Photobiological hydrogen production from organic materials occurs with the help of illumination and under aerobic conditions within photobioreactors. Novel designs are needed in order to increase the light conversion efficiency and to improve the biological hydrogen production. In this thesis, purple non sulfur bacteria Rhodobacter sphaeroides O.U. 001 was employed as the hydrogen producing microorganism. Two different types of photobioreactors, namely oscillatory helical photobioreactor and recycling helical bioreactor, were devised and successfully operated for bacterial growth and hydrogen production. Total liquid capacity of the pneumatically driven oscillatory flow helical tubular photobioreactor was 11.5 L, and 4.5 L of which was occupied by the bacterial culture. The bacteria grew very well both in malate-based and acetate-based media under nitrogen atmosphere. The bacteria sustained their vitality 24 days before the system was shut down. The recycling helical tubular photobioreactor, which was developed for hydrogen production, had a fully occupied total volume of 6.5L. The bacteria produced approximately 1.9L of hydrogen in four days on malate-based media. The hydrogen production rate was 0.009LH2/Lculture.h. The effects of molecular nitrogen gas and the sodium glutamate concentration on the growth of hydrogen producing photosynthetic bacteria Rhodobacter sphaeroides O.U.001 in the reactor were also examined in 500ml-bottles. The bacterial growth curves did not show any difference at the control medium containing 15mM of acetate and 10 mM of sodium glutamate. However, other bottles containing a lesser amount of N-source was found to grow earlier under the nitrogen atmosphere. Besides, even a 15/2 acetate/sodium glutamate ratio was observed to be sufficient to grow the bacteria for inoculation, and to spend extra sodium glutamate was not necessary. The novel designs developed in this study aim to improve the biological hydrogen production by photosynthetic bacteria, and to provide new ways in adaptation of photobiological systems to outdoor conditions for large-scale applications.

The aim of this study is to combine the basic concepts of mechanics on drill string which are related to directional drilling, thus finding a less complicated and more economical way for drilling directional wells. Slick BHA, which has no stabilizers attached and single stabilizer BHA are analyzed through previously derived formulas gathered from the literature that are rearranged for this study. An actual directional well is redrilled theoretically with a slick BHA and a computer program is assembled for calculating the side force and direction of the well for single stabilizer BHA. Influence of controllable variables on drilling tendency is investigated and reported. The study will be useful for well trajectory and drill string design in accordance with the drilling phase. Also, by using available data from offset wells, drilling engineer can back-calculate the formation anisotropy index (FAI) that is often used for optimizing well trajectories and predicting drilling tendency on new wells in similar drilling conditions. After analysing the directional well data used in this study, it has been concluded that the well could be drilled without a steerable tool if the kick of point (KOP) is not a shallower depth. If the KOP is kept similar, the same curvature could not be achieved without a steerable tool.

In this study it was aimed to design and operate a new system with sufficient number of rotating drums since rotation of turntable is incapable of providing uniformity. Effect of new design on final color values and moisture content were also investigated. Macaroni beads were colored with CoCl2 solution and processed in a domestic microwave oven starting from 11.3&plusmn / 0.10% moisture content and L*= 41.1&plusmn / 0.31 , a*= 8.5&plusmn / 0.27 , b*= 5.3&plusmn / 0.22 color value with turntable and the proposed design. In experiments 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% power levels and 1, 2 and 3 min processing times and 2 different locations were used. The average color values measured were not affected significantly by the locations studied inside the cavity for both operation types. The changes in color values were found to be significant with altering power level for both operation types. Time also changed average color values for samples processed on turntable and in rotating drums. The new design lowered the average L* values of the final product and kept the sample from burning. Average a* and b* values were not significantly affected by the operation type. The uniformity of final product in terms of color distribution was affected significantly by the operation type and the improvement in uniformity calculated quantitatively by means of variances and found out that the new design improved the color uniformity of the final product by 94.7%. The non-uniformity of the products processed on turntable was significantly changed with power level. Time or location did not affect uniformity significantly for both operation types. The final average moisture contents of samples processed on turntable were lower than the ones processed with the new design. That is, the rotating drums lowered the moisture removal compared to the turntable.

Past few decades witnessed the birth and explosive growth of the internet and the communications &ndash / most notably the electronic mail- through it. Studies indicate that although security measures are deployed, their usage is very limited and problematic. This work proposes a system to address some of the shortcomings of present mail security systems, such as underutilization, complicated key management and unwanted immunization against filtering-scanning. A two-layer message encryption scheme with domain level keys is introduced and a performance analysis is presented. An analysis of the improvement on the key management is also presented. Results show that, e-mails can be secured without significant performance impact, and visible ease of key management, by using the system proposed in this thesis.

A two-phase research program was undertaken numerically to assess the behavior of the beam outside of the link that is designed for overstrength of the link in eccentrically braced frames (EBFs). In the first phase, software was developed to conduct a statistical analysis of the typical cases designed according to the AISC Seismic Provisions for Structural Steel Buildings. In this analysis, it was noticed that most of the statistically analyzed cases do not satisfy the code requirement provided for overstrength factor. Furthermore, the analyses results revealed that troublesome designs are highly influenced by normalized link length and slenderness of the beam. In this phase, redistribution of forces between beam and brace after the yielding of beam was also studied and it was observed that the forces not carried by the yielded beam are taken by the brace. In second phase, a total of 91 problematic designs were analyzed on finite element program to investigate the effective parameters on the overstrength issue, and overall and local stability of the beam outside of the links. According to analysis results, it was observed that unbraced beam length and flange slenderness are responsible for the stability of the system. Based on these results, the boundary values were suggested to prevent lateral torsional buckling of the beam and local buckling of the brace connection panel separately. Moreover, the overstrength factor specified by code was found conservative for the intermediate and long links although it is fit for the short links.

The subject of this study is the design of a camera, which has maximum volume of 50 mm x 50 mm x 300 mm, using short infrared wavelength providing Rayleigh criteria. Firstly, the required flux per pixel has been calculated. Throughout these calculations, atmospheric losses have been obtained by MODTRAN program. Also signal to noise ratio has been examined at minimum and maximum integration time intervals. The focal length of the camera has been calculated as it receives 1 m resolution from 8 km distance. Moreover, the lens materials have been used as N-F2, LIF and BaF2 in this six lens system. The design has been done using ZEMAX optical design program and the performance of the system at focal plane was investigated by the help of Seidel aberrations, Modulation transfer Function (MTF), Spot diagram and Optical Path Difference (OPD) fan plot analyses.

¡uAbstract¡v Information technology has been evolving continuously. No matter software or hardware, the innovative products are amazing. In recent years, the developing trends of computer aided design (CAD) system have been shifted from the simple 2-dimension plan drafting system to the 3-dimension model, which combines management, engineering, design, construction and information, and has become the goal that engineering firms pursuit. However, the information technology of engineering design today does not meet the need of engineering firms. Each firm has to analyze its need completely and thoroughly, train engineering information researchers actively, and hope that information technology can fully support its operations. Only by this way, the firm could have CAD and the information technology of engineering design that meet its demand and thus leads to a more sound and competitive mechanism. This study tries to examine on-the-job trainings discussed in the literature systemically and explore the engineering design information systems that have been completed by engineering consulting firms. Thus, we can understand every detail of work done by the researchers of engineering design information systems. Also, we interviewed those people deeply. The purpose of this study is to discuss how to integrate engineering designers and information technology and how an engineering designer is trained to be an engineering design researcher, after he or she implements an engineering design project. Therefore, he or she would become a researcher who can combine engineering design and information technology and then apply them wholly.

Current emission prediction models in the conceptual design phase are based on historical data and empirical correlations. Two main reasons contributing to the current state of emission models are complexity of the phenomena involved in the combustor and relatively low priority of having a more detailed emissions model at the conceptual design phase. However, global environmental concerns and aviation industry growth highlight the importance of improving the current emissions prediction approaches. There is a need to have an emission prediction model in the conceptual design phase to reduce the prediction uncertainties and perform parametric studies for different combustor types and operating conditions. The research objective of this thesis is to develop a methodology to have an initial estimate of gas turbines' emissions, capture their trends and bring more information forward to the conceptual design phase regarding the emission levels. This methodology is based on initial sizing of the combustor and determining its flow-fractions at each section using a 1D flow analysis. A network of elementary chemical reactors is considered and its elements are sized from the results of the 1D flow analysis to determine the level of emissions at the design and operating conditions. Additional phenomena that have significant effects on the prediction of emissions are also considered which are: 1) droplet evaporation and diffusion burning, and 2) fuel-air mixture non-uniformity. A simplified transient model is developed to determine the evaporation rate for a given droplet size distribution and to obtain the amount of vaporized fuel before they ignite. A probabilistic unmixedness model is also employed to consider the range of equivalence ratio distribution for the fraction of the fuel that is vaporized and mixed with air. An emission model is created for the single annular combustor (SAC) configuration and applied to two combustors to test the prediction and parametric capabilities of the model. Both uncertainty and sensitivity analyses are performed to assess the capability of the model to reduce the prediction uncertainty of the model compared to the simpler models without considering the droplet evaporation and mixture non-uniformity. The versatility of the model is tested by creating an emission model for a Rich-Quench-Lean (RQL) combustor, and the results are compared to limited actual data. In general, the approach shows a good performance predicting the NOx emission level compared to CO emission level and capturing their trends. Especially in the RQL combustor case, a more detailed model is required to improve the prediction of the CO emission level.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2001. / Typescript. Bibliographical references: leaf 287-297.

Dissertation (Ph.D.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (School of Kinesiology) / Simon Fraser University. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.