Hydrogenation and dehydrogenation on Pd- and Pt- catalysts are encountered in many industrial hydrocarbon processes. The present work considers the development of catalysts and their kinetic modeling along a general and rigorous approach. The first part deals with the kinetics of selective hydrogenation, more particularly of the C3 cut of a thermal cracking unit for olefins production. The kinetics of the gas phase selective hydrogenation of methyl-acetylene (MA) and propadiene (PD) over a Pd/γ-alumina catalyst were investigated in a fixed bed tubular reactor at temperatures 60 - 80 oC and a pressure of 20 bara. Hougen-Watson type kinetic equations were derived. The formation of higher oligomers slowly deactivated the catalyst. The effect of the deactivating agent on the rates of the main reactions as well as on the deactivating agent formation itself was expressed in terms of a deactivation function multiplying the corresponding rates at zero deactivation. Then, the kinetic model was plugged into the reactor model to simulate an industrial adiabatic reactor. In the second part the production of hydrogen from hydrocarbons was investigated. In both cyclohexane and decalin dehydrogenations, conversions higher than 98% could be obtained over Pt/γ-alumina catalyst at temperature of 320 and 340 oC, respectively, with no apparent deactivation for 30 h and with co-feed of H2 in the feed. Except for H2 and trace amounts of side cracking products, less than 0.01%, benzene was the only dehydrogenated product in cyclohexane dehydrogenation. In the case of decalin dehydrogenation, partially dehydrogenated product, tetralin, was also formed with selectivity lower than 5%, depending on operating conditions. A rigorous Hougen-Watson type kinetic model was derived, which accounted for both the dehydrogenation of cis- and trans- decalin in the feed and also the isomerization of the two isomers. Jet A is the logic fuel in the battlefields. The dehydrogenation of Jet A can produce H2 for military fuel cell application. Although the H2 production is lower than that of steam/autothermal reforming, it eliminates the needs of high temperature and product separation operation.

The Ultra-Wideband (UWB) communication technology has been extensively attended in recent years. In this thesis, we propose the improved selective-Rake receiver and analyze the performance on UWB channels. The UWB transmission channels are modeled with statistical methods and its fading characteristics are discussed. Different impulse radio properties for the UWB communication system are analyzed. The system performance and design complexity issues of selective-Rake receiver (SRake) are studied. Rake receiver has difficulties achieving desired system performance in the dense multipath environment. The main ideas of SRake receiver are to obtain the SNR level on known multipath channel and to determine the desired number of Rake fingers. Matched filters and maximum likelihood detectors are utilized in the implementation of the SRake to estimate the signal time delay. The CLEAN algorithm is then used in selecting the paths with relatively high energy. Furthermore, we also propose a noise cancellation scheme for performance improvement in the SRake receiver. In the noise cancellation scheme, the multiresolution property of wavelet transform is used for filtering the noise interference caused by the rapid fluctuation factor. In addition, a two-stage search is combined with the original CLEAN algorithm to increase the accuracy of path selection. From our simulation results on the UWB channels, the improved SRake receiver, with noise cancellation and two-stage search, indeed has high SRake output SNR and better path accuracy than the original SRake receiver.

Collective Action , National Teachers' Association R.O.C

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Customized information service is very important for service provider nowadays. Traditional selective dissemination, as widely discussed in library community requires users¡¦ involvement and only serves a limited amount of users. In this thesis, we propose to employ data mining techniques to discover knowledge in circulation databases so as to provide customized service in library new book recommendation. Our research¡¦s data source is from National Sun Yat-Sen University¡¦s library. We follow a standard data mining procedure and report our experience in this thesis. Our research uses patron concept hierarchy and book hierarchy with given support threshold and confidence threshold to derived association rules with patron types being antecedent and book types being subsequent. Four algorithms, namely SBSP, SBMP, LatSBMP, MBMP are proposed to facilitate patron and book hierarchy search. Their complexities are compared analytically.

Abstract Libraries have long been widely recognized as import information-offering institutes. Thousands of new books are acquired per month by our university¡Xa mid-sized university in Taiwan), and patrons may have difficulties identifying the small set of books that really interest them. This gives rise to the problem of finding an effective way to recommend patrons the newly arrived books in a library. In this work, we address this problem in finding generalized association rules between patrons and books. We first discuss how to identify relevant but independent patron attributes in regard of the books they checked out. Then, we propose a set of algorithms for generating large itemsets and evaluate their performance experimentally. In addition, we define interestingness of rules and propose an algorithm for pruning uninteresting rules. Finally, we apply our approach to the circulation data of National SUN Yat-Sen University library and report our experiences.

In this work, the steady-state performance of zeolite-based Cu-ZSM-5, vanadium based honeycomb monolith catalysts (V), vanadium-titanium based pillared inter layered clay catalyst (V-Ti PLIC) and vanadium-titanium-tungsten-based honeycomb monolith catalysts (V-Ti-W) was investigated in the selective catalytic reduction process (SCR) for NO removal using NH3 in presence of oxygen. The objective is to obtain the expression that would predict the conversion performance of the catalysts for different values of the SCR process parameters, namely temperature, inlet oxygen concentration and inlet ammonia concentration. The NOx emission, its formation and control methods are discussed briefly and then the fundamentals of the SCR process are described. Heat transfer based and chemical kinetics based SCR process models are discussed and widely used rate order based model are reviewed. Based on the experimental data, regression analysis was performed that gives an expression for predicting the SCR rate for the complete temperature range and the rate order with respect to inlet oxygen and ammonia concentration. The average activation energy for the SCR process was calculated and optimum operating conditions were determined for each of the catalyst. The applicable operating range for the catalyst depends on the NO conversion as well as on the ammonia slip and the N2O and NO2 emission. The regression analysis was repeated for the applicable range and an expression was obtained that can be used to estimate the catalyst performance. For the Cu-ZSM-5, the best performance was observed for 400oC, 660 ppm inlet ammonia concentration and 0.1% inlet oxygen concentration. For the V based honeycomb monolith catalyst, the best performance was observed for 300oC, 264 ppm inlet ammonia concentration and 3% inlet oxygen concentration. For the V-Ti based PLIC catalyst, the best performance was observed for 350oC, 330 ppm inlet ammonia concentration and 3% inlet oxygen concentration. For the V-Ti-W based honeycomb monolith catalyst, the best performance was observed for 300oC, 330 ppm inlet ammonia concentration and 3% inlet oxygen concentration. The conversion performance of all of these catalysts is satisfactory for the industrial application. At the operating conditions listed above, the N2O emission is less than 20 ppm and the NO2 emission is less than 10 ppm. The results were validated by comparing the findings with the similar work by other research groups. The mechanism of SCR process is discussed for each of the catalyst. The probable reactions are listed and adsorption and desorption process are studied. The various mechanisms proposed by the researchers are discussed briefly. It is concluded that V-Ti-W and Cu-ZSM-5 catalyst are very promising for SCR of NOx. The expressions can be used to estimate the conversion performance and can be utilized for optimal design and operation. The expressions relate the SCR rate to the input parameters such as temperature and inlet oxygen and ammonia concentration hence by controlling these parameters desired NOx reduction can be achieved with minimal cost and emission.

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This study examines whether hope appeal and fear appeal in service advertisements would significantly influence consumers¡¦ perception of innovation characteristics such as relative advantage, compatibility, and perceived risk, thus further influence the consumers¡¦ decision on whether to adopt the innovative service product or not. As to the literature support, the researcher advocate that when consumer perceives a stronger appeal of hope or fear, he/she will generate a selective exposure to the information from the specific advertisement, thus further influence the consumers¡¦ adoption decision. And by experimental design, besides the main effect of hope and fear appeal, the researcher also considered and included the negative reactivity of consumers and also the amount of benefit information within the advertisement to explore their moderating roles in the effects of emotional appeal on the customers¡¦ adaptation of service innovation. The results shows that except perceived risk, other perceived innovative characteristics (compatibility and relative advantages) are significantly affected by the hope and fear appeal. The result also shows that perceived innovative characteristics partially mediate the effect of emotional appeal on the customers¡¦ adaptation of service innovation. But unexpectedly, negative reactivity and the amount of benefits information within the advertisement do not show significant moderating effects on the relationship between emotional appeal and adaptation of service innovation.

<p>The subject of this thesis is scattering of electromagneticwaves from planar and curved periodic structures. The problemspresented are solved in the frequency domain.</p><p>Scattering from planar structures with two-dimensionalperiodic dependence of constitutive parameters is treated. Theconstitutive parameters are assumed to vary continuously orstepwise in a cross section of a periodically repeating cell.The variation along a longitudinal coordinate z is arbitrary. Ageneral skew lattice is assumed. In the numerical examples, lowloss and high loss dielectric materials are considered. Theproblem is solved by expanding the .elds and constitutiveparameters in quasi-periodic and periodic functionsrespectively, which are inserted into Maxwell’s equations.Through various inner products de.ned with respect to the cell,and elimination of the longitudinal vector components, a linearsystem of ordinary di.erential equations for the transversecomponents of the .elds is obtained. After introducing apropagator, which maps the .elds from one transverse plane toanother, the system is solved by backward integration.Conventional thin metallic FSS screens of patch or aperturetype are included by obtaining generalised transmission andre.ection matrices for these surfaces. The transmission andre.ection matrices are obtained by solving spectral domainintegral equations. Comparisons of the obtained results aremade with experimental results (in one particular case), andwith results obtained using a computer code based on afundamentally di.erent time domain approach.</p><p>Scattering from thin singly curved structures consisting ofdielectric materials periodic in one dimension is alsoconsidered. Both the thickness and the period are assumed to besmall. The .elds are expanded in an asymptotic power series inthe thickness of the structure, and a scaled wave equation issolved. A propagator mapping the tangential .elds from one sideto the other of the structure is derived. An impedance boundarycondition for the structure coated on a perfect electricconductor is obtained.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>electromagnetic scattering, periodicstructure, frequency selective structure, frequency selectivesurface, grating, coupled wave analysis, electromagneticbandgap, photonic bandgap, asymptotic boundary condition,impedance boundary condition, spectral domain method,homogenisation</p>