The last 20 years have seen an unprecedented breakthrough in the biodiesel industry worldwide leads to abundance of glycerol. Therefore, the economic utilization of glycerol to various value-added ...chemicals is vital for the sustainability of the biodiesel industry. One of the promising processes is acetalization of glycerol to acetals and ketals for applications as fuel additives. These products could be obtained by acid-catalyzed reaction of glycerol with aldehydes and ketones. Application of different supported heterogeneous catalysts such as zeolites, heteropoly acids, metal-based and acid-exchange resins have been evaluated comprehensively in this field. In this review, the glycerol acetalization has been reported, focusing on innovative and potential technologies for sustainable production of solketal. In addition, the impacts of various parameters such as application of different reactants, reaction temperature, water removal, utilization of crude-glycerol on catalytic activity in both batch and continuous processes are discussed. The outcomes of this research will therefore significantly improve the technology required in tomorrow's bio-refineries. This review provides spectacular opportunities for us to use such renewables and will consequently benefit the industry, environment and economy.
Well-aligned K-doped zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods were successfully grown on a FTO substrate using a cost-effective facile electrochemical route. The structural and morphological results indicated the ...single-crystalline structure of all samples with preferential growth along the c-axis direction. The K doping in the ZnO lattice dramatically influenced the bowing in the valence band edge resulting in the band gap reduction and increased the optical absorption. According to the optical results, the incorporation of K
+
ions as the donors into ZnO lattice substantially modulated the bandgap structure of ZnO nanorods leading to formation of new emission centers. This in turn resulted in the redshift of the ultraviolet emission peaks. The optical band gap reduces from 3.26 eV for the undoped ZnO to 3.21 eV for K (10 wt%)-doped ZnO nanorods. The high conversion efficiency of approximately 4.34% is attained for 6 wt% K-doping contents. The good photovoltaic behavior of the K (6 wt%)-doped ZnO nanorods can be attributed to the higher surface-to-volume ratio and the large K-doped ZnO nanorods/FTO interfacial band bending. The findings indicated that K doping of the ZnO nanostructures significantly affects the dye-sensitized solar cells performance.
Integrating a high power source, like a super capacitor (SCAP), and a lithium-ion battery (LIB) for electric vehicle (EV) applications yields achievement improvements, including maximum reliability, ...long lifetime (LT), small size, and competitive pricing for the overall source. A hybrid energy storage system (ESS) controlled by an intelligent energy management strategy (EMS) may be substantially included in multi-source EV design and development. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid chimp optimization algorithm (ChOA) and Levy walk technique to create an optimum EMS. The proposed technique reduces battery power (BP) stress and increases the LT, which is accomplished by using a hybrid ChOA-Levy walk (ChOA-LW) optimization algorithm with a rule-based approach in accordance with understanding the performance of LIB and SCAP. In order to optimize the rule-based EMS's control settings, the latter strategy is suggested. The control approach can be implemented online once the offline optimization procedure is finished. The presented technique is evaluated via simulation and on an experimental platform by means of a power emulator testbed of a LIB/SCAP hybrid ESS. In terms of BP stress and LT, the findings are compared with a conventional rule-based approach and a mono-source containing a regular high-power LIB. Results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested technique, which enables the requested performance to be satisfied with better energy utilization. The assessment results also show notable LT improvements for the LIB, an improvement of up to 19% over the mono-source in reference to a conventional single cell LIB.
•A hybrid ChOA and Levy walk technique to create an optimum energy management strategy.•Reduce battery power stress and increase the long lifetime of the battery.•Presenting an experimental platform by means of a power emulator testbed of a lithium-ion battery hybrid energy storage system.•An improvement of up to 19% over the mono-source in reference to a conventional single-cell lithium-ion battery.
Over the last few years, some novel researches in the field of medical science made a tendency to have a therapy without any complications or side-effects of the disease with the aid of prognosis ...about the behaviors of the substructure living biological cell. Regarding this issue, nonlinear frequency characteristics of substructure living biological cell in axons with attention to different size effect parameters based on generalized differential quadrature method is presented. Supporting the effects of surrounding cytoplasm and MAP Tau proteins are considered as nonlinear elastic foundation. The Substructure living biological cell are modeled as a moderately thick curved cylindrical nanoshell. The displacement- strain of nonlinearity via Von Karman nonlinear shell theory is obtained. Extended Hamilton's principle is used for obtaining nonlinear equations of the living biological cells and finally, GDQM and PA are presented to obtain large amplitude and nonlinear frequency information of the substructure living biological cell. Based on presented numerical results, increasing the nonlinear MAP tau protein parameter causes to improve the hardening behavior and increase the maximum amplitudes of resonant vibration of the microtubule. The crucial consequence is when the fixed boundary conditions in the microstructure switch to cantilevered, the living part of the cells could manage to have irrational feedback at the broad field of the excitation frequency. The current study has been made into the influences of the NSG parameters, geometrical and physical parameters on the instability of the curved microtubule employing continuum mechanics model.
Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma
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