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ABSTRACT The ability of steel reinforced concrete to withstand long service life is ensured by the strong binding between the concrete and the rebar. Although rebar corrosion deterioration in the [...]

Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are two of the emerging techniques used in creating more significant opportunities in smart dairy farming (SDF). Currently, the demand for milk is continuously increasing due to the world's growing population. Thus, some suppliers are inclined towards adopting fraudulent practices such as introducing adulterants into milk to eliminate the demand and supply gap. Conventional detection techniques require specific chemicals and equipment to determine the presence of adulterants in milk. Though effective, this technique has the downsides of producing qualitative results that are laborious, time-consuming and the same milk sample cannot be further analyzed for other adulterants. Hence, this paper presents an IoT-based solution to detect adulterants in milk by measuring its pH and electrical conductivity (EC) parameters. To achieve this, a fuzzy logic system was designed in MATLAB® using the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox™ and implemented on an arduino mega microcontroller to analyze the impurities present in milk samples through hardware implemented. This research revealed that milk's pH and EC values with no adulteration range from 6.45 to 6.67 and 4.65 mS/cm to 5.26 mS/cm, respectively. Finally, the collected data is stored in the cloud using the ThingSpeak™ web platform, interconnected with an IoT (ESP8266 Wi-Fi module).

The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) highlights the global health emergency. To limit the rate of COVID-19 transmission to health care workers, adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) are required. Emerging reports indicate that the widespread usage of PPE during the COVID-19 outbreak has exacerbated plastic contamination in the ocean.

With the ever-increasing demand for energy and a growing concern for the non-renewability of the energy sources as well as the environmental pollution, renewable energy harvesting systems have emerged as one of the energy technologies globally. In this context, this research work addresses a novel, clean and environmentally friendly renewable energy generation technology that harvests energy from human locomotion, like walking and running. The developed system is based on two square sized tiles structure paver in which two fluid bags are connected through flow control mechanisms including unidirectional valves and mini hydro generators that convert the human kinetic energy into electricity via fluid movements. All the design related simulations were performed in ANSYS software to find out the optimal parameters like fluid velocity, power output and fluid bag shape etc. Sequentially, it was experimentally observed that the energy harvesting paver can produce an average output power of 1.4 W per step during typical human walking and can power up a DC load of 390 Ω LED. The system is easily reproducible and can be installed with relative ease to power up street lamps, billboards and emergency lighting systems etc. Furthermore, the system is eco-friendly and cost-effective in comparison to other available energy harvesting paver systems. Hence, this novel fluid based footstep energy harvesting paver has considerable prospects as an effective renewable energy system.

The application of V-cut twisted tape turbulator inserted in the absorber tube of a photovoltaic thermal (PVT) system was investigated through a 3-D numerical analysis. The objective was to determine the effect of turbulator pitch distance (50 mm, 77 mm, and 100 mm) and Re number (500, 1000, 1500, and 2000) on the PVT energy and exergy performances. The results were compared with those obtained for the absorber tube without turbulator. Our findings demonstrated that the pressure drop and PV temperature, respectively, escalates and diminishes by 78–84% and 5.69–6.68% for the case with turbulator (pitch of 100 mm) as Re increases from 500 to 2000. In consequence, the overall energy efficiency and overall exergy efficiency improve by 15.76–14.27% and 12.01–8.68%, respectively, for the increase in Re within the studied range. In addition, the application of turbulator with a pitch of 100 mm improves the overall energy and exergy efficiencies of the PVT system by 3.04–7.70% and 4.03–13.08% at the Re range of 500–2000 as compared to the without turbulator case. Moreover, the greatest useful thermal and electrical efficiencies were obtained for the PVT with turbulator pitch of 100 mm and at Re =2000, which yields the highest overall thermal and exergy efficiencies of 75.46% and 16.34%, respectively. Furthermore, RSM technique is utilized to obtain a model for the overall energy and exergy efficiencies versus Re and P. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]