in the plate is significantly increased. In addition, it is demonstrated that for high-frequency Lamb waves, it converges to dispersive Rayleigh wave velocity.     

Bidirectional Quantum Teleportation of a Class of <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-Qubit States by Using (2<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis> + <Emphasis Type="Bold">2</Emphasis>)-Qubit Entangled States as Quantum Channel

A new protocol of bidirectional quantum teleportation (BQT) is proposed in which the users can transmit a class of n-qubit state to each other simultaneously, by using (2n + 2)-qubit entangled states as quantum channel. The state of the art approaches can only transmit two-qubit states in each round. This scheme is based on control-not operation, single-qubit measurements and appropriate single-qubit unitary operations. It is shown that the protocol is secure in preparation phase.