Catalytic reduction is considered an effective approach for the reduction of toxic organic pollutants from the environment, but finding an active catalyst is still a big challenge. Herein, Ag decorated CeO2 catalyst was synthesized through polyol reduction method and applied for catalytic reduction (conversion) of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP). The Ag decorated CeO2 catalyst displayed an outstanding reduction activity with 99% conversion of 4-NP in 5 min with a 0.61 min−1 reaction rate (k). A number of structural characterization techniques were executed to investigate the influence of Ag on CeO2 and its effect on the catalytic conversion of 4-NP. The outstanding catalytic performances of the Ag-CeO2 catalyst can be assigned to strong synergistic interaction of Ag with CeO2 that prevents the aggregation of Ag species and also, helps in the exposure of more surface active metallic Ag0. In addition, the Ag-CeO2 catalyst shown remarkable durability up to several (five) repeated rounds, certifying its everyday applicability.
Environmental pollution is experiencing an alarming surge within the global ecosystem, warranting urgent attention. Among the significant challenges that demand immediate resolution, effective treatment of industrial pollutants stands out prominently, which for decades has been the focus of most researchers for sustainable industrial development aiming to remove those pollutants and recover some of them. The liquid membrane (LM) method, specifically electromembrane extraction (EME), offers promise. EME deploys an electric field, reducing extraction time and energy use while staying eco-friendly. However, there's a crucial knowledge gap. Despite strides in understanding and applying EME, optimizing it for diverse industrial pollutant
... Show MoreFlexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is one of the instances in flexible manufacturing systems. It is considered as a very complex to control. Hence generating a control system for this problem domain is difficult. FJSP inherits the job-shop scheduling problem characteristics. It has an additional decision level to the sequencing one which allows the operations to be processed on any machine among a set of available machines at a facility. In this article, we present Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm with Harmony Search for solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem. It is based on the new harmony improvised from results obtained by artificial fish swarm algorithm. This improvised solution is sent to comparison to an overall best
... Show MoreImage databases are increasing exponentially because of rapid developments in social networking and digital technologies. To search these databases, an efficient search technique is required. CBIR is considered one of these techniques. This paper presents a multistage CBIR to address the computational cost issues while reasonably preserving accuracy. In the presented work, the first stage acts as a filter that passes images to the next stage based on SKTP, which is the first time used in the CBIR domain. While in the second stage, LBP and Canny edge detectors are employed for extracting texture and shape features from the query image and images in the newly constructed database. The p
In this contribution, density functional theory-based calculations have been carried out to assess the electronic, photocatalytic and optical properties of Ce1-xTixO2 system. Ti incorporation leads to a decrease of Ce 4f states and enhancement of Ti 3d states in the bottom of conduction band. Furthermore, it was found that doping ceria with Ti-like transition metals could evidently shift the absorption of pure CeO2 towards higher wavelength range. These findings can provide some new insights for designing CeO2-based photocatalysts with high photocatalytic performance. To the best of our knowledge, this investigation calculates Mullikan’s charge transfer of Ce1-xTixO2 system for the first time. Charge transfer reveals an ionic bond between
... Show MoreWith the recent growth of global populations, main roads in cities have witnessed an evident increase in the number of vehicles. This has led to unprecedented challenges for authorities in managing the traffic of ambulance vehicles to provide medical services in emergency cases. Despite the high technologies associated with medical tracks and advanced traffic management systems, there is still a current delay in ambulances’ attendance in times of emergency to provide patients with vital aid. Therefore, it is indispensable to introduce a new emergency service system that enables the ambulance to reach the patient in the least congested and shortest paths. However, designing an effici
BCl3 is toxic gas and its detection is of great importance. Thus, here, B3LYP, M06-2X, and B97D density functionals are utilized for probing the effect of decorating Zn, Cd, and Au on the sensing performance of an AlP nano-sheet (AlPNS) in detecting the BCl3. We predict that the interaction of pure AlPNS with BCl3 is physisorption, and the sensing response (SR) of AlPNS is approximately 9.2. The adsorption energy of BCl3 changes from −4.1 to −18.8, −19.1, and −19.5 kcal/mol by decorating the Zn, Cd, and Au metals into the AlPNS surface, respectively. Also, the corresponding SR meaningfully rises to 40.4, 59.0, and 80.9, indicating that by increasing the atomic number of metals, the sensitivity of metal decorated AlPNS (metal@AlPNS)
... Show MoreIn this paper, we investigate two stress-strength models (Bounded and Series) in systems reliability based on Generalized Inverse Rayleigh distribution. To obtain some estimates of shrinkage estimators, Bayesian methods under informative and non-informative assumptions are used. For comparison of the presented methods, Monte Carlo simulations based on the Mean squared Error criteria are applied.
In this paper, the computational complexity will be reduced using a revised version of the selected mapping (SLM) algorithm. Where a partial SLM is achieved to reduce the mathematical operations around 50%. Although the peak to average power ratio (PAPR) reduction gain has been slightly degraded, the dramatic reduction in the computational complexity is an outshining achievement. Matlab simulation is used to evaluate the results, where the PAPR result shows the capability of the proposed method.