SAPO-34, a silicoaluminophosphate zeolite, has been synthesized by the hydrothermal method with the addition of different molecular weights of polyethylene glycol (PEG), and has been characterized with XRD, SEM, N2 adsorption–desorption, FT-IR, and NH3 temperature-programmed desorption (NH3-TPD). We studied SAPO-34 as a catalyst in the methanol-to-olefins (MTO) reaction, in a fixed-bed reactor. The results show that the chain length of PEG has a great influence on the particle size and morphology of SAPO-34. PEG acts as inhibitor in the crystallization process. With the increase of the chain length of PEG used in the synthesis, from a relative molecular weight of 400–6000, the morphology of SAPO-34 changes gradually from cubic to nanoplate-like and then changes to cubic again. The particle size decreases markedly at first and then increases to some extent. The catalytic stability in the MTO reaction also increases first and then decreases, with all the catalysts having almost the same selectivity to olefins. When the sample is synthesized with PEG800, the particles become nanoplate-like with a thickness of 46 nm on average, and the catalytic stability is appreciably prolonged, which is attributed to the shorter diffusion paths of the reactants in the zeolite.
In this study, a continuous and airtight twin-spiral dryer was developed in accordance with the characteristics and challenges in the process of disposing polysilicon slurry. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were used to investigate the flow field in the rotating twin-spiral continuous dryer and an original discrete phase model was also elaborated to compare with the cold-modeling experimental results. The corresponding flow field was obtained using the available inlet velocity of 0.05–0.3 m/s and the rotational speed of the inner cone of 12–44 r/min, the residence time distribution, and tracked particles trajectory. Results showed that the residence time of the tracer particles in the cone cylinder was about 15.8–25.4% of the time spent out of it, and the particle’s residence time was much shorter in contrast to the rotational speed and inlet velocity. The external ribbon had a larger influence on the fluid, thereby leading to a larger velocity in the region outside the cone compared to that in the region inside the cone. In addition, the appearance of the vortex and boundary layer separation at the back of the ribbon and the spoke bar had secondary diversion effects on the fluid. Furthermore, the inlet velocity had little influence on the flow field while the rotational speed of the cone greatly affected the flow field. Hence, the CFD simulations showed good agreement with the experimental results.
Although the performance of membrane reactors (MR) is highly affected by the ratio of membrane area-to-reaction volume, there are few studies on this effect owing to the difficulties associated with reactor manufacture. In this study, an MR with high A/V ratio, a diameter of 35 m, and a height of 0.8 mm was fabricated. Separation performance of this MR was investigated in an n-butanol/water system. Esterification of acetic acid and n-butanol was used as the model reaction to investigate the performance of catalytically active membrane reactors (CAMR) with different A/V ratios. The reaction conversion was 38.59% in the CAMR with the high A/V ratio of 12,497/m, which was much higher than that in other CAMRs, for reaction time of 60 min and W/V f ratio of 0.093 g/mL. Excellent catalytic stability of the CAMR was confirmed by performing long-term stability experiments.
As a kind of aerobic bacteria, Saccharopolyspora spinosa exhibits a high demand for oxygen. In the fermentation process, the methods of increasing ventilation and improving agitation speed are usually adopted to achieve higher values of dissolved oxygen. These methods decrease the efficiency of spinosad biosynthesis. In this study, an improved reactor was designed to solve these problems. The exhaust gas reflux device, impellers, and baffles were improved. Furthermore, we established the kinetic models for the cell growth, substrate consumption and spinosad generation in batch fermentation process. The simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental data. Spinosad production reached 583.86 mg/L after employing the suitable feeding strategy by fed-batch fermentation in the improved reactor, whereas it was only 157.01 mg/L before optimization. The method described can provide insight to strengthen spinosad production and can be extended to the culturing process of filamentous aerobic bacteria.
Single-grit grinding of a 2.5D woven composite was investigated by the finite-element method (FEM) using a unit-cell model. According to our hypotheses, the axis of the warp yarn was a sinusoidal curve and the cross section of the weft yarn was shaped like a biconvex lens. AVUMAT subroutine was used to construct the constitutive model of the 2.5D woven composite. The grinding process of the composite was analyzed using an FEM simulation with the ABAQUS/Explicit software. A validation experiment was also carried out. The simulation results showed that a grinding crack was well simulated. Furthermore, the junctions between the warp yarn and weft yarn were found to be seriously damaged and cracks were observed to extend outward along the warp fiber during grinding, in good agreement with the experimental results. In addition, the strain of weft yarns was obviously greater than that of warp yarns when the grinding direction was perpendicular to the weft yarns and parallel to the axis of the warp yarns. These results demonstrate that the mesostructure strongly influences the grinding damage inflicted on woven composites.
Microbe-induced calcite precipitation is a sustainable improvement technique for sandy soil, which can alter the properties of sand via microbial activity. In this study, we investigated the loose-sand-consolidation effect by controlling the injection velocity, bacterial and cementing-solution concentrations, and hold times. The results demonstrate that, as the cyclic batch increases, the utilization rate of the bacterial fluid increases and both the optical density (OD600) of the bacteria and urease activity decrease. Moreover, it was determined that a 3-h hold time for a 0.5 mol/L cementing solution with a cementing fluid velocity of 2 mL/min has the greatest bonding effect. The final strength of the loose sand with an increase in calcium carbonate content was further discussed.
The development of offshore wind farms in deep water favors floating wind turbine designs, but floating horizontal axis wind turbines are facing the challenge of high cost of energy (CoE). The development of innovative designs to reduce the CoE is thus desirable, such as floating vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). This study demonstrates the characteristics of aerodynamic loads and load effects of a two-bladed floating VAWT supported by a semi-submersible platform. Fully coupled simulations are performed using the time-domain aero-hydro-servo-elastic code SIMO-RIFLEX-AC. It is found that thrust, lateral force, and aerodynamic torque vary considerably and periodically with the rotor azimuth angle. However, the variation in the generator torque can be alleviated to some extent by the control strategy applied. Moreover, the variations of platform motions and tensions in the mooring lines are strongly influenced by turbulent winds, whereas those of tower-base bending moments are not. The tower-base bending moments exhibit notable two-per-revolution (2P) response characteristics.
A modified suction caisson (MSC), which was reported by the authors of this paper previously, comprises an external short-skirted structure that is added to a regular suction caisson (RSC). It has been proved that MSCs can improve the lateral bearing capacity and limit the deflection of the caisson compared with RSCs. A series of model tests were conducted to investigate responses of MSCs subject to uplift loading in saturated sand. The effects of external skirt dimensions on the uplift bearing capacity of MSCs were considered. In addition, the influences of the sealed top lid of the skirted structure on the uplift bearing capacity and the resulting passive suction of MSCs were also studied. It was found that the uplift bearing capacities of MSCs are 1.4–1.7 times that of RSCs. Moreover, test results in serviceable conditions show that the sealed external skirted structure of perspex-made suction caissons significantly contributed to the uplift bearing capacity as a result of passive suction.
Previous studies at home and abroad have mainly focused on single dam-break, and little attention has been paid so far to the dam-break of cascade reservoirs. Multi-source flooding, which can lead to three-dimensional turbulent phenomena and superposition effects, is the main difference between the dam-break of cascade and single reservoirs. Detailed descriptions of the coupled numerical simulation of multi-source flooding have little been reported, and the initial wet riverbed is rarely considered in current models. Therefore, in this paper, a method based on the three-dimensional $k - \varepsilon$ turbulence model coupled with the volume-of-fluid method is proposed to simulate the dam-break flooding of cascade reservoirs. The upstream river, reservoir, and downstream river are connected by the internal boundary method, and the initial conditions, including river flow and reservoir water, are determined according to the results of the numerical simulation. Coupled numerical simulation of different dam-break flooding is then achieved. The present work solves the challenges presented by the enhancement and superposition of natural river flow, upstream flooding, and downstream flooding. This paper provides a theoretical basis for future studies on the dam-break flood routing of cascade reservoirs.
Conventional camera calibration that employs calibration targets is a commonly used method to acquire a camera’s intrinsic and/or extrinsic parameters. The calibration targets are usually designed as periodic arrays of simple high-contrast patterns that provide highly accurate world coordinate system points and the corresponding image pixel coordinate system points. The existing pixel coordinate extraction algorithms can reach a sub-pixel level; however, they treat each single pattern in one image as an independent individual, which makes it difficult to further improve extraction accuracy. In this paper, a novel method is proposed by utilizing the periodic arrangement characteristics of the calibration target pattern as a global constraint to improve the calibration accuracy. Based on a camera’s pinhole model, the intersection point of two fitted curves is used as an optimized pixel point to replace the initial one. Following the pixel coordinate optimization procedures, experiments were performed using real data from a 3D laser line scanner and a dynamic precision calibration target. Our results show that the relative errors of camera homography matrix elements obtained by the proposed optimization method were reduced compared with the commonly used method. The average coordinate measurement accuracy can be improved by nearly 0.05 mm. It is shown that the proposed optimization method can enhance the camera calibration accuracy, especially when the extracted pixels are of poorer precision.
Pulse-pairs (PP) generated by distance measuring equipment (DME) cause severe interference to the L-band digital aeronautical communication systems. Unlike previous works that mainly improved receiver structure for mitigating the DME interference, this paper proposes a novel and practical time domain PP mitigation method without changing the existing receiver structure. Our method is composed of three parts and utilizes a specific property, i.e., a relatively fixed waveform of DME PP. First, the complex-valued waveform of PP is automatically detected through an iterative weighted average method. Then, on the basis of the detected PP waveform, each PP is reconstructed according to its amplitude, position, and initial phase, which are estimated through a sparse representation algorithm. Finally, the reconstructed PPs are subtracted from the contaminated signal. Numerical experiments show that compared with recently published methods the bit error rate obtained by our method is approximately 5 dB better, while the complexity is maintained at the same level.