Comparative adsorption–regeneration performance for newly developed carbonaceous adsorbent

H.M.A. Asghar,S.N. Hussain,N.W. Brown,E.P.L. Roberts 한국공업화학회 2019 Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Vol.69 No.-

A proprietary adsorbent material called Nyex 1000 was developed by the Arvia Technology Ltd. (UK based waste water treatment company). Nyex 1000 was being employed for a number of commercial applications dealing with the removal of organic contaminants from industrial effluents. This adsorbent material had small adsorptive capacity. With the aim to address small adsorptive capacity, a new graphite based adsorbent material was developed. The particle design was accomplished through successive chemical, thermal and mechanical treatments of raw graphite material (natural large flake graphite, to be called here as NLFG). The chemical treatment of the NLFG was carried out through electrochemical intercalation using dilute (50%) sulfuric acid in an electrochemical cell. Chemically treated NLFG then went through thermal treatment at 850 °C and followed by mechanical treatments consisting of compression (4536 kgf cm−2) and chopping at 18,000 rpm for 30 s. The developed adsorbent material, (exfoliated compacted graphite, to be called here as ECG) and NLFG were characterized using state of the art techniques including SEM, BET surface area, XRD, Zeta potential, Boehm surface titration, bed electrical conductivity and laser size analysis. The characterization results showed significant increase in internal specific surface area from 1 to 17 m2 g−1. It was attributed to the development of partially porous particle surface verified by SEM results. The XRD, Boehm surface titration, Zeta potential results endorsed the associated chemical and physical changes appeared in the composition of the NLFG as a result of chemical, thermal and mechanical treatments. Adsorption-regeneration studies were conducted using developed ECG and existing Nyex 1000 materials. The pollutants used for adsorption–regeneration studies were acid violet 17, phenol, humic acid, ethane thiol and methyl propane thiol dissolved in aqueous solution. The results were compared and it was found that ECG showed significantly improved adsorption capacity with many folds. Both adsorbent materials, ECG and Nyex 1000 delivered 100% electrochemical regeneration efficiencies.

Highly transparent RF magnetron-sputtered indium tin oxide films for a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells amorphous/crystalline silicon

Hussain, S. Q.,Oh, W. K.,Ahn, S.,Le, A. H. T.,Kim, S.,Iftiquar, S. M.,Velumani, S.,Lee, Y.,Yi, J. Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam. 2014 Materials science in semiconductor processing Vol.24 No.-

A progressive route for tailoring electrical transport in MoS2

Shehzad, M. A.,Hussain, S.,Khan, M. F.,Eom, J.,Jung, J.,Seo, Y. Springer Science + Business Media 2016 NANO RESEARCH Vol.9 No.2

<P>Typically, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is polycrystalline; as a result, the scattering of charge carriers at grain boundaries can lead to performances lower than those observed in exfoliated single-crystal MoS2. Until now, the electrical properties of grain boundaries have been indirectly studied without accurate knowledge of their location. Here, we present a technique to measure the electrical behavior of individual grain boundaries in CVD-grown MoS2, imaged with the help of aligned liquid crystals. Unexpectedly, the electrical conductance decreased by three orders of magnitude for the grain boundaries with the lowest on/off ratio. Our study provides a useful technique to fabricate devices on a single-crystal area, using optimized growth conditions and device geometry. The photoresponse, studied within a MoS2 single grain, showed that the device responsivity was comparable with that of the exfoliated MoS2-based photodetectors.</P>

DECISION FUSION OF A MULTI-SENSING EMBEDDED SYSTEM FOR OCCUPANT SAFETY MEASURES

M. A. HANNAN,A. HUSSAIN,A. MOHAMED,S. A. SAMAD,D. A. WAHAB 한국자동차공학회 2010 International journal of automotive technology Vol.11 No.1

The need for an embedded system that can fuse incomplete, inconsistent, and imprecise decisions from several sensing systems is a crucial step in achieving an effective decision for occupant safety measures. This paper deals with the decision fusion strategies of a multi-sensing embedded system to achieve significant enhancement in the reliability of occupant safety through the fused decisions. Multi-sensing approaches to determine weight, vision, and crash sensing are developed for occupant detection, classification, position calculation, and crash detection. A rule-based decision fusion algorithm is then developed to fuse the multi-sensing decisions. The developed sensing systems are incorporated into an embedded device. To execute the embedded system, a system interface between the software and hardware is developed using Lab Window/CVI with the C programming language. The experimental results demonstrated that the real time operation of the embedded system validate the effectiveness of the decision fusion algorithm, characterize the safety measures and monitor the decision application. Several events were tested that prove the performance of the embedded system is robust towards occupant safety measures.

Implication of rubber- steel bearing nonlinear models on soft storey structures

A.B.M. Saiful Islam,Raja Rizwan Hussain,Mohammed Zamin Jumaat,Kh Mahfuz ud Darain 사단법인 한국계산역학회 2014 Computers and Concrete, An International Journal Vol.13 No.5

Soft storey buildings are characterised by having a storey that has a large amount of open space. This soft storey creates a major weak point during an earthquake. As the soft stories are typically associated with retail spaces and parking garages, they are often on the lower levels of tall building structures. Thus, when these stories collapse, the entire building can also collapse, causing serious structural damage that may render the structure completely unusable. The use of special soft storey is predominant in the tall building structures constructed by several local developers, making the issue important for local building structures. In this study, the effect of the incorporation of an isolator on the seismic behaviour of tall building structures is examined. The structures are subjected to earthquakes typical of the local city, and the isolator is incorporated with the appropriate isolator time period and damping ratio. A FEM-based computational relationship is proposed to increase the storey height so as to incorporate the isolator with the same time period and damping ratio for both a lead rubber bearing (LRB) and high-damping rubber bearing (HDRB). The study demonstrates that the values of the FEM-based structural design parameters are greatly reduced when the isolator is used. It is more beneficial to incorporate a LRB than a HDRB.

DEVELOPMENT OF OCCUPANT CLASSIFICATION AND POSITION DETECTION FOR INTELLIGENT SAFETY SYSTEM

M. A. HANNAN,A. HUSSAIN,S. A. SAMAD,A. MOHAMED,D. A. WAHAB,A. K. ARIFFIN 한국자동차공학회 2006 International journal of automotive technology Vol.7 No.7

Occupant classification and position detection have been significant research areas in intelligent safety systems in the automotive field. The detection and classification of seat occupancy open up new ways to control the safety system. This paper deals with a novel algorithm development, hardware implementation and testing of a prototype intelligent safety system for occupant classification and position detection for in-vehicle environment. Borland C++ program is used to develop the novel algorithm interface between the sensor and data acquisition system. MEMS strain gauge hermatic pressure sensor containing micromachined integrated circuits is installed inside the passenger seat. The analog output of the sensor is connected with a connector to a PCI-9111 DG data acquisition card for occupancy detection, classification and position detection. The algorithm greatly improves the detection of whether an occupant is present or absent, and the classification of either adult, child or non-human object is determined from weights using the sensor. A simple computation algorithm provides the determination of the occupant’s appropriate position using centroidal calculation. A real time operation is achieved with the system. The experimental results demonstrate that the performance of the implemented prototype is robust for occupant classification and position detection. This research may be applied in intelligent airbag design for efficient deployment.

Using nearest neighbors for accurate estimation of ultrasonic attenuation in the spectral domain

Hasan, M. K.,Hussain, M. A.,Ara, S. R.,Soo Yeol Lee,Alam, S. K. IEEE 2013 and Frequency Control Vol.60 No.6

<P>Attenuation is a key diagnostic parameter of tissue pathology change and thus may play a vital role in the quantitative discrimination of malignant and benign tumors in soft tissue. In this paper, two novel techniques are proposed for estimating the average ultrasonic attenuation in soft tissue using the spectral domain weighted nearest neighbor method. Because the attenuation coefficient of soft tissues can be considered to be a continuous function in a small neighborhood, we directly estimate an average value of it from the slope of the regression line fitted to the 1) modified average midband fit value and 2) the average center frequency shift along the depth. To calculate the average midband fit value, an average regression line computed from the exponentially weighted short-time Fourier transform (STFT) of the neighboring 1-D signal blocks, in the axial and lateral directions, is fitted over the usable bandwidth of the normalized power spectrum. The average center frequency downshift is computed from the maximization of a cost function defined from the normalized spectral cross-correlation (NSCC) of exponentially weighted nearest neighbors in both directions. Different from the large spatial signal-block-based spectral stability approach, a costfunction- based approach incorporating NSCC functions of neighboring 1-D signal blocks is introduced. This paves the way for using comparatively smaller spatial area along the lateral direction, a necessity for producing more realistic attenuation estimates for heterogeneous tissue. For accurate estimation of the attenuation coefficient, we also adopt a reference-phantombased diffraction-correction technique for both methods. The proposed attenuation estimation algorithm demonstrates better performance than other reported techniques in the tissue-mimicking phantom and the in vivo breast data analysis.</P>

Comprehensive analysis of plant rapid alkalization factor (RALF) genes

Sharma, A.,Hussain, A.,Mun, B.G.,Imran, Q.M.,Falak, N.,Lee, S.U.,Kim, J.Y.,Hong, J.K.,Loake, G.J.,Ali, A.,Yun, B.W. Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam. 2016 Plant Physiology and Biochemistry Vol. No.

<P>Receptor mediated signal carriers play a critical role in the regulation of plant defense and development. Rapid alkalization factor (RALF) proteins potentially comprise important signaling components which may have a key role in plant biology. The RALF gene family contains large number of genes in several plant species, however, only a few RALF genes have been characterized to date. In this study, an extensive database search identified 39, 43, 34 and 18 RALF genes in Arabidopsis, rice, maize and soybean, respectively. These RALF genes were found to be highly conserved across the 4 plant species. A comprehensive analysis including the chromosomal location, gene structure, subcellular location, conserved motifs, protein structure, protein-ligand interaction and promoter analysis was performed. RALF genes from four plant species were divided into 7 groups based on phylogenetic analysis. In silico expression analysis of these genes, using microarray and EST data, revealed that these genes exhibit a variety of expression patterns. Furthermore, RALF genes showed distinct expression patterns of transcript accumulation in vivo following nitrosative and oxidative stresses in Arabidopsis. Predicted interaction between RALF and heme ligand also showed that RALF proteins may contribute towards transporting or scavenging oxygen moieties. This suggests a possible role for RALF genes during changes in cellular redox status. Collectively, our data provides a valuable resource to prime future research in the role of RALF genes in plant growth and development. (C) 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.</P>

DEVELOPMENT OF OCCUPANT CLASSIFICATION AND POSITION DETECTION FOR INTELLIGENT SAFETY SYSTEM

Hannan, M.A.,Hussain, A.,Samad, S.A.,Mohamed, A.,Wahab, D.A.,Ariffin, A.K. The Korean Society of Automotive Engineers 2006 International journal of automotive technology Vol.7 No.7

Occupant classification and position detection have been significant research areas in intelligent safety systems in the automotive field. The detection and classification of seat occupancy open up new ways to control the safety system. This paper deals with a novel algorithm development, hardware implementation and testing of a prototype intelligent safety system for occupant classification and position detection for in-vehicle environment. Borland C++ program is used to develop the novel algorithm interface between the sensor and data acquisition system. MEMS strain gauge hermatic pressure sensor containing micromachined integrated circuits is installed inside the passenger seat. The analog output of the sensor is connected with a connector to a PCI-9111 DG data acquisition card for occupancy detection, classification and position detection. The algorithm greatly improves the detection of whether an occupant is present or absent, and the classification of either adult, child or non-human object is determined from weights using the sensor. A simple computation algorithm provides the determination of the occupant's appropriate position using centroidal calculation. A real time operation is achieved with the system. The experimental results demonstrate that the performance of the implemented prototype is robust for occupant classification and position detection. This research may be applied in intelligent airbag design for efficient deployment.

Pre-treatment of adsorbents for waste water treatment using adsorption coupled-with electrochemical regeneration

H.M.A. Asghar,S.N. Hussain,E.P.L. Roberts,A.K. Campen,N.W. Brown 한국공업화학회 2013 Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Vol.19 No.5

With the aim to address waste water treatment problems, a novel and economic water treatment technology was introduced at the University of Manchester. It comprised of a unique combination of adsorption and electrochemical regeneration in a single unit. This process successfully eliminated a number of organic pollutants by using an electrically conducting adsorbent material called NyexTM which was a modified form of synthetic graphite. To expand the scope of other graphite types in waste water treatment applications, natural vein and recycled vein graphite materials were selected for electrochemical surface treatment (pre-treatment) in order to evaluate their adsorptive and electrical properties. New graphite based adsorbents were developed and characterized using a laser diffraction particle size analyser,BET surface area, SEM analysis, X-ray (EDS) elemental analysis, X-ray powder diffraction, Boehm surface titration, Zeta potential electrical bed conductivity and bulk density measurements. Boehm surface titration and EDS (X-ray) elemental analysis showed a significant increase in oxygen containing surface functional groups. Although, no significant improvement in bed electrical conductivity was found to occur after electrochemical surface treatment, however, natural vein and recycled vein graphite materials presented highest bed electrical conductivity amongst competing graphite materials. Aqueous solution of acid violet 17 as a standard pollutant was used to evaluate the comparative performance of these adsorbents. The investigations revealed that electrochemical surface treatment contributed to an increase in the adsorption capacity by a factor of two only for natural vein graphite. Un-treated recycled vein graphite adsorbent delivered the same adsorptive capacity (3.0 mg g-1) to that of electrochemically treated natural vein graphite. The electrochemical regeneration efficiency at around 100% was obtained using a treatment time of 60 and 30 min, current density of 14 mA cm-2, charge passed of 36 and 18 C g-1 for synthetic graphite, natural and recycled vein graphite materials respectively. Relatively a small consumption of electrical energy, 24 J g-1 for regenerating natural vein graphite adsorbent versus 36 J g-1 for synthetic graphite adsorbent, was found to be required for destruction/oxidation of adsorbed acid violet 17. Multiple adsorption/regeneration cycles presented no loss in adsorptive capacity over 5adsorption/regeneration cycles. The use of natural and recycled vein graphite adsorbents offered some advantages over graphite intercalation based adsorbents with reduced electrical energy consumption during regeneration and simpler separation of particulate adsorbent.