Catalytic activity evaluation of industrial Pd/C catalyst via gray-box dynamic modeling and simulation of hydropurification reactor

In this paper, dynamic modeling and simulation of the hydropurification reactor in a purified terephthalic acid production plant has been investigated by gray-box technique to evaluate the catalytic activity of palladium supported on carbon (0.5 wt.% Pd/C) catalyst. The reaction kinetics and catalyst deactivation trend have been modeled by employing artificial neural network (ANN). The network output has been incorporated with the reactor first principle model (FPM). The simulation results reveal that the gray-box model (FPM and ANN) is about 32 percent more accurate than FPM. The model demonstrates that the catalyst is deactivated after eleven months. Moreover, the catalyst lifetime decreases about two and half months in case of 7 percent increase of reactor feed flowrate. It is predicted that 10 percent enhancement of hydrogen flowrate promotes catalyst lifetime at the amount of one month. Additionally, the enhancement of 4-carboxybenzaldehyde concentration in the reactor feed improves CO and benzoic acid synthesis. CO is a poison to the catalyst, and benzoic acid might affect the product quality. The model can be applied into actual working plants to analyze the Pd/C catalyst efficient functioning and the catalytic reactor performance.

Destined to design? How and why Australian women choose to study industrial design

Despite over three decades of legislation and initiatives designed to tackle the traditional gender divide in the science, technology and design fields, only a quarter of the registered architects in Australia are women. There are no statistics available for other design disciplines, with little known about why women choose design as a career path and who or what influences this decision. This qualitative research addresses this knowledge gap, through semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with 19 Australian women who completed an industrial (product) design degree. Thematic analysis revealed three key themes: childhood aptitude and exposure; significant experiences and people; and design as a serendipitous choice. The findings emphasise the importance of early exposure to design as a potential career choice, highlighting the critical role played by parents, teachers, professionals and social networks.

Studying industrial design : Exploring the experience of female students

Despite a significant increase in the number of women enrolling and graduating from design courses, the reality is that women remain ‘invisible’ in the design profession (Bruce, 1985). Over two decades ago, Bruce and Lewis (1990) argued that women were less likely than men to be designers due to three key gendered hurdles: the completion of a design degree, getting a design job and obtaining success in a design job. This paper focuses specifically on Australian women’s experience of hurdle one: the completion of a design degree, utilising industrial design as a case study. Semi-structured interview questions (exploring issues such as experience in class and the workshop, accessibility of the course and content, types of projects etc) were recorded and transcribed verbatim, with a thematic analysis conducted to better understand women’s experiences in completing their industrial design degree. This paper focuses on one key theme “navigating the design studio”, which comprises of three sub-themes: design skill development, the workshop experience and course evaluation. These findings highlight the need to understand the educational experience to ensure female designers remain motivated and eventually employable.

Industrial Designer

A discussion with Dr Rafael Gomez on Industrial Design for the Nelson Senior Graphics for Queensland Schools publication.

Bioaerosols associated with industrial green waste composting facilities and optimal microbiological indicators

This project developed and assessed a standard operating procedure for monitoring microbiological aerosol levels and dispersal from Australian industrial composting facilities. Development occurred via seasonal monitoring of such operations with evaluation of optimal microbial indicator organisms, sampling and analysis logistics. The resultant procedure allows practical end-user assessment of compost-associated bioaerosol levels, and potential health risks to proximal residential populations encroaching on such composting facilities and on-site industrial operations personnel.

Experiments and experiences with dependability for a large autonomous industrial vehicle

This paper describes the experiences gained performing multiple experiments while developing a large autonomous industrial vehicle. Hot Metal Carriers (HMCs) are large forklift-type vehicles used in the light metals industry to move molten or hot metal around a smelter. Autonomous vehicles of this type must be dependable as they are large and potentially hazardous to infrastructure and people. This paper will talk about four aspects of dependability, that of safety, reliability, availability and security and how they have been addressed on our experimental autonomous HMC.

Applying digital product memories in industrial production

Industrial production and supply chains face increased demands for mass customization and tightening regulations on the traceability of goods, leading to higher requirements concerning flexibility, adaptability, and transparency of processes. Technologies for the ’Internet of Things' such as smart products and semantic representations pave the way for future factories and supply chains to fulfill these challenging market demands. In this chapter a backend-independent approach for information exchange in open-loop production processes based on Digital Product Memories DPMs is presented. By storing order-related data directly on the item, relevant lifecycle information is attached to the product itself. In this way, information handover between several stages of the value chain with focus on the manufacturing phase of a product has been realized. In order to report best practices regarding the application of DPM in the domain of industrial production, system prototype implementations focusing on the use case of producing and handling a smart drug case are illustrated.

Wastewater pollution abatement in China: A comparative study of fifteen industrial sectors from 1998 to 2010

This study analyzes the management of wastewater pollutants in a number of Chinese industrial sectors from 1998 to 2010. We use decomposition analysis to calculate changes in wastewater pollutant emissions that result from cleaner production processes, end-of-pipe treatment, structural changes in industry, and changes in the scale of production. We focus on one indicator of water quality and three pollutants: chemical oxygen demand (COD), petroleum, cyanide, and volatile phenols. We find that until 2002, COD emissions were mainly reduced through end-of-pipe treatments. Cleaner production processes didn’t begin contributing to COD emissions reductions until the introduction of a 2003 law that enforced their implementation. Petroleum emissions were primarily lowered through cleaner production mechanisms, which have the added benefit of reducing the input cost of intermediate petroleum. Diverse and effective pollution abatement strategies for cyanide and volatile phenols are emerging among industries in China. It will be important for the government to consider differences between industries should they choose to regulate the emissions of specific chemical substances.

Water use and wastewater discharge of industrial sector in China

Problem of water scarcity has been increasingly severe in China. Though industrial sectors play important role for the rapid economic growth, and they consumes water and discharge wastewater. The purpose of this study is to examine the efficiency of water use and wastewater discharge in comparison with those of other inputs and production output in Chinese industry. Measuring efficiency of each input and output factor from 2002 to 2008, we find the average inefficiencies of industrial water use and industrial wastewater discharge are higher than those of capital, labor, and production output in China. In addition, the productivity levels to save water in the water shortage areas are not higher compared to the others. The water use inefficiency has a high dispersion especially in the regions where the amounts of water resources per capita is less than 3000 cubic meter.

A novel experimental method to assess industrial aerosol deposition in idealized porous channels

A novel and economical experimental technique has been developed to assess industrial aerosol deposition in various idealized porous channel configurations. This judicious examination on aerosol penetration in porous channels will assist engineers to better optimize designs for various engineering applications. Deposition patterns differ with porosity due to geometric configurations of the channel and superficial inlet velocities. Interestingly, it is found that two configurations of similar porosity exhibit significantly higher deposition fractions. Inertial impaction is profound at the leading edge of all obstacles, whereas particle build-up is observed at the trailing edge of the obstructions. A qualitative analysis shows that the numerical results are in good agreement with experimental results.

Food security in welfare capitalism: Comparing social entitlements to food in Australia and Norway

The concept of food security is often anchored in popular understandings of the challenge to produce and supply enough food. However, decades of policies for intensive agriculture have not alleviated hunger and malnutrition, with an absence of food security featuring in both economically developing and developed nations. Despite perceptions that the economic growth in advanced, capitalist societies will ensure freedom from hunger, this is not universal across so-called ‘wealthy nations’. To explore the dynamics of food security in economically developed countries, this paper considers institutional approaches to domestic food security primarily through responses to poverty and welfare entitlements, and, secondarily, through food relief. Through the lens of social entitlements to food and their formation under various expressions of welfare capitalism, we highlight how the specific institutional settings of two economically developed nations, Australia and Norway, respond to uncertain or insufficient access to food. Whilst Norway's political agenda on agricultural support, food pricing regulation and universal social security support offers a robust, although indirect, safety net in ensuring entitlements to food, Australia's neoliberal trajectory means that approaches to food security are ad hoc and rely on a combination of self-help, charitable and market responses. Despite its extensive food production Australia appears less capable of ensuring food security for all its inhabitants compared to the highly import-dependent Norway.

Discovering urban citizenship in the surveillance society

Cities and urban spaces around the world are changing rapidly from their origins in the industrialising world to a post-industrial, hard wired landscape. A further embellishment is the advent of mobile media technologies supported by both existing and new communications and computing technology which claim to put the urban dweller at the heart of a new, informed and ‘liberated’ seat of participatory urban governance. This networked, sensor enabled society permits flows of information in a multitude of directions ostensibly empowering the citizenry through ‘smart’ installations such as ‘talking bus stops’ detailing services, delays, transport interconnections and even weather conditions along desired routes. However, while there is considerable potential for creative and transformative kinds of citizen participation, there is also the momentum for ‘function-creep’, whereby vast amounts of data are garnered in a broad application of urban surveillance. This kind of monitoring and capacity for surveillance connects with attempts by civic authorities to regulate, restrict, rebrand and reframe urban public spaces into governable and predictable arenas of consumption. This article considers questions around the possibilities for retaining and revitalising forms of urban citizenship, set in the context of Marshall’s original premise of civil, social and political citizenship(s) in the middle of the last century, following World War Two and the coming of the modern welfare state.

Foreign aid, domestic investment and welfare

This paper examines the welfare implications of temporary foreign aid in a simple two-period, two-country model of trade. Domestic investment is endogenous, providing an important link between aid in period one and the terms of trade in periods one and two. Transfer-induced changes in the terms of trade redistribute present and future income between the donor and the recipient. In the presence of barriers to international borrowing and lending, such redistribution gives rise to the possibility of temporary aid being both potentially and strictly Pareto improving.

Market access and welfare: Is there a conflict?

Well known tariff reform rules that are guaranteed to increase welfare will not necessarily increase market access, while rules that are guaranteed to increase market access will not necessarily increase welfare. The present paper proposes a new set of tariff reforms that can achieve both objectives at the same time.

Public good provision and the welfare effects of indirect tax harmonisation

The paper considers the welfare effect of the harmonisation of indirect taxes in two open economies. The revenue from taxation is used for the production of a non-tradeable public good. The welfare levels are affected via two channels: (i) changes in the levels of public good provision, and (ii) changes in deadweight loss associated with the taxes. We develop a number of rules of harmonisation and derive conditions under which they lead to potential Pareto improvement.