Earticle

The current scenario of the transportation sector reflects the urgent need to address issues such as depletion of traditional fuel reserves and ever growing pollution levels. Researchers around the world are focussing on alternatives as well as optimisation of currently employed devices to reduce the pollution levels generated by the commonly used fuels. One such optimisation involves the study of air flow within the intake manifolds of SI engines. It is a well-known fact that alterations in the air manifolds of engines have a significant impact on the engine performance parameters, fuel consumption and emission levels. Previous works have demonstrated the impacts of runner lengths, diameter, plenum volume, taper angle of distribution manifolds and other factors on in-cylinder fluid motion and engine performance. However, a static setup provides an optimal configuration only at a specific engine speed. This paper aims to investigate the variations in the same parameters on a four stroke, naturally aspirated single cylinder SI engine through varying the cross section design over the intake runner with the aid of Computational Fluid Dynamics. The system consists of segments that form the intake runner with projections on the inside that allow various permutations of the intake runner segments. The various configurations provide the optimised fluid flow characteristics within the intake manifold at specific engine speed intervals. The variations such as turbulence, air fuel mixing are analysed using the three dimensional CFD software FLUENT. The results can be used further for developing an automated or manually adjustable intake manifold.

Ceramic foams are prepared as positive images corresponding to a plastic foam structure which exhibits high porosities (85–90%). This structure makes the ceramic foams attractive as a catalyst in a dry reforming process, because it could reduce a high pressure drop problem. This problem causes low mass and heat transfers in the process. Furthermore, the reactants would shortly contact to catalyst surface, thus low conversion could occur. Therefore, this research addressed the preparation of dry reforming catalysts using a sol-gel catalyst preparation via a polymeric sponge method. The specific objectives of this work are to investigate the effects of polymer foam structure (such as porosity, pore sizes, and cell characteristics) on a catalyst performance and to observe the influences of catalyst preparation parameters to yield a replica of the original structure of polymeric foam. To accomplish these objectives industrial waste foams, polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) foams, were used as a polymeric template. Results indicated that the porosity of the polyurethane and polyvinyl alcohol foams were about 99% and 97%. Their average cell sizes were approximate 200 and 50 micrometres, respectively. The cell characteristics of polymer foams exhibited the character of a high permeability material that can be able to dip with ceramic slurry, which was synthesized with various viscosities, during a catalyst preparation step. Next, morphology of ceramic foams was explored using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and catalyst properties, such as; temperature profile of catalyst reduction, metal dispersion, and surface area, were also characterized by H2 -TPR and H2-TPD techniques, and BET, respectively. From the results, it was found that metal-particle dispersion was relatively high about 5.89%, whereas the surface area of ceramic foam catalysts was 64.52 m2/g. Finally, the catalytic behaviour toward hydrogen production through the dry reforming of methane using a fixed-bed reactor was evaluated under certain operating conditions. The approaches from this research provide a direction for further improvement of marketable environmental friendly catalyst production.

Coking accumulations via dry methane reforming (DMR) over 10NAM monolithic catalyst and pelletized catalyst was investigated. 10NAM catalyst was synthesized and coated on a wall of monolithic reactor. Pelletized catalyst of 10NAM was also prepared for the comparison. Consequently, catalyst was characterized by BET, H2-TPR and H2-TPD. The catalytic reaction was undergone at 600oC under atmospheric pressure and CH4 to CO2 reactant ratio of 1:2. The coking formation over spent catalyst was then carried out in the hydrogen flow using temperature programmed technique (TPH). According to the results, DMR over 10NAM monolithic catalyst exhibits a minimized coking formation comparing to the use of pelletized catalyst. This could be attributed to a prominent heat transfer efficiency of the monolithic catalyst.

This research aims to study an effect of sodium chloride solution concentration on the corrosion rate of AA1100 aluminium alloy and SGACD zinc coated steel lap joint with a test duration of 30 days and a test temperature of 45o. The summarized results are as follows. Increase of the NaCl solution concentration increased the weight loss of Al, corrosion rate of Al, weight loss of Fe and also decreased the corrosion rate of Fe. Increase of the test duration affected to increase the weight loss and corrosion rate of Al and also decrease the weight loss and corrosion rate of Fe. The corrosion that was formed in a lap joint consisted of the uniform corrosion on the surface of the metals and the galvanic corrosion in the lap area of the joint. The maximum weight loss of AA 1100 aluminium and SGACD zinc coated steel that was occurred in the sodium chloride with 3.25% was 2.203% and 3.208%, respectively.. The maximum corrosion rate of AA 1100 aluminium and SGACD zinc coated steel that was occurred in 4.00% and 3.5% sodium chloride solution was 0.156 mm/year and 0.479 mm/year, respectively.

The present study aims to the use of carboxymenthyl cellulose (CMC) improving the ability of fiber in the dyeing process. Cellulose was extracted from banana leaves by NaOH and then modified by reacting with chloroacetic acid to obtain the carboxymenthyl cellulose. The effect of carboxymenthyl cellulose contents on the mechanical properties and dye absorption were also investigated. Then, CMC were blend with polypropylene (grade 561R) at 1%, 3% and 5% by weight ratio. The fibers were obtained from single screw extruder. The results show that the mechanical properties of the product decreased when increased the amount of CMC in the fiber product. After dyeing, the dye however were absorbed by the CMC-PP fibers more than the original PP fibers. The absorption of dye on the CMC-PP fibers increased significantly with the CMC ratio.

The application of SS400 carbon steel and AISI430 ferritic stainless steel joint has been increased in industries because of the advantage of both metals was able to increase the service lifetime of the important structures. Therefore, a fusion welding process that could produce a sound weld and good joint properties should be optimized. This research is aimed to weld a butt joint of SS400 carbon steel and AISI430 ferritic stainless steel using Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) welding process and to study the effects of welding parameters on joint properties. The experimental results were concluded as follows. The optimized welding parameter that produced the tensile strength of 448 MPa was the welding current of 110A, the welding speed of 400 mm/min and the mixed gas of 80%Ar + 20%CO2. Increase of the welding current affected to increase and decrease the tensile strength of the joint, respectively. Lower welding current produced the incomplete bonding of the metals and indicated the low tensile strength. Microstructure investigation of the welded joint showed a columnar grain in the weld metal and a coarse grain in the heat affected zone (HAZ). The unknown hard precipitated phases were also found at the grain boundaries of the weld metal and HAZ. The hardness profile did not show the difference of the hardness on the joint that was welded by various welding currents but the hardness of the weld metal was higher than that of the other location.

This study was the use of the finite element method in the deep drawing process of a rectangular shell cup. The aim was to analyse the equivalent strain in the workpiece and to find out what happened to the disc blank sheet before the forming by stamping. The rectangular shell cup was 24x30x20 mm. and made of 2mm.thick SUS 403 and SUS 304 stainless steel. There were 3 types of blank sheets: 1) square sheet 2) 45 degree angled edge cutting sheet 3) circular sheet. It was found out that the drawing up with the use of 3 types of blank sheet made of SUS 304 stainless steel had no risk in the workpiece. For the stamping of the rectangular shell that used a square sheet made of SUS 403 stainless steel, it was found out that there was no risk in the work piece, but with the use of 45 degree angled edge cutting sheet or round sheet, the work piece had a risk to be damaged.

In Thailand, the electricity consumption is very high with the intention of reduce high temperature in the building. Since 2000, a lot of people paying attention to Green- Building concept. A similar concept is natural building, which is usually on a smaller scale and tends to focus on the use of natural materials that are available locally. Therefore, the Earth-Block (EAB) product is appropriated approach to reduce energy consumption in the buildings. The EAB is produced with environmentally friendly process, which does not release harmful pollution and effective cost. The main significant character is durable materials for building construction. This study aims to develop the new thermal insulation by using soil-cement with vetiver grass fibre. Additionally, it describes the innovative systems used in production of EAB materials by mixing the soil-cement with vetiver grass fibre. This paper reveals lowest costs, space configurations changing and greater design flexibility for constructing the building. Keywords:

Sugar cane, renewable fiber resources, were used for roof tile production. Urea formaldehyde, phenol formaldehyde and isocyanate resin were used as binders in this study. Roof tile specimens with 400 mm wide, 400 mm long and 5 mm thick were prepared by compression molding. Physical and mechanical properties of the specimens were analyzed by water absorption ,thickness swelling, thermal conductivity, density, modulus of rupture and modulus of elasticity. From the results, water absorption at 1 and 24 hours was 19-47 % and 38-57 %, respectively. Thickness swell at 24 hours was 15-29%. Thermal conductivity was 0.016, 0.017 and 0.019 W/m.K when using isocyanate, urea formaldehyde and phenol formaldehyde, respectively. Density of the specimens was 770-860 kg/m3. Modulus of rapture was 255-280 MPa. Modulus of elasticity was 5.1-7.6 GPa. Physical and mechanical properties of the specimens indicated that they would be applied for roof tile and construction.

Green technologies such as renewable energy resources, Electric Vehicles and Plug- in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (EVs/PHEVs), electric locomotives, etc. are continually increasing at the existing power network especially distribution levels, which are Medium Voltage (MV) and Low Voltage (LV). It can be noted that the increasing level of green technologies is driven by the reduction emission policies of carbon dioxide (CO2). The green technologies can affect the quality of power, and hence its impacts of are analysed. In practical, the environment such as wind, solar irradiation, temperature etc. are uncontrollable, and therefore the output power of renewable energy in that area can be varied. Moreover, the technology of the EVs/PHEVs is still developed in order to improve the performance of supply and driving systems. This means that these developed can cause harmonic distortion as the control system is mostly used power electronics. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse the voltage variation and harmonic distortion in distribution power network in urban area in Europe due to the combination between wind turbine, hydro turbine, photovoltaic (PV) system and EVs/PHEVs. More realistic penetration levels of SSDGs and EVs/PHEVs as forecasted for 2020 is used to analyse. The dynamic load demands are also taken into account. In order to ensure the accurate of simulation results, the practical parameters of distribution system are used and the international standards such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards are also complied. The suggestion solutions are also presented. The MATLAB/Simulink software is chosen as it can support complicate modelling and analysis.

Renewable energy resources play an important part in the world’s future. Renewable energy sources have the following components: biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, directs solar, wind, tidal and hydropower. Hydropower is still the most efficient way to generate electricity worldwide. Hydropower projects can contribute as a cheap energy source, as well to encourage the development of small industries across a wide range of new technology; furthermore hydropower systems use the energy in flowing and falling water to produce electricity or mechanical energy. Hydropower systems are classified as large, medium, small, mini and micro according to their installed power generation capacity, as do the following components: water turbines, control mechanisms and electrical transmissions. In this article a review of small hydropower systems has been done on the principles surrounding the fundamentals of hydraulic engineering, the fundamentals of hydrology, identification of sites and economic analysis.

This paper presents a design and implementation of real time electrical energy computing tool to measure and record the electrical energy based on type of detection devices, Hall Effect current sensor and Microcontroller. The tool was installed on the system power supply of the room and compared with kWh meter. Finally, we found that the energy record has error of average power calculating results is 0.077%.

In this paper, Residential roof top photovoltaic system with 9.9 kW design is proposed. The system composed of 200 Watts solar array 33 panels connecting in series 10 strings and parallels 3 strings which have maximum voltage and current are 350 V and 23.8 A. The 10 kW sinusoidal grid-connected inverter with window voltage about 270-350 is selected to convert and transfer DC Power to AC Power at PCC (Point of Common Coupling) of power system following to utility standard. However the impact of fluctuation and uncertainty of weather condition of PV may decrease the voltage stability and voltage collapse of power system. In order to solve this problem the energy storage such 120 V 1200 Ah battery bank and 30 kVAR capacitor are designed for voltage stability control. The other expensed for installing the system such battery charger, cable, accessories and maintenance cost are concerned. The economic analysis by using investment from money loan with interest about 7% and use own money which loss income of deposit about 3% are calculated as 671,844 and 547,044 for PV system with energy storage and non energy storage respectively. The solar energy from PV is about 101,616 Bath per year which evaluated by using the value of 5 kWh/m2/day from average peak sun hour (PSH) of the Thailand and 6.96 Bath/kWh of Feed in Tariff Incentive. The payback periods of four scenarios are proposed follow as i) PV system with energy storage and use loan money is 15 years ii) PV system with no energy storage and use loan money is 10 years iii) PV system with energy storage and use deposit money is 9 years iv) PV system with energy storage and use deposit money is 7 years. In addition, the other scenarios of economic analysis such no FIT support and other type of economic analysis such NPV and IRR are proposed in this paper.

This paper is aimed to study the influence of aluminium dross from Thai aluminum casting factory on polypropylene matrix-polymer composite material properties. The summarized experimental results are as follows. An increase in the amount of aluminum dross polymer composite material affected to increase hardness, modulus of elasticity and abrasion resistance. However, the increase of the aluminum dross had no effects to change the yield strength and the melting temperature of the polymer composite material. The aluminum dross also affected to form the crystallinity at 117-122 ℃ and directly increased the rigid property of the composite materials. The microstructure examination revealed that the aluminum dross was located in a polymer matrix and affected to increase the dark colour of the polymer composite material.

The article aims to apply a friction stir spot welding for producing the lap joint between AA5052 aluminum alloy and C11000 copper alloy. The dimension of the materials was 100 mm in length, 30 mm in width and 1.0 mm in thickness. The copper plate was set overlap the aluminum plate by 30 mm. The welding parameter was the rotating speed of 2500-4000 rpm, the pin inserting rate of 2-8 mm/min and the holding time of 6 sec. The mechanical properties test and the microstructure investigation were performed to evaluate the lap joint quality. The summarized results are as follows. The friction stir spot welding could produce effectively the lap joint between AA5052 and C11000 copper. Increase of the rotating speed and holding time directly affected to decrease the tensile shear strength of the lap joint. The optimized welding parameters in this study that indicated the tensile shear strength of 864 N was the rotating speed of 3500 rpm, the pin inserting rate of 6 mm/min and the holding time of 4sec. The experimental results also showed that the hardness of the weld metal was lower than that of the base materials.

This article is aimed to study the effects of resistance spot welding (RSW) on the lap joint properties between AA1100 aluminum alloy and SGACD zinc coated steel and its properties. The summarized experimental results are as follows. The summarized experimental results are as follows. The optimum welding parameters that produced maximum tensile shear strength of 2200 N was a welding current of 95 kA, a holding time of 10 cycles, and a welding pressure of 0.10 MPa. Increasing of welding current, increased the tensile shear strength of the joint and also increased the amount of aluminum dispersion at the joint interface. The lap joint of steel over the aluminum (Type I) showed the higher joint tensile shear strength than a lap joint of aluminum over the steel (Type II). The indentation depth and the ratio of the indentation depth to the plate thickness decreased when the welding current was increased in the type I lap joint and also decreased when the welding current was decreased in the type II lap joint. The interface structure showed the formation of the brittle FeAl3 intermetallic compound that deteriorated the joint strength.

This article aims to apply a friction stir spot welding for producing a lap joint of AA1100 aluminum alloy and SGACD zinc coated steel. The experiment was designed by MINITAB and then investigated the relation among the friction spot joint parameters. The experimental results are as follows. The friction spot joining could successively produce the lap joint of AA1100 aluminum alloy and SGACD zinc coated steel. Interaction between the rotate speed, the hold time and the tool insert speed affected to vary the tensile shear strength of the lap joint. The prediction of the optimized welding parameters that indicated the tensile shear strength of 1966 N was the rotated speed of 4000 rpm, the pin hold time of 6 sec, the pin insert rate of 6 mm/min with the S/N ratio of 66.56 that was higher than that of the total mean S/N ratio. The practical experiment of the predicted welding parameters indicated the tensile shear strength of 2165 N and had the S/N ratio of 66.70 that was higher than the predicted tensile shear strength.

This research aims to study the effects of various welding parameters in gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process on welding penetration, microstructure and hardness of AS3578-A350 high strength steel with the thickness of 10 mm. The welding process parameters were a welding current of 100-200A, an arc voltage of 20-30V, a welding speed of 20-60 cm/min and a gas shielding type of Ar and Ar+CO2. The summarized experimental results are as follows. An increase of the welding current and voltage affected to increase the penetration depth of the joint. However, when the welding speed was decreased, it increased the penetration depth of the joint. Using the Ar gas for shielding the weld area, produced the higher penetration depth and the less narrow weld bead than the joint that was shielded by the mix gas of Ar+CO2. The variation of the welding process parameters affected to produce the various microstructures of weld metal and heat affected zone and also showed the various kind of hardness along the weld joint.

This study presents the experimental results of the Friction Stir Welding (FSW) of AA6063 aluminum alloy and AISI304 stainless steel butt joint by varying the welding parameters such as the rotating speed and the welding speed. The main results are as follows. The variation of the welding parameters produced various characteristic interfaces and had distinct influences on the joint properties. Increasing the rotating speed and the welding speed decreased the joint tensile strength because it produced the defect on the joint interface. The optimum welding parameter that could produce the sound joint was a rotating speed of 750 rpm and the welding speed of 102 mm/min with the tensile strength of 71 MPa.