Thermogravimetric studies on catalytic effect of metal oxide nanoparticles on asphaltene pyrolysis under inert conditions

This study investigated the catalytic effect of NiO, Co₃O₄ and Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles toward asphaltene thermal decomposition (pyrolysis) under inert conditions. Asphaltene adsorbed onto the selected nanoparticles were subjected to thermal decomposition up to 800?°C in a thermogravimetric analyzer. The presence of nanoparticles caused a significant decrease in the asphaltene decomposition temperature and activation energy. Activation energies for the process were calculated using the Ozawa?CFlynn?CWall method. All the selected metal oxide nanoparticles showed high catalytic activity toward asphaltene decomposition in the following order NiO?>?Co₃O₄?>?Fe₃O₄. This study confirms that metal oxide nanoparticles can significantly enhance the thermal decomposition of heavy hydrocarbons, like asphaltenes.     

The effect of starvation periods on the performance of a two-liquid-phase mixed tank bioreactor for removal of n-hexane from air streams

In this research the effect of silicone oil as a heavy organic solvent on the performance of a mixed tank bioreactor was investigated. In the first stage of the experiments, the response of a two-liquid-phase mixed tank bioreactor to periods of n-hexane starvation was compared with that of a control bioreactor. In the control bioreactor, after 3?days of starvation, approximately six days were needed to reach the removal efficiency it had before starvation. This figure was only 10?h for the silicone oil-containing bioreactor. The results confirmed that inclusion of a heavy organic solvent can increase the elimination capacity of a bioreactor and to help sustain high elimination capacity after starvation periods. In the second stage of the experiments, the effect of the amount of silicone oil on the performance of the bioreactor was investigated. Increasing the amount of oil from 5 to 10% (v/v) increased the maximum elimination capacity from 106 to 117?g/m³?h.     

Solitary wave solutions for some nonlinear time-fractional partial differential equations

In this paper, we have studied the hybrid projective synchronisation for incommensurate, integer and commensurate fractional-order financial systems with unknown disturbance. To tackle the problem of unknown bounded disturbance, fractional-order disturbance observer is designed to approximate the unknown disturbance. Further, we have introduced simple sliding mode surface and designed adaptive sliding mode controllers incorporating with the designed fractional-order disturbance observer to achieve a bounded hybrid projective synchronisation between two identical fractional-order financial model with different initial conditions. It is shown that the slave system with disturbance can be synchronised with the projection of the master system generated through state transformation. Simulation results are presented to ensure the validity and effectiveness of the proposed sliding mode control scheme in the presence of external bounded unknown disturbance. Also, synchronisation error for commensurate, integer and incommensurate fractional-order financial systems is studied in numerical simulation.     

Comparative study of electrically conductive cotton fabric prepared through the in situ synthesis of different conductive materials

Cellulose - The electrical conductivity of cotton fabrics was enhanced using an in situ synthesis of graphene or polymerization of conductive polymer. The impact of conductive materials...     

A Novel Strategy for Determination of Paracetamol in the Presence of Morphine Using a Carbon Paste Electrode Modified with CdO Nanoparticles and Ionic Liquids

A voltammetric sensor for determination of paracetamol in the presence of morphine is described for the first time. The synthesized CdO nanoparticles were characterized with different methods such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X‐ray diffraction (XRD). The paracetamol and morphine peaks are separated ca. 0.37 and 0.65 V, respectively; hence paracetamol can be analysed in the presence of morphine and more than 21 times of the current excess of paracetamol. The detection limits for paracetamol and morphine were 0.07 and 0.1 μM, respectively. The sensor has been successfully applied for the assay of the above compounds in real samples.     

A Class of Super Dense Stars Models Using Charged Analogues of Hajj-Boutros Type Relativistic Fluid Solutions

We present a spherically symmetric solution of the general relativistic field equations in isotropic coordinates for perfect charged fluid, compatible with a super dense star modeling. The solution is well behaved for all the values of Schwarzschild parameter u lying in the range 0 < u < 0.1727 for the maximum value of charge parameter K = 0.08163. The maximum mass of the fluid distribution is calculated by using stellar surface density as ρ _b = 4.6888×10¹⁴g cm^?3. Corresponding to K = 0.08 and u _max = 0.1732, the resulting well behaved solution has a maximum mass M = 0.9324M _⊙ and radius R = 8.00 and by assuming ρ _b = 2×10¹⁴g cm^?3 the solution results a stellar configuration with maximum mass M = 1.43M _⊙ and radius R _b = 12.25 km. The maximum mass is found increasing with increasing K up to 0.08. The well behaved class of relativistic stellar models obtained in this work might has astrophysical significance in the study of internal structure of compact star such as neutron star or self-bound strange quark star like Her X-1.     

An optimal type II fuzzy sliding mode control design for a class of nonlinear systems

This study deals with the problem of controlling a class of uncertain nonlinear systems in the presence of external disturbances. To achieve this goal, a new Optimal Type-2 Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller (OT2FSMC) is introduced. In the proposed controller, a novel heuristic algorithm, namely particle swarm optimization with random inertia weight (RNW–PSO), is employed. To achieve an optimal performance, the parameters of the proposed controller as well as the input and output membership functions are optimized simultaneously by RNW–PSO. The globally asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system is mathematically proved. Finally, this method of control is applied to the inverted pendulum system as a case study. Simulation results show the system performance is desirable.     

Spectrophotometric Determination of Pyrithioxin in Pharmaceutical Preparations

Rapid direct and induced difference spectrophotometric methods for determination of pyrithioxin in single dosage forms (tablets and syrups) are reported. The direct methods depend upon measurement of the absorbance of pyrithioxin in different media at λ_max i-e at 296 nm in 0.1 M hydrochloric acid, at 328 nm in citric acid-phosphate buffer of pH 7 and at 314 nm in 0.1 M sodium hydroxide. The mean percentage recovery of the authentic samples were 100.55±0.43, 101.21±0.58 and 100.29±0.64 respectively (P=0.05). The absorbance difference methods are based upon either measurement of the difference between the acid and the alkaline solutions i-e. Δ A (Alk-Acid) at 318 nm with an accuracy of 100.72±0.88 or the absorbance difference between the acid and neutral solutions i-e Δ A (pH 7-acid) at 328 nm with an accuracy of 100.31±0.68.