High-performance nanostructured bio-based carbon electrodes for energy storage applications

Cellulose - Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based carbon precursor is a well-established and researched material for electrodes in energy storage applications due to its good physical properties and...     

Lagrangean relaxation based heuristics for lot sizing with setup times

We consider a lot sizing problem with setup times where the objective is to minimize the total inventory carrying cost only. The demand is dynamic over time and there is a single resource of limited capacity. We show that the approaches implemented in the literature for more general versions of the problem do not perform well in this case. We examine the Lagrangean relaxation (LR) of demand constraints in a strong reformulation of the problem. We then design a primal heuristic to generate upper bounds and combine it with the LR problem within a subgradient optimization procedure. We also develop a simple branch and bound heuristic to solve the problem. Computational results on test problems taken from the literature show that our relaxation procedure produces consistently better solutions than the previously developed heuristics in the literature.     

Effect of amine catalysts on preparation of nanometric SiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> particles and antireflective films via sol–gel method

SiO₂ sols were prepared by hydrolysis and condensation reactions of tetraethyl orthosilicate through a one step acid or a two step acid + base catalysis process, in the presence of nitric acid and four different base catalyzers, namely trimethylamine, triethylamine, tripropylamine and tributylamine. Hydrolysis of TEOS was followed by FT-IR analyses. Particle size distributions of the sols were evaluated after predetermined durations in 1–22 days. Particle growth was seen to be faster in amine catalyzed systems than in one step acid catalyzed system. The highest rate of growth was in triethylamine catalyzed system. Glass substrates were dip coated with the prepared SiO₂ sols. Effect of sol aging duration on film thickness and on light transmittance properties of the films was investigated with respect to type of base catalyst. Thicknesses of the films which were measured to be in the range of 100–400 nm, were seen to increase with aging duration of the sols. Triethylamine catalyzed system presented the highest film thickness. Films obtained from one step acid catalyzed system presented an increase of 4.8%; whereas acid + base catalyzed films provided an increase in the light transmittance of 5.7% in the first 4 days of aging. Surfaces of films were examined by FESEM and AFM. The antireflective character of the films was verified by diffuse reflectance analyses.     

Regional Differences in Rice Hulls Supply for Bioethanol Production

Agricultural by-products are becoming an attractive substrate for bioethanol production. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of regional differences in the rice hulls using Escherichia coli KO11 for bioethanol production. The rice hulls coded Edirne were obtained from Thrace Region, and the rice hulls coded Izmir were obtained from Aegean Region in Turkey. Rice hulls were treated by dilute acid before using them as substrates. The cells were incubated on an orbital shaker at 160 rpm under 30 °C during 96 h of the fermentation period. It was found that the maximum yield of ethanol from sugar (0.44 g ethanol/g reducing sugar) was obtained with the substrate C/N ratio of 29.16 in Izmir medium. The main difference was the dominant carbon source available as a substrate. It was detected that glucose concentration was about 2.5 times higher in Izmir medium, whereas xylose concentration was about two times higher in Edirne medium. The different results obtained with rice hulls from different origins could depend on the type of paddy as well as different cultivation conditions. These findings provide a valuable indicator for identifying suitable agricultural waste materials to be used as substrates for bioethanol production.     

Exact traveling wave solutions of perturbed nonlinear Schrödinger's equation (NLSE) with Kerr law nonlinearity

By using new solutions of nonlinear partial differential equation, a direct algebraic method is described to construct the exact traveling wave solutions for perturbed nonlinear Schrödinger's equation (NLSE). Exact traveling wave solutions are explicitly obtained by this method.     

Ordered sets with interval representation and (m,n)-Ferrers relation

Semiorders may form the simplest class of ordered sets with a not necessarily transitive indifference relation. Their generalization has given birth to many other classes of ordered sets, each of them characterized by an interval representation, by the properties of its relations or by forbidden configurations. In this paper, we are interested in preference structures having an interval representation. For this purpose, we propose a general framework which makes use of n-point intervals and allows a systematic analysis of such structures. The case of 3-point intervals shows us that our framework generalizes the classification of Fishburn by defining new structures. Especially we define three classes of ordered sets having a non-transitive indifference relation. A simple generalization of these structures provides three ordered sets that we call “d-weak orders”, “d-interval orders” and “triangle orders”. We prove that these structures have an interval representation. We also establish some links between the relational and the forbidden mode by generalizing the definition of a Ferrers relation.     

Surface properties of Reactive Yellow 2 immobilised pHEMA and HEMA/chitosan membranes: characterisation of their selectivity to different proteins

Poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate), pHEMA, and a composite pHEMA/chitosan networks were synthesized in the membrane form via UV initiated photo-polymerisation in the presence of an initiator ,′-azoisobutyronitrile. Reactive Yellow 2 (RY-2) was covalently immobilised as a dye–ligand onto both membranes. The polarity and surface energy of the investigated membranes were determined by contact angle measurement. The incorporation of chitosan in the pHEMA networks produced more hydrophilic surface, as indicated by contact angle analysis. The binding characteristics of lysozyme, γ-globulins, human serum albumin (HSA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) to pHEMA-RY-2 and pHEMA/chitosan-RY-2 affinity membranes have been investigated from aqueous solution and their dye–ligand free forms were used as control systems. When chitosan was incorporated in the pHEMA network as a cationic polymer led to higher adsorption capacity for the lysozyme. Selective adsorption behaviour was also observed in the case of pHEMA/chitosan-RY-2 membrane for the lysozyme. The non-specific adsorptions of the lysozyme on the pHEMA and pHEMA/chitosan membranes were about 1.9 and 7.2 mg/ml, respectively. These were negligible for all others investigated proteins. The lysozyme adsorption data was analysed using the first-order and the second-order models. The first-order equation in both affinity membrane systems is the most appropriate equation to predict the adsorption capacities of the adsorbents. The adsorption isotherms well fitted the combined Langmuir–Freundlich model. A theoretical analysis has been conducted to estimate the thermodynamic contributions (changes in enthalpy, entropy and Gibbs free energy) for the adsorption of lysozyme to both dye–ligand immobilised membranes. The adsorption capacities of both dye–ligand immobilised membranes increased with increasing the temperature while decreased with increasing the NaCl concentration. Both affinity membranes are stable when subjected to sanitization with sodium hydroxide after repeated separation–elution cycles.     

Laboratory investigation of biodegradability of a polyurethane foam under anaerobic conditions

Polyurethane (PU) foams can be used in many remediation applications as an isolation material to prevent the release of hazardous materials into the environment. The integrity of a PU foam was investigated in this study using short-term accelerated laboratory experiments including bioavailability assays, soil burial experiments, and accelerated bioreactors to determine the fate of PU foam in the soil where anaerobic processes are dominant. The experimental results have shown that the studied PU foam is likely not biodegradable under anaerobic conditions. Neither weight loss nor a change in the tensile strength of the PU material after biological exposure was observed. The FT-IR chemical signature of the PU foams was also nearly identical before and after biological exposure. The composition of the PU material (aromatic polyester and polyether PU) used in this study could have played a significant role in its resistance to microbial attack during the short-term accelerated experiments.