An existing furnace oil fired boiler is used to supply process steam to an instant tea manufacturing factory. The instant tea is manufactured the Broken Mixed Fannings (BMF) through extraction and other required processes. The average steam consumption of the plant is 6000 kg/h at 10 barg pressure. During the process, tea waste is generated at a nominal rate of 50,000 kg/day, about 2000 kg/h at around 70% MC content on wet basis. At the moment this waste tea is either dumped in the surrounding area by spending money or sent to landfilling purposes, which create environmental issues.   The tea waste coming out at 70% MC wet basis, is looked at to press through continuous belt press to reduce the moisture content to about 55% on wet basis. The water removed from this pressing process is sent to effluent treatment plant at the factory. The output from the belt press is sent to a steam operated  The average generation of tea waste from the instant tea manufacturing process process is about 2000 kg/h, after pressing in the belt press an output rate of about 1,400 kg/h at 55% MC. This amount of tea waste at 55% MC is sent to a rotary steam tube dryer and the MC is reduced from 55% to 30% and the output rate from the steam tube dryer is about 857 kg/h. The amount of steam consumed by the rotary steam tube dryer at 6 barg pressure is 760 kg/h. Then the tea waste from the rotary tube dryer is mixed with firewood of 30% MC and fed to the boiler to generate process steam, out of which 857 kg/h steam at 6 barg pressure is sent back to the rotary steam dryer. From tea waste alone, a steam amount of 2,472 kg/h can be supplied after giving steam to the rotary steam dryer. The balance steam amount of 3,528 kg/h for the process requirement is supplied by burning additional firewood at 30% MC content. The tea waste fuel and firewood in combination have an overall moisture content of 30% on wet basis. The boiler is rated at 10,000 kg/h F & A 100 deg C with an actual generating capacity of about 9000 kg/h at 10 barg operating pressure at 70 deg C feed water temperature. By implementing the combination of belt press, rotary steam tube dryer and firewood boiler in place of the existing furnace oil fired boiler, an annual monetary saving of 168 Mn SLR/year can be achieved with a simple payback period of 21 months which is a highly feasibly project.

TiAlN and TiAlN-based coatings that are used of relevance as protection of cutting tool inserts used in metal machining have been studied. All coatings were deposited by reactive cathodic arc evaporation using industrial scale deposition systems. The metal content of the coatings was varied by using different combinations of compound cathodes. The as-deposited coatings were temperature annealed at ambient pressure and in some cases also at high pressure. The resulting microstructure was first evaluated through a combination of x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. In addition, mechanical properties such as hardness by nanoindentation were also reported. TiAlN coatings with two different compositions were deposited on polycrystalline boron nitride substrates and then high pressure high temperature treated in a BELT press at constant 5.35 GPa and at 1050 and 1300 °C for different times. For high pressure high temperature treated TiAlN it has been shown that the decomposition is slower at higher pressure compared to ambeint pressure and that no chemical interaction takes place between TiAlN and polycrystalline cubic boron nitride during the experiments. It is concluded that this film has the potential to protect a polycrystalline cubic boron nitride substrate during metal machining due to a high chemical integrity. TiZrAlN coatings with different predicted driving forces for spinodal decomposition were furthermore annealed at different temperatures. For this material system it has been shown that for Zr-poor compositions the tendency for phase separation between ZrN and AlN is strong at elevated temperatures and that after spinodal decomposition stable TiZrN is formed.

Le comportement des verres sous pression, lié à leurs structures topologiques, est un enjeu majeur à la fois fondamental et appliqué. L’anomalie élastique de la silice à 2,5GPa est un phénomène connu et son existence est plus que probable dans le verre de GeO2. Il semblait alors légitime de questionner son existence dans des verres plus répandus de compositions chimiques complexes comme les verres alumino sodo silicatés. L’anomalie élastique a été étudiée in situ par Diffusion Brillouin et Raman pour le verre de GeO2 et trois verres alumino sodo silicaté de compositions chimiques : (Al2O3)X(Na2O)25−X(SiO2)75 où X=0, 6 et 12%. Il a été montré que l’existence de l’anomalie de compressibilité dans le domaine élastique n’était pas réduite qu’à la silice uniquement mais au contraire persistait sur un vaste domaine de compositions chimiques et semblait être liée à la présence d’anneaux à 6 tétraèdres. Au delà de la limite élastique, les modifications structurales à l’origine du phénomène de densification permanente ont été étudiées pour la silice, le verre de GeO2 et six verres d’alumino sodo silicatés (contenant X=0, 2, 6, 9, 12 et 16% d’Al2O3). Tout d’abord nous avons observé par diffusion Brillouin la disparition progressive de l’anomalie élastique de la silice avec la densification. Ce phénomène a été interprété en termes de transformations induites par la pression d’une forme amorphe basse densité (LDA) en une forme amorphe haute densité (HDA) : LDA → HDA. Des études in situ et ex situ par Diffusion Brillouin et Raman, Résonance Magnétique Nucléaire (RMN) et aussi de Spectroscopie d’Absorption des Rayons X proche du seuil (XANES) ont montré que les modifications structurales à l’origine de la densification permanente dépendaient grandement de la composition chimique. En particulier la présence de cation sodique semble favoriser les modifications à courte portée comme la formation d’espèces hautement coordonnées d’aluminium ou encore de silicium ainsi que la dépolymérisation du réseau. Au contraire les verres les plus riches en aluminium semblent montrer une densification plus proche structurellement de celle de la silice pure c’est à dire modifiant principalement l’ordre à moyenne distance avec diminution de l’angle inter-tétraèdre et de la taille des anneaux / The structural study of glasses under pressure is of fundamental interest in Physics, Earth Science and is technologically important for the comprehension of industrial material properties. The elastic anomaly at 2.5GPa in pure silica glass is a well known phenomenon and its existence is more than likely in GeO2 glass. In this work the persistence of the elastic anomaly in more complex and more widely glass compositions as sodium alumino silicate glasses was studied. The elastic anomaly was studied in situ in GeO2 and three sodium alumino silicate glasses by Brillouin and Raman scattering. The studied sodium alumino silicate glasses had the following compositions : (Al2O3)X(Na2O)25−X(SiO2)75 where X=0, 6 et 12% and is the molar percentage of Al2O3. The elastic anomaly was shown to persist in a broad domain of chemical compositions thus its existence is not reduced to pure silica glass. Its existence seems to be linked to the presence of 6 membered rings. Beyond the elastic limit, the structural modifications was studied in pure silica, GeO2 glass and sodium alumino silica glasses (with X=0, 2, 6, 9, 12 et 16% of Al2O3) in order to structurally better understand the densification phenomenon. Firstly the elastic anomaly was studied by Brillouin scattering experiments, was shown to progressively disappear with the densification. This progressive disappearance was interpreted in terms of a progressive structure induced transformation from a Low Density Amorphous form (LDA) into a High Density Amorphous form (HDA) : LDA → HDA. In situ and ex situ studies by Brillouin and Raman scattering, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) showed that the pressure induced structural transformation was highly dependent of the glass chemical composition. For instance the presence of sodium cations promotes short range order modifications, such as formation of highly coordinated species (Al, Si) and network depolymerization. On the other hand, glasses with a high aluminum concentration show a densification process closer to that of pure silica glass, with mainly middle range order structural modifications such as a decrease of the inter-tetrahedral angle or ring size decrease