International Journal of Engineering and Applied Physics

Maintenance strategy focused on the specific consumption of diesel generators in sub-saharan countries: Case of National Electricity Company of Burkina Faso

2022-05-15T19:31:35-04:00

Sub-Saharan countries would mainly use thermal power plant whose Specific Consumption (SC) was relatively higher than the reference values provided by the manufacturers, which would contribute to the increase in electricity production costs. The aim of this study would be to propose a maintenance strategy which would aim to keep the SC according to the age of the generator at acceptable proportions according to the reference values provided by the manufacturers. The Ishikawa and Pareto diagrams were used to identify and analyze the causes of the variation in the SC of two large plants of the National Electricity Company of Burkina Faso. The results showed four major causes representing about 20% of the common causes which are 80% of the increase in SC in the thermal power plant of Kossodo and Komsilga, it would be : the poor quality of the fuels, lack of spare parts, inadequate maintenance practice, and poor fuel supply policy.

First Principle Calculations to Predict the Preferred Crystal and Structural Parameter of Indium Phosphate

2022-05-21T15:52:25-04:00

The structural and electronic properties and phase transition under pressure of Indium phosphide in Zinc-blende, Rock salt, and wurtzite structure were studied using the first principle calculations based on the density functional theory by means of the pseudo-potential plane-waves method. The calculation was performed within the Generalised Gradient Approximations (GGA) within Perdew-Burke and Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange-correlation functional. On the basis of the Murnaghan equation of state, the transition pressure between the Zinc-Blende to RockSalt phases, Zinc-blende to Wurtzite, and RockSalt to Wurtzite was investigated.

A Comprehensive Study on Utility of Carrier Transportation Layer for Efficiency Improvement of Organic Photovoltaic Devices using GPVDM Modeling

2022-05-21T15:51:48-04:00

A comparative study on the electrical parameters of organic photovoltaic device has been taken into consideration for unified realization about the need of carrier transportation layer in organic photovoltaic devices. The parameters have been measured by modeling the devices using simulation technique. Device efficiency of transportation layer P3HT:PCBM incorporated device has been obtained increasing comparatively. Possible reason of such improvement in device efficiency has been demonstrated on the basis of theoretical point of view. Series resistance and ideality factor has been estimated from IdV/dI-I plot. About three times reduction of the following has been encountered with addition of P3HT:PCBM compound. Such significant reduction of series resistance (R_s) and trap energy (E_t) are found to be responsible for the probable reason of improvement of device efficiency which are calculated by analyzing Current-Voltage (I-V) characteristics. Differential technique of current voltage relationship has also been implemented to explain the trapping distribution for both devices. It has been found that trap factor increases for P3HT:PCBM compound device comparatively which concludes better conduction into the device.

Corrosion inhibition potentials of Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) in tetraoxosulphate (VI) acid solution

2022-06-25T15:34:52-04:00

The harmful effects of chemical based corrosion inhibitors on man and the ecosystem prompted the search for alternatives that are non hazardous to the environment.Therefore, the corrosion inhibition potentials of the leaves and flowers of the green variety of Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) were evaluated.This was undertaken mainly to investigate the effectiveness of the leaves and flowers of Roselle in mitigating the corrosion of mild steel in acidic medium. The gravimetric method of corrosion measurement was used to evaluate the corrosion inhibition potentials of the plant parts. The results showed that the leaves and flowers of the plant can effectively be used to mitigate the corrosion of metals in acidic medium. The maximum inhibition efficiencies of the leaves and flower extracts of the plant were 27.94 % and 22.81 % respectively. The leaves and flowers of the plant were more efficient on the first eight days of application.

Recognition and Detection of Vehicle License Plates Using Convolutional Neural Networks

2022-08-05T13:09:35-04:00

The rise in toll road usage has sparked a lot of interest in the newest, most effective, and most innovative intelligent transportation system (ITS), such as the Vehicle License Plate Recognition (VLPR) approach. This research uses Convolutional Neural Networks to deliver effective deep learning principally based on Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) for detection and recognition of numerous License Plates (LPs) (CNN). Two fully convolutional one-stage object detectors are utilized in ALPRNet to concurrently identify and categorize LPs and characters, followed by an assembly module that outputs the LP strings. Object detectors are typically employed in CNN-based approaches such as You Only Look Once (YOLO), Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Faster R-CNN), and Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Mask R-CNN) to locate LPs. The VLPR model is used here to detect license plates using You Only Look Once (YOLO) and to recognize characters in license plates using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Unlike existing methods, which treat license plate detection and recognition as two independent problems to be solved one at a time, the proposed method accomplishes both goals using a single network. Matlab R2020a was used as a tool.

Electrochemical Performance of Laser Modified Zinc Electrode

2022-06-25T16:29:25-04:00

In this work CO₂ laser has been utilized to produce textured surface in zinc foil to use in electrochemical cells as a cathode, the modified surface was obtained by making two parallel lines in 1mm, using CO₂ laser with (?=10600nm) and power of 90 watts and 10mm/s speed. The experimental evidence of the effect of surface texturing on the performance of the electrochemical cell was demonstrated and investigated. The results show considerable increase in cell voltage with the textured cathode comported to the planar one, also the performance of cell with the textured cathode is more stable.

Estimation Of Entrance Skin Dose And Effective Dose In Cervical Spine X-Ray Procedures

2022-07-28T15:31:07-04:00

The use of ionizing radiation in medical field is the largest and a growing man-made source of radiation exposure. The aim of this study is to estimate the doses received by patients during radiological examinations in order to standardize the examination procedures and optimize the patient dose. Two most referral hospitals, located in the Capital City of Kebbi State, were investigated. The Patients undergoing cervical spine X-ray examinations were involved in this study. Entrance Skin Dose (ESD) and Effective Dose were calculated using exposure parameters (voltage, tube loading, focus-patient distance). The Cal Dose _X 5.0 software was used to determine ESD and ED. Conversion coefficients were used to relate ESD to the effective dose (ED). A total of 65 radiographic examinations data were collected from the two hospitals during three months of the year 2021 to 2022. The highest ESD (mGy) was found for the lateral cervical view in Sir Yahaya Memorial Hospital, with an average value of 4.12 mGy. The highest value of ED and DRLs was also observed for the AP projection in FMC with an average of 0.27 mSv and 4.73. The ESDs reported in this study are generally higher than value obtained from the research conducted by the Iran, and Brazil, while ED was remarkably high compared to other studies. This trend is an indication that the patient radiation protection practices in these two hospitals need to be justified. The results of this study showed that there is a need for justification and optimization in order to reduce patient radiation dose without affecting the quality of the radiographic image. The data of this work will be useful in contributing to the formulation of regional guidance levels.

Structural and Electronic Properties of Gallium Phosphate Semiconductor in Wurtzite Rock-Salt and Zinc-Blende

2022-07-22T07:53:16-04:00

First principle method was used to study the structural and electronic properties of Gallium Phosphate in Wurtzite, zinc blende and rock salt using the molecular dynamics density functional theory implemented on the Quantum Espresso software. For this work the choice of the pseudo-potential is the GGA, scf calculation was used for zinc blende and rock salt to test the convergence of kinetic energy cut-off, lattice parameter, number of k-point with respect to 1mRy energy and 0.5kbar pressure. The same was repeated in wurtzite but vc-relax was used, all the plots obtained for the three structure converges towards the set threshold, the plot of band structure and density of state reveals that rock salt is a metal due to absence of band gap while other are semi-conductors with an indirect band gap, a plot of energy versus enthalpy shows that there’s a transition from zinc blende to rock salt with about 18.73% decrease in volume from zinc blende to rock salt and this occur at a pressure of 29.07GPa, it is noteworthy that Gallium Phosphate was found to be more stable in zinc blende.

Levels Of Natural Radionuclides in Khat (Catha Edulis) Leaves and Soils in Selected Areas In Embu County, Kenya

2022-08-10T20:22:13-04:00

Over the past years, khat (Catha edulis) has been the major cash crop grown in some parts of the Eastern side of Kenya.The leaves from this plant are chewed for their stimulating effect. However, some studies have reported detrimental effects on the users of khat. This research established the level of human exposure due to radiation by natural sources in the khat growing areas of Embu County by measuring the specific activities of ²³⁸U, ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K,estimate the dose rate absorbed and obtain the hazard indices due to these radionuclides. A total of 30 samples were collected from different areas distributed throughout Embu County, 15 for khat and 15 for soil samples. The samples were then prepared and analyzed using the Thallium activated Sodium Iodide Detector (NaI(Tl). Mean activities for khat leaves were obtained as 875.8±11 Bq/kg, 10.1±1 Bq/kg and 51.1±4 Bq/kg for ⁴⁰K, ²³⁸U and ²³²Th respectively. The activities of soil in the same region were obtained as 344±12 Bq/kg, 22±11 Bq/kg and 33±5 Bq/kg for ⁴⁰K, ²³⁸U and ²³²Th respectively. The mean absorbed dose rates obtained for soil was 44±0 nGyh^-1 while the average Annual Effective Dose (AED) for ingested radionuclides for khat was 0.45±0.19 mSv/y. Average values of soil hazard indices for soil 0.26, 0.32, 0.70 and 0.76 for external index (H_ex), internal index (H_in), gamma index (?) and Excess Lifetime Cancer Risk (ELCR) respectively. All the indices in this work were within the safe limit.

Optical properties and efficiency studies for Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla dye sensitized solar cell

2022-09-02T18:58:36-04:00

The sun light, that gives the clean, fleckless and cheap energy which is an environmental friend; becomes the demand and on-call of the researchers in the last century. In this paper, the three natural dyes, namely; (Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla) were successfully and swimmingly synthesized by dissolved in acetone solvent. The optical properties; absorbance, transmission, reflection, absorption coefficient and energy band gap were carefully and solicitously studied using ultra violet visible spectrometer UV.vis. The vibration modes for the three samples were also determined and delimited using Fourier Transform Infra-red spectroscopy FTIR. The efficiency of dye sensitized solar cell DSSC was studied using and utilisation IV characteristic for three natural dyes (Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla), where the cell was fabricated and processed by coating a conducting proceeding substrate of (FTO) using titanium dioxide TiO₂. The power conversion efficiency was calculated and reckoned, which found to be [0.583, 0.539 and 0.285], respectively. The highest efficiency obtained from this DSSC sensitized by Beta Vulgarize which was 0.583%, and thus might be due to its concentrated, focussed dye and colour.

Influence of River Water and Treated Industrial Sewage Water Quality on Compressive Strength of Concrete with Sawdust Ash as Partial Replacement of Cement

2022-07-18T20:31:51-04:00

The study centered on the effect of different qualities of water on concrete compressive strength. The concrete mix of M25 grade with a water-cement ratio of 0.45 was investigated. Water samples, such as portable water, river water, and treated industrial sewage water were collected from Hassan city and were used to cast 150x150x150mm concrete cubes. The cured cubes were crushed on 7, 14, 21 & 28 days for compressive strength estimation. The results showed that the compressive strength of the concrete cubes made with portable water, river water, and treated industrial sewage water increased with days & not have many variations in their compressive strength The optimum replacement ratio was about 12%. This may be considered a solution not only to the problem of the environment but also to the problem of economics in the design of buildings. the combination of treated wastewater and saw dust ash greatly influences the compression strength of the concrete. The aim of the present study was to know the effect of chemical impurities in mixing different types of water on the compressive strength of concrete.