Experimental Heat Transfer Coefficients of Waste Heat Recovery Unit in Detergent Manufacturing Process

The waste heat recovery unit is one of the most important units in the chemical process. It recovers waste heat from the exhaust gas of the process resulting in the reduction of heat loss. In the detergent manufacturing process, the particulate air leaving the spray dryer is the exhaust gas containing the large amount of heat. Therefore, a waste heat recovery unit can significantly reduce heat loss. In this work, heat transfer coefficients of a waste heat recovery unit in the detergent manufacturing process were studied. Waste heat from the particulate air is recovered in the shell and coiled tube heat exchanger. The particulate air flows in the shell side, and water flows in the tube side. Four coiled tubes with different coil pitches were investigated. The results show that the tube-side heat transfer coefficient increases as the coil pitch decreases. Loading ratio also has an important effect on heat transfer coefficients. The increase of loading ratio leads to a lower value of the overall heat transfer coefficient. From 100 experiments, empirical correlations for the prediction of tube-side and shell-side heat transfer coefficients were proposed. The results indicate that the predicted heat transfer coefficients agree well with the experimental values.     

Amoxicillin removal from aqueous solutions using hollow fibre supported liquid membrane: kinetic study

Amoxicillin was removed from aqueous solutions using hollow fibre supported liquid membrane system (HFSLM). After evaluation of the influencing variables, the highest permeation coefficient of amoxicillin reached 2.778 × 10^?4 ms^?1 when the length of hollow fibres was 15 cm and the operating time was 60 min. Then, the reaction flux models of extraction and stripping were calculated. Thereafter, the modelling results were compared with the experimental data at standard deviations of 2.07 and 3.19%. In the comparison of carrier and diluent, the best conditions were achieved when Aliquat 336 and 1-Decanol were used. Results showed that amoxicillin extraction and stripping were of first and zero reaction orders; their reaction rate constants were 0.0344 min^?1 and 0.0445 mg/L·min, respectively.     

Simultaneous estimation of thin film thickness and optical properties using two-stage optimization

In this work, we proposed the new method for estimation of the thickness and the optical properties of the thin metal oxide film deposited on a transparent substrate. The developed method uses only transmittance spectra measured. Our method is based on the two stage optimization where the thickness is determined in the outer stage and the optical properties are determined in the inner stage. The differential evolutionary algorithm is used in solving the formulated problem. The proposed method was illustrated in the case study of Titanium dioxide film deposited on a glass substrate. The results indicate that the thickness and the optical properties estimated agree well with the experiment. Moreover, we investigated robustness of the proposed method in the case of transmittance spectra containing noises. The data were modelled by adding random noises ranging between 0 and 30% to the transmittance spectra measured. It is seen that the proposed method has better robustness and performance than the existing method based on pointwise unconstrained minimization approach. In solving the estimation problem, the performance of the proposed method was also compared with the well-known Levenberg?CMarquardt method and single stage differential evolutionary method. The results indicate that the proposed method has better performance than Levenberg?CMarquardt method and single stage differential evolutionary method. Moreover, the proposed method is more robust to random noise than Levenberg?CMarquardt method and single stage differential evolutionary method.     

Recent advances in oxygen electrocatalysts based on tunable structural polymers

Due to their high energy density, great safety and eco-friendliness, zinc-air batteries (ZABs) attract much attention. During the process of charging and discharging, the two key processes viz. oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) limit their efficiency. In general, the noble metal-based electrocatalysts (ORR: platinum (Pt); OER: iridium (IV) oxide [IrO₂] and ruthenium oxide [RuO₂]) have long been used. Nonetheless, these noble metal electrocatalysts also have their limitations owing to high cost and poor stability. As alternatives, polymers are found to be most promising on account of their tunable structure, uniform network, high surface morphology and strong durability. Polymers are capable catalysts. In this review, recent advances as well as insight into the architecture of covalent organic polymers (COPs), metal coordination polymers (MCPs) and pyrolysis-free polymers (PFPs) are duly outlined.     

Lithium inserted ZnSnN2 thin films for solar absorber: n to p-type conversion

ZnSnN₂ is a non-toxic and earth-abundant photoabsorber material for flexible photovoltaic devices because of its excellent optoelectronic behavior. However, theoretical studies show that the alkaline-earth metallic (Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, and Fr) dopants in ZnSnN₂, particularly lithium (Li), display shallow-acceptor behavior and improve the performance of ZnSnN₂ semiconductors. Orthorhombic phase structure with (002) preferred orientation was observed for Li-doped films and the lattice parameters agree well with reported standards. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis revealed the incorporation of Li in Li:ZnSnN₂ films. XPS, the density of states, and Born effective charge analysis revealed the chemical bonding states of Li–ZnSnN₂. In contrast to the pristine n-type ZnSnN₂, Li:ZnSnN₂ thin films showed conductivity with p-type hole concentrations varying between 1.14 × 10²⁰–9.47 × 10¹⁹ cm^?3 and the highest mobility of 20.03 cm²V^?1s^?1. Therefore, we obtained p-type conductivity by substituting an organolithium reagent (C?H?Li) on the Zn site, which highlights that Li:ZnSnN₂ can be effectively used as the photoanode layer for next-generation thin-film solar cell devices.