Neutrino-nucleon scattering is an effective way to investigate the inner structure of the nucleon, to extract the Standard Model parameters and to explore heavy quarks production dynamics. In the last decades, several experiments have been constructed to study weak interactions of neutrinos with nucleons. One of them was CERN-WA95 experiment operated by the CHORUS collaboration. It is based on a hybrid detector with nuclear emulsion as a target followed by electronic devices. Nuclear emulsion provides three dimensional spatial information with an outstanding resolution of the order of one micron. Therefore, it is ideal to detect short-lived particles. A special technique has been developed to reconstruct events in the emulsion which allows to perform a detailed investigation of events such as charmed hadrons production by neutrinos. As a result, the backround in the selected charm sample is up to six times lower compared to similar experiments. Such a method also permits to make direct measurements of some quantities instead of model fittings. This thesis is devoted to the study of the muonic decays of charmed hadrons and their production in emulsion. Manual inspection of charm events gives a complete reconstruction of charm decay topology. The extraction of the inclusive muonic branching ratio is based on the ratios per number of charged daughters in charm decay. Such an approach allows to separetely measure the muonic branching ratios for neutral and charged charm particles. Finally, normalization of the events with a muon in the final state to the charged current events gives dimuon production rate which is found compatible with the previous experiments. On top of that, preliminary results are shown for Bjorken x distribution and for a direct measurement of the Vcd Cabbibo-Kabayashi-Maskawa matrix element.

Vegetable oils have been researched as alternative source of energy for many years because they have proven themselves as efficient fuel sources for diesel engines when used in the form of biodiesel, vegetable oil–diesel blends, vegetable oil-water-diesel blends and mixtures thereof. However, very few studies involving the use of emulsified low grade alcohols in straight vegetable oils, as fuels for combustion have been published. Even, the published literature involves the use of emulsified fuels only for compression ignition diesel engines. Through this project, an attempt has been made to suggest the use of alcohol-in-vegetable oil emulsions (AVOE) as an alternate fuel in stationary burners like electric utility boiler producing steam for electricity generation and more dynamic systems like diesel engines. The main goal of this study is to understand the effect of the combustion of different methanol-in-canola oil emulsions, swirl angle and equivalence ratio on the emission levels of NOx, unburned hydrocarbons (UHC), CO and CO2. The 30 kW furnace facility available at Coal and Biomass Energy Laboratory at Texas A & M University was modified using a twin fluid atomizer, a swirler and a new liquid fuel injection system. The swirler blades were positioned at 60° and 51° angles (with respect to vertical axis) in order to achieve swirl numbers of 1.40 and 1.0, respectively. The three different fuels studied were, pure canola oil, 89-9 emulsion [9 percent methanol – in – 89 percent canola oil emulsion with 2 percent surfactant (w/w)] and 85-12.5 emulsion [12.5 percent methanol – in – 85 percent canola oil (w/w) emulsion with 2.5 percent surfactant]. All the combustion experiments were conducted for a constant heat output of 72,750 kJ/hr. One of the major findings of this research work was the influence of fuel type and swirl number on emission levels. Both the emulsions produced lower NOx, unburned (UHC) hydrocarbon and CO emissions than pure canola oil at both swirl numbers and all equivalence ratios. The emulsions also showed higher burned fraction values than pure oil and produced more CO2. Comparing the performance of only the two emulsions, it was seen that the percentage amount of methanol added to the blend had a definite positive impact on the combustion products of the fuel. The higher the percentage of methanol in the emulsions, the lesser the NOx, UHC and CO emissions. Of all the three fuels, 85-12.5 emulsion produced the least emissions. The vorticity imparted to the secondary air by the swirler also affected the emission levels. Increased vorticity at higher swirl number led to proper mixing of air and fuel which minimized emission levels at SN = 1.4. The effect of equivalence ratio on NO_x formation requires a more detailed analysis especially with regards to the mechanism which produces nitrogen oxides during the combustion of the studied fuels.

A colloid of magnesium hydroxide is used to stabilize droplets of monomers before suspension polymerisation. The characteristics of precipitated magnesium hydroxide changes significantly during the first hours. The viscosity is high and flucctuating at first but decreases and becomes low and stable after a few hours. When the colloid ages the primary particles agglomerate into larger particles which increases in size by time due to, among other things, Oswald ripening and aggregation. This can cause problems with poor reproducibility in the production. Therefore, the purpose of this study was finding a way to age the colloid without an increase in particle size and without changing any other features. Several experiments were made to optimize the precipitation procedure and to find out what parameters that are most important. The results showed that the stirring rate and colloidal concentration have big influence. Small amounts of chemicals that modifies the surface of the colloid was added. This made the particle size near constant over time and the colloid was aged for two months without increasing in size or changing other properties. This was confirmed by making microspheres that had the same characteristics as microspheres made with a fresh colloid.

The synthesis of precipitated calcium carbonate nanoparticles with the use of double water in oil emulsion has been developed. Restricting the mass of calcium ions present in the system makes it possible to predict particle size precipitated. A model was developed to calculate the concentration required to synthesize a desired particle size. This model took into account a coalescence factor. The coalescence factor is described at the probability of two emulsion droplets, with separate nucleation processes within them, colliding and forming one nucleation process. The Ca2+ ions diffused through the oil membrane into the emulsion droplets with (CaCO3)2- ions by concentration gradients and facilitated transport. The size and shape of precipitated calcium carbonate synthesized was confirmed using scanning electron microscope and light scattering. Particles ranging from 100 nm to 1200 nm have been synthesized using mass restriction. The effect of temperature on the crystalline structure of precipitated calcium carbonate was studied. This was done by x-ray diffraction, where it was found that calcite was the dominating crystalline structure.

Waste oil emulsions are generated in several manufacturing processes. Such emulsions not only affect the efficacy of wastewater treatment but also influence the water quality of the effluent. Therefore, these waste oil emulsions that have to be treated before being released into the environment. Many processes have been developed for demulsifying such materials and microwave irradiation has been shown to be most effective in this respect. It does not require the addition of chemicals and the oil recovered from the emulsion can be reused. With microwave irradiation, there are two main mechanisms occurring simultaneously. One is the rapid increase of temperature which reduces the viscosity of the emulsion. The other is molecular rotation, which neutralizes the Zeta potential because of the rearrangement of electrical charges surrounding the water droplets. Hence, water droplets coalesce and result in the separation of the emulsion. Addition of inorganic salts has also been shown to improve the efficiency of microwave irradiation in demulsification owing to an increase in solvent conductivity, which accelerates the heating rate. This process is termed salt-assisted microwave irradiation. In the present study, we propose that NaCl and artificial seawater can be an economical source of cations required in salt-assisted microwave demulsification. Our experiments included batch tests of emulsion characteristics and the effects of microwave operating conditions on demulsification rate and separation efficiency of three oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions (mineral oil, vegetable oil, and mineral-oil/vegetable-oil mix). First study was aimed to examine the demulsification of an O/W cutting oil emulsion with the addition of NaCl under microwave irradiation. This work investigates the effect of a set of operating variables, including irradiation time, irradiation power, dosage of NaCl, settling time, pH and the initial oil concentration, on the separation efficiency in the treatment of an oil in water (O/W) type cutting oil emulsion by microwave assisted demulsification. As a result of a series of batch demulsification tests a set of optimum operating conditions was found, consisting of 2 min of microwave irradiation at 280 W, the addition of 14 g/L of NaCl, 60 min settling time, and at a pH of 9.5. A separation efficiency of 93.8% was obtained with these conditions for 50 mL of cutting oil emulsion with an initial oil content of 10 g/L. The objective of the second study was to examine the demulsification of an O/W cutting oil emulsion, an olive oil emulsion, and a 1:1 cutting-oil/olive-oil emulsion mix, using a proposed process termed as seawater-assisted microwave irradiation demulsification. We conducted batch demulsification tests on 50-mL aliquots with an initial oil content of 10 g/L, and found that the separation efficiencies of a cutting oil emulsion, an olive oil emulsion, and a cutting-oil/olive-oil mix reached 93.1%, 92.6%, and 93.2%, respectively, using our optimum operating conditions, which were 40 sec of microwave irradiation at 700 W, a 60 min settling time, and addition of 12%, 32%, and 20% (all v/v) of artificial seawater, respectively. Using this set of operating conditions, a decrease in solution pH was found to significantly increase the demulsification efficiency after addition of inorganic acid, whereas an increase in the concentration of surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), resulted in a decrease in efficiency. In addition, our test data were explored using a stepwise regression method, yielding a multi-variable equation. This empirical equation was able to describe separation efficiency rather well, after exclusion of tests showing separation efficiency below 40% and temperature higher than the boiling point. This study could provide essential information related to O/W emulsions using salt-assisted microwave demulsification.

In this study, Reometer AR2000 is used to investigate the effect of shear rate on viscosity of emulsion. And a model for the effective viscosity of emulsion is established. Moreover, another model for the hydrodynamic lubrication with binary mixtures of non-Newton fluids is developed. The coupled modified Reynolds are solved by combining the advanced multilevel method with the Newton-Raphson method. The effect of shear rate on lubrication characteristics of hydrodynamic lubrication of emulsion is investigated in cold rolling process. Research results show that the viscosity of emulsion is decreased with increasing the shear rate. Hence,the oil film thickness, oil preasure and oil concentration under hydrodynamic lubrication are increased with decreasing the slide-to roll ratio. Emulsion will be Newton fluid under high shear rate. In the cold rolling process, the emulsion shows the high shear rate, and the elastic deformation of roller and strip are considersd. Hence the end point of plastic zone of strip is moved to oulet zone due to the lubricated zone is increased, so that the film thickness is higher than that for rigid body. When roller radius is increased, the effective elastic modulus and the thickness reduction of strip are decreased, then the lubrication characteristics in cold rolling process are influenced by elastic deformation. When the rolling speed is increased , the inlet film thickness is increased, and the roll torque is slightly increased, but the rolling force and peak preasure are almost not influenced.

Polyaniline (PAn) is an important conjugated conducting polymer because of its good environmental stability. However, the conductive form of polyanilune is difficult to processed because it is insoluble in common organic solvent. This property limits its processibility and application. In the study, we developed a feasible route for preparing polyaniline/surfactant core-shell latex to solve the insoluble problem. The polyaniline latex was made by emulsion polymerization of aniline monomer, using ionic polymer (poly(4-vinylpyridine)-methanesulfonic acid; P4VP(MSA)) as the surfactant and dopant. And then, the nano-size and core-shell morphologies of polyaniline latex was studied by Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) technique. The best conductivity of polyaniline film is approach to 10-2 S/cm.

Emulsified acids have been extensively used in the oil industry since 1933. Most of the available research and publications discussed mainly the application of emulsified acid in the field. A fair number of the published work also discussed in depth some of the emulsified acid properties such viscosity, stability and reactivity. However, all of the available research discussed the emulsified acid without sufficient details of its preparation. Beside their chemical composition, the ways emulsified acids are prepared cause significant differences in their physical properties. The characterization of emulsified acid by its droplet size and size distribution complements its chemical composition and gives the emulsified acid a unique description and thus reproducible properties. No previous study considered the impact of the droplet size on the characteristics and properties of emulsified acid. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to study the effects of the droplet size on various properties of emulsified acid such as viscosity, stability and reactivity. Results showed that the droplet size and size distribution have a strong effect on the stability, viscosity and diffusion rate of the emulsified acid. The results of this work are important because knowledge of the effect of the droplet size on major design parameters will guide the way emulsified acid is prepared and applied in the field.

Zugl.: Karlsruhe, Univ., Diss., 2009 / Hergestellt on demand. - Zusätzliches Online-Angebot unter http://uvka.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/shop/isbn/978-3-86644-407-2

Zugl.: Saarbrücken, Univ., Diss., 2009