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Microalgae, one of the important biofuel producers, have received considerable attention recently.Dewatering is one of the bottlenecks for its industrialization due to the dilute nature of the suspensions and the small cell size. Traditional liquidesolid separation processes are not efficient for dewatering of microalgae suspensions. In this study, falling film evaporation was employed for dewatering of microalgae suspension, which is a popular process for concentrating heat sensitive materials. The heat transfer coefficient was as high as 9414.20 W/m2 K with mass flow rate of 0.233 kg/s, DT of 1.21 C, and microalgae concentration of 60 g/L. The falling film evaporation process can be made highly energy efficient if it is coupled with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MVR) or Thermal Vapor Recompression (TVR) system. Heat and mass transfer characteristics of falling film evaporation of microalgae suspension have been investigated here. This will provide the fundamentals for future feasibility study of utilizing the falling film evaporation in the microalgal industry.

This paper will present the research results from developing a computer database system using a variant design approach to assist in the preparation of quality manuals. The basic principle is "the most common one of design assignments modifies or uses an existing design to make a 'new' component." Such an information flow mainly relies on a database, which stores all the information about ISO 9000 certification requested by a desired company. Integration of system architecture and communication protocol allows to accommodate different types of business (electronics, mechanical, etc.). A case study is presented to illustrate the process of generating quality manuals through an intelligent user-interface and to demonstrate a new and unique business strategy to enhance quality improvement and management.

We report on first evidence of wave activity during neutral beam heating in KSTAR plasmas: 40 kHz magnetic fluctuations with a toroidal mode number of n = 1. Our analysis suggests this a beta-induced Alfvén eigenmode (BAE) resonant with the q = 1 surface

Natamycin is a type of polyene macrolide antibiotic and has been produced in submerged microbial cultures of some natural Streptomyces strains. Natamycin extraction from cellular biomass is greatly affected by the molecular and solubilization characteristics of the extraction solvent, and this is a major reason for the routine attainment of low volumetric titers, resulting from sparing natamycin solubility. In this work, a series of experiments were conducted to investigate the solubility of natamycin in some selected organic solvents in order to assess the influence on natamycin extraction yield. Natamycin showed the highest solubility in 75% aqueous methanol under the conditions of pH 2, 30°C and 1 atm. Furthermore, the extraction of natamycin using 75% aqueous methanol was performed and the highest extraction yield of 45.7% was obtained under pH 2. A mathematical model derived from Fick's law of the biomolecular diffusion process was developed to fit the experimental kinetic data of natamycin extraction.

The use of microalgae for biofuels and other microalgal sourced products has received significant interests in recent years. Dewatering is a major obstruction in industrial-scale processing microalgae suspensions. Basically, the dilute nature of the harvested microalgal cultures leads to a considerable operational cost during dewatering, thereby rendering algae-based products less economically attractive. Evaporation, which is used widely in industry, dominates in concentrating temperature sensitive products processing. In order to explore the possibility of evaporation as a credible option in microalgae suspension dewatering, basic engineering information is needed. In this work, microalgae suspension characteristics and rheological properties have been investigated. Moreover, pool boiling under vacuum has been tested to establish the relevant heat and mass transfer characteristics. The corresponding Nu-Reb correlations have been obtained for the evaporative heat transfer process. It is probably the first time that a study has been focused on microalgae culture dewatering using an evaporation means. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Microalgae, one of the important biofuel producers, have received considerable attention recently. Dewatering is one of the bottlenecks for its industrialization due to the dilute nature of the suspensions and the small cell size. Traditional liquid-solid separation processes are not efficient for dewatering of microalgae suspensions. In this study, falling film evaporation was employed for dewatering of microalgae suspension, which is a popular process for concentrating heat sensitive materials. The heat transfer coefficient was as high as 9414.20 W/m2 K with mass flow rate of 0.233 kg/s, ∆T of 1.21 °C, and microalgae concentration of 60 g/L. The falling film evaporation process can be made highly energy efficient if it is coupled with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MVR) or Thermal Vapor Recompression (TVR) system. Heat and mass transfer characteristics of falling film evaporation of microalgae suspension have been investigated here. This will provide the fundamentals for future feasibility study of utilizing the falling film evaporation in the microalgal industry.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure signal changes in the brain during a respiratory challenge that elevated blood pressure. Subjects were scanned during a baseline period and during a Valsalva maneuver. Results were compared using fixed-effects analysts with the SPM99 package, and examined once using a boxcar model and once by models generated from changes in cardiac and respiratory signals during the breathing challenge. Models based on physiological measures resulted in greater localization of signal changes., Papers from the 23rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, October 25-28, 2001, held in Istanbul, Turkey. See also ADM001351 for entire conference on cd-rom. The original document contains color images.