A computação com DNA é um campo da Bioinformática que, através da manipulação de seqüências de DNA, busca a solução de problemas. Em 1994, o matemático Leonard Adleman, utilizando operações biológicas e manipulação de seqüências de DNA, solucionou uma instância de um problema intratável pela computação convencional, estabelecendo assim, o início da computação com DNA. Desde então, uma série de problemas combinatoriais vem sendo solucionada através deste modelo de programação. Este trabalho analisa a computação com DNA, com o objetivo de traçar algumas linhas básicas para quem deseja programar nesse ambiente. Para isso, são apresentadas algumas vantagens e desvantagens da computação com DNA e, também, alguns de seus métodos de programação encontrados na literatura. Dentre os métodos estudados, o método de filtragem parece ser o mais promissor e, por isso, uma metodologia de programação, através deste método, é estabelecida. Para ilustrar o método de Filtragem Seqüencial, são mostrados alguns exemplos de problemas solucionados a partir deste método. / DNA computing is a field of Bioinformatics that, through the manipulation of DNA sequences, looks for the solution of problems. In 1994 the mathematician Leonard Adleman, using biological operations and DNA sequences manipulation, solved an instance of a problem considered as intractable by the conventional computation, thus establishing the beginning of the DNA computing. Since then, a series of combinatorial problems were solved through this model of programming. This work studies the DNA computing, aiming to present some basic guide lines for those people interested in this field. Advantages and disadvantages of the DNA computing are contrasted and some methods of programming found in literature are presented. Amongst the studied methods, the filtering method appears to be the most promising and for this reason it was chosen to establish a programming methodology. To illustrate the sequential filtering method, some examples of problems solved by this method are shown.

Mes travaux de thèse portent sur l'échantillonnage direct du signal RF en réception après l'antenne, dans un contexte d'applications radio-logicielle et radio-cognitive. Le but de cette technique est de pouvoir traiter le signal quelle que soit la modulation utilisée et dans une large gamme de fréquences, directement après l'antenne, en réduisant au maximum la partie analogique. Pour cela une architecture d'échantillonneur passif a été utilisée. L'originalité de cette architecture consiste en l'implémentation d'un système d'échantillonnage différentiel en quadrature purement passif, constitué d'un réseau de capacités commutées. En fixant la constante de temps du système à une valeur élevée devant la fréquence minimale du signal RF à démoduler, l'échantillonneur se comporte à la fois en tant que mélangeur et filtre en fréquence. Cela permet la réjection des brouilleurs hors de la bande de réception et contribue à améliorer sensiblement la dynamique du système de réception, le tout pour une consommation très faible. Aussi, le système est flexible en fréquence, permettant ainsi de recevoir le spectre RF sur une large bande et de recevoir différents types de signaux modulés. Celui-ci a été intégré dans un front-end de réception complet en technologie CMOS 130nm pour des applications dans les bandes ISM (433MHz et 868MHz) dont les débits de transmission sont limités à 1Mbits/s. L'architecture développée est adaptée à des applications de type radio-logicielle ou radio-cognitive, lorsqu'une agilité en fréquence, une grande dynamique et des contraintes de consommation très basse sont visées. / My thesis work is focusing on the RF signal direct sampling reception after the antenna in a software-defined radio applications and cognitive radio context. The purpose of this technique is to treat the signal whatever the modulation used and in a wide range of frequencies, directly after the antenna while minimizing at maximum the analog part. For this, a passive sampler architecture has been used. The originality of this architecture consists in the implementation of a passive differential sampling system working in quadrature, consisting of a switched capacitors network. By setting the time system constant to a high value compared to the minimum frequency of the RF signal to be demodulated , the sampler acts both as a filter and a frequency mixer. This allows the rejection of interferers outside the reception band and contributes to improve significantly the receiver system dynamic, for a very low consumption. Also, the system is flexible in frequency, which permits to receive the RF spectrum over a wide band of frequencies and detect different types of modulated transmitted signals. It has been integrated into a complete front-end 130nm CMOS technology receiver dedicated to ISM bands applications (433MHz and 868MHz bands) whose transmission data rates are limited to 1Mbit/s. The developed architecture is suitable for software-defined radio or cognitive radio applications where frequency agility, high dynamic and very low power constraints are targeted.

Doctor of Philosophy / Computing and Information Sciences / Doina Caragea / Increasing amounts of content on the Web means that users can select from a wide variety of items (i.e., items that concur with their tastes and requirements). The generation of personalized item suggestions to users has become a crucial functionality for many web applications as users benefit from being shown only items of potential interest to them. One popular solution to creating personalized item suggestions to users is recommender systems. Recommender systems can address the item recommendation task by utilizing past user preferences for items captured as either explicit or implicit user feedback. Numerous collaborative filtering (CF) approaches have been proposed in the literature to address the recommendation problem in the single-domain setting (user preferences from only one domain are used to recommend items). However, increasingly large datasets often prevent experimentation of every approach in order to choose the one that best fits an application domain. The work in this dissertation on the single-domain setting studies two CF algorithms, Adsorption and Matrix Factorization (MF), considered to be state-of-the-art approaches for implicit feedback and suggests that characteristics of a domain (e.g., close connections versus loose connections among users) or characteristics of data available (e.g., density of the feedback matrix) can be useful in selecting the most suitable CF approach to use for a particular recommendation problem. Furthermore, for Adsorption, a neighborhood-based approach, this work studies several ways to construct user neighborhoods based on similarity functions and on community detection approaches, and suggests that domain and data characteristics can also be useful in selecting the neighborhood approach to use for Adsorption. Finally, motivated by the need to decrease computational costs of recommendation algorithms, this work studies the effectiveness of using short-user histories and suggests that short-user histories can successfully replace long-user histories for recommendation tasks. Although most approaches for recommender systems use user preferences from only one domain, in many applications, user interests span items of various types (e.g., artists and tags). Each recommendation problem (e.g., recommending artists to users or recommending tags to users) can be considered unique domains, and user preferences from several domains can be used to improve accuracy in one domain, an area of research known as cross-domain recommender systems. The work in this dissertation on cross-domain recommender systems investigates several limitations of existing approaches and proposes three novel approaches (two Adsorption-based and one MF-based) to improve recommendation accuracy in one domain by leveraging knowledge from multiple domains with implicit feedback. The first approach performs aggregation of neighborhoods (WAN) from the source and target domains, and the neighborhoods are used with Adsorption to recommend target items. The second approach performs aggregation of target recommendations (WAR) from Adsorption computed using neighborhoods from the source and target domains. The third approach integrates latent user factors from source domains into the target through a regularized latent factor model (CIMF). Experimental results on six target recommendation tasks from two real-world applications suggest that the proposed approaches effectively improve target recommendation accuracy as compared to single-domain CF approaches and successfully utilize varying amounts of user overlap between source and target domains. Furthermore, under the assumption that tuning may not be possible for large recommendation problems, this work proposes an approach to calculate knowledge aggregation weights based on network alignment for WAN and WAR approaches, and results show the usefulness of the proposed solution. The results also suggest that the WAN and WAR approaches effectively address the cold-start user problem in the target domain.

abstract: Functional traits research has improved our understanding of how plants respond to their environments, identifying key trade-offs among traits. These studies primarily rely on correlative methods to infer trade-offs and often overlook traits that are difficult to measure (e.g., root traits, tissue senescence rates), limiting their predictive ability under novel conditions. I aimed to address these limitations and develop a better understanding of the trait space occupied by trees by integrating data and process models, spanning leaves to whole-trees, via modern statistical and computational methods. My first research chapter (Chapter 2) simultaneously fits a photosynthesis model to measurements of fluorescence and photosynthetic response curves, improving estimates of mesophyll conductance (gm) and other photosynthetic traits. I assessed how gm varies across environmental gradients and relates to other photosynthetic traits for 4 woody species in Arizona. I found that gm was lower at high aridity sites, varied little within a site, and is an important trait for obtaining accurate estimates of photosynthesis and related traits under dry conditions. Chapter 3 evaluates the importance of functional traits for whole-tree performance by fitting an individual-based model of tree growth and mortality to millions of measurements of tree heights and diameters to assess the theoretical trait space (TTS) of “healthy” North American trees. The TTS contained complicated, multi-variate structure indicative of potential trade-offs leading to successful growth. In Chapter 4, I applied an environmental filter (light stress) to the TTS, leading to simulated stand-level mortality rates up to 50%. Tree-level mortality was explained by 6 of the 32 traits explored, with the most important being radiation-use efficiency. The multidimentional space comprising these 6 traits differed in volume and location between trees that survived and died, indicating that selective mortality alters the TTS. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2017

We are currently living in the Internet of Things (IoT) era, which involves devices that are connected to Internet and are communicating with each other. Each year, the number of devices increases rapidly, which result in rapid growth of data that is generated. This large amount of data is sometimes titled as Big Data, which is generated from different sources, such as log data of user behavior. These log files can be collected and analyzed in different ways, such as creating product recommendations. Product recommendations have been around since the late 90s, when the amount of data collected were not at the same level as it is today. The aim of this thesis has been to investigating methods to process and create product recommendations to see how well they are adapted for Big Data. This has been accomplished by three theory studies on how to process user events, how to make the product recommendation algorithm called collaborative filtering scalable and finally how to convert implicit feedback to explicit feedback (ratings). This resulted in a recommendation engine consisting of Apache Spark as the data processing system, which had three functions: read multiple log files and concatenate log files for each month, parsing the log files of the user events to create explicit ratings from the transactions and create four types of recommendations. The NoSQL database MongoDB was chosen as the database to store the different types of product recommendations that was created. To be able to get the recommendations from the recommendation engine and the database, a REST API was implemented which can be used by any third-party. What can be concluded from the results of this thesis work is that the system that was implemented is partial scalable. This means that Apache Spark was scalable for both concatenating files, parse and create ratings and also create the recommendations using the ALS method. However, MongoDB was shown to be not scalable when managing more than 100 concurrent requests. Future work involves making the recommendation engine distributed in a multi-node cluster to utilize the parallelization of Apache Spark. Other recommendations include considering other NoSQL databases that might be more scalable than MongoDB.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 DissCC.pdf: 2450373 bytes, checksum: 8cbe8a964a77ba28b6fc5019b478228a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-10-23 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Vinasse is a waste of sugarcane industry and, due to the presence of organic matter and mineral nutrients, it has been used for the irrigation of the sugarcane crops. However, its composition limits such application due to soil salinization. The anaerobic fermentation of vinasse generates biogas that is used as energy source in the sugarcane industry itself. The fermented vinasse results in biodigested vinasse. The development of techniques for residue use can contribute to cleaner production systems. In this research, we evaluated treated conventional and biodigested vinasses for the growth of Chlorella vulgaris. The treatment consisted of filtering the vinasses through smectite clay and activated carbon, or centrifugation. Concentrations of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100% of treated vinasses were tested. Cell density, absorbance at 570 nm, pH and electrolyte conductivity were quantified daily in a six day experiment. Based in cell density, specific growth rates were calculated. Growth rates higher than the controls were obtained in 60% conventional filtered vinasse and 10% conventional centrifuged one, as well as in 80% biodigested filtered vinasse and 20% biodigested centrifuged vinasse. In general, the filtered vinasse was superior in relation to the centrifuged one regarding higher residue concentration that supported microalgae growth. After microalgae acclimation we evaluated the photosynthetic performance of C. vulgaris in the best vinasses conditions and the biochemical composition of the biomass present in the vinasse, which besides the microalgae contained other microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, since it was not sterilized. Specific growth rate for C. vulgaris in 60% filtered conventional vinasse was 1.6 d-1 and 1.5 d-1 in the 80% filtered biodigested vinasse, representing increases of up to 84 x in cell density compared to the initial. In the LC Oligo control the growth rate was ~ 0.9 d-1 and in the BG11 it was 1,1 d-1. Although the better C. vulgaris growth in the treated vinasses, photosynthetic efficiency and its related parameters were better in the control than in the vinasses. These results together with those of chlorophyll a concentration suggest that the microalgae have possibly used a mixotrophic metabolism while in the vinasses. We observed higher biomass accumulation in the vinasses than in the controls. A reduction of total dissolved organic carbon and dissolved mineral elements up to 50%, as well as bacteria and fungi, were detected in the vinasse after microalgae growth. This study is a contribution to the knowledge of microalgae physiology in a residue and to the development of cleaner ethanol production system. / A vinhaça é um resíduo da indústria sucroalcooleira que, devido à presença de matéria orgânica e nutrientes minerais, tem sido utilizada para fertirrigação das próprias culturas de cana-deaçúcar. Porém, a composição desse resíduo limita sua aplicação no solo, pois pode levá-lo à salinização. A fermentação anaeróbia da vinhaça gera biogás que é usado como fonte de energia para a própria usina. Essa fermentação resulta na vinhaça biodigerida. Técnicas que permitam utilizar as vinhaças, convencionais ou biodigeridas, contribuem para um sistema de produção mais limpo e rentável. Propusemos nesta pesquisa, avaliar o uso de vinhaça tratada. Para tanto usamos vinhaça convencional e biodigerida, filtradas em argila esmectita e carvão ativado, ou centrifugadas. Nelas cultivamos Chlorella vulgaris (BEYERINCK, 1890). As vinhaças tratadas foram testadas em concentrações de 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 e 100%. Avaliamos diariamente a densidade celular, absorbância em 570 nm, pH e condutividade eletrolítica ao longo de seis dias. Com os resultados de densidade celular, calculamos as taxas de crescimento para cada tratamento. Os melhores crescimentos se deram em vinhaça convencional filtrada 60% e centrifugada 10% e, em vinhaça biodigerida filtrada 80% e centrifugada 20%. Em geral, as vinhaças filtradas suportaram o crescimento das microalgas em concentrações superiores em relação às centrifugadas. A produção de biomassa foi maior nos filtrados em comparação com centrifugados. Após aclimatação da microalga em vinhaça avaliaram-se os parâmetros fotossintéticos e bioquímicos da biomassa produzida em vinhaça biodigerida filtrada 80% e em vinhaça convencional centrifugada 60%. Taxas de crescimento específicas de C. vulgaris de 1,6 d-1 foram obtidas na vinhaça filtrada convencional 60% e 1,5 d-1 na biodigerida filtrada 80%, representando aumentos de até 84 x nas densidades celulares em relação às iniciais. No controle LC Oligo esse valor foi de 0,9 d-1 e no BG11 foi de 1,1 d-1. Apesar do melhor crescimento algal nas vinhaças, a eficiência fotossintética e os parâmetros relacionados foram melhores no controle do que nas vinhaças. Esses resultados sugerem que a microalga na vinhaça possa ter utilizado a via mixotrófica como fonte de carbono. Observou-se que houve maior acúmulo de biomassa nos cultivos em vinhaça do que nos controles. Houve redução do conteúdo de carbono orgânico total dissolvido e de elementos minerais na vinhaça em até 50%, bem como da contaminação por fungos e bactérias ao final dos cultivos. Este estudo é uma contribuição para o conhecimento da fisiologia de microalgas em resíduos e para o desenvolvimento de uma produção de etanol mais sustentável.

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Agradecemos a compreensão. on 2016-09-22T17:06:43Z (GMT) / Submitted by RODRIGO DOS SANTOS ALBUQUERQUE null (rdsa20@gmail.com) on 2016-09-22T17:53:18Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação de mestrado Rodrigo Albuquerque.pdf: 1101110 bytes, checksum: 06cce8f64ce03aadf0ced70da5dcfcab (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Felipe Augusto Arakaki (arakaki@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-09-27T12:31:29Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 albuquerque_rs_me_jabo.pdf: 1101110 bytes, checksum: 06cce8f64ce03aadf0ced70da5dcfcab (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-27T12:31:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 albuquerque_rs_me_jabo.pdf: 1101110 bytes, checksum: 06cce8f64ce03aadf0ced70da5dcfcab (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-04 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Fundação para o Desenvolvimento da UNESP (FUNDUNESP) / A criopreservação provoca injúrias aos espermatozoides e necessita de métodos que minimizem esses danos. Embora seja bastante discutida, a remoção do plasma seminal tornou-se uma alternativa para melhorar a qualidade e viabilidade espermática após a congelação e vem sendo utilizada em outras espécies na tentativa de obter bons resultados. O objetivo deste estudo foi comparar a remoção do plasma seminal de bubalinos tanto por filtragem (SpermFilter®) quanto por centrifugação sobre a qualidade do sêmen descongelado de búfalos. Foram utilizados sete touros da raça Murrah, os quais foram submetidos à colheita de sêmen por vagina artificial uma vez por semana. Os ejaculados foram diluídos com Botu-Bov® e fracionados em alíquotas para confrontar três técnicas antes da congelação: grupo C (Criopreservação convencional com plasma seminal), grupo CE (Criopreservação removendo o plasma seminal por centrifugação) e grupo F (Criopreservação removendo o plasma seminal por filtragem). O sêmen fresco foi analisado quanto ao volume, aspecto, cor, concentração (câmara de Neubauer), turbilhonamento, motilidade progressiva, vigor e morfologia espermática. No sêmen descongelado, foram avaliados a cinética espermática pelo CASA, a integridade de membrana plasmática, acrossoma, potencial de membrana mitocondrial e quantificação de EROs por citometria de fluxo e, adicionalmente, foi estimado o grau de peroxidação lipídica pela técnica de TBARS. Os resultados revelam que a remoção de plasma seminal não proporcionou aumento da velocidade espermática, alteração no potencial de membrana mitocondrial e nem modificou o grau de peroxidação lipídica. Entretanto, a presença do plasma seminal (grupo controle) e a centrifugação provocou maiores índices de lesões na membrana plasmática, quando estas apresentam o acrossoma intacto (47,88±1,99% vs. 41,30±1,96%, respectivamente) em comparação ao grupo F (40,45±2,01%; p<0,07). A lesão em ambas as membranas (acrossomal e plasmática) foi mais evidente na filtragem (22,18±1,07) em relação ao grupo controle (15,23±1,06), sendo que a centrifugação não diferiu entre os grupos (17,43±1,04; p<0,01). A EROs foi mais evidente no grupo CE (56,68±4,53%) em relação ao grupo C e F (21,83±4,60% vs. 20,96±4,7%, respectivamente; p<0,01). Portanto, as hipóteses de que a remoção de plasma seminal melhoram a cinética espermática e proporcionam menores índices de lesões na membrana plasmática não foram confirmadas. Embora a filtragem tenha apresentado vantagem sobre a centrifugação gerando menor quantidade de EROs, não se justifica a remoção do plasma seminal em búfalos devido aos resultados serem muito semelhantes ao grupo controle. / Cryopreservation promotes injury to sperm and methods to minimize such damage are necessary. Although much discussed, removal of seminal plasma that has been successfully used in other species has become an alternative for improving sperm quality and viability after freezing. The aim of the present study was compare to removal seminal plasma in buffalo both by filtering (SpermFilter®) and by centrifugation on the quality frozen thawed buffalo semen. For this purpose, semen of seven Murrah buffalo-bulls, which were submitted to semen collection by artificial vagina once a week. The samples were diluted with Botu-Bov® and were fractionated in aliquots to confront three techniques before freezing: C group (conventional cryopreservation with seminal plasma), CE group (cryopreservation removing the seminal plasma centrifuge) F group (Cryopreservation removing the seminal plasma with Sperm Filter®). Fresh semen was analyzed for volume, appearance, color, concentration (Neubauer chamber), gross motility, progressive motility, vigor and sperm morphology. In the thawed sperm, sperm kinetics was evaluated by CASA, plasma membrane and acrosomal integrity, mitochondrial membrane potential and estimation of the levels of reactive oxygen species were assigned by flow cytometry and was estimated degree of lipid peroxidation by TBARS technique. The results show that the removal seminal plasma did not improve sperm kinetics, mitochondrial membrane potential and does not modify the degree of lipid peroxidation.However, the presence of seminal plasma (control group) and centrifugation resulted in higher rates of injury to the plasma membrane, where they have an intact acrosome (47,88±1,99% vs. 41,30±1,96%, respectively) compared to F group (40,45±2,01%; p<0.07). The damage in both membranes (acrosome and plasma) was more evident in filtering (22,18±1,07) compared to the control group (15,23±1,06), and centrifugation did not differ between groups (17,43±1,04; p<0.01). ROS production was more evident in the CE group (56,68±4,53%) compared to the C and F group (21.83±4.60% vs. 20.96±4.7%, respectively; p<0.01). Therefore, removal seminal plasmais not beneficial to sperm, as did not alter the sperm kinetics nor provided lower lesions rates in the plasma membrane, although the filter has presented advantage over centrifugation as generated lower amount of ROS, not justifies the use bothtechnique because the results are very similar to those with seminal plasma. / FUNDUNESP: 2523-002-14

Algoritmos de detecção de linhas são usados em muitos campos de aplicação, tais como visão computacional e automação como base para análises mais complexas. Por exemplo, a informação de linha pode ser usada como dado de entrada para algoritmos de detecção de objetos ou mesmo para a estimativa da orientação espacial de robôs aéreos. Uma das formas de detectar linhas é através do uso de um processo de filtragem não linear chamado deWide Line Detector (WLD). Esse algoritmo é eficaz na marcação de pixels de linha em imagens em tons de cinza, separando linhas claras ou linhas escuras. Contudo, os algoritmos de detecção de linha não estão normalmente preocupados com a estimativa de largura local individual associada a um pixel. Se disponível, tal informação poderia ser explorada por algoritmos de visão computacional. Além do mais, a informação de cor também é extensivamente usada em visão computacional como um discriminante de objetos, mas o WLD não a usa. Neste Trabalho, nós propusemos a extensão do WLD para imagens em cores. Nós também desenvolvemos um novo kernel monotonicamente crescente que é mais eficiente e mais robusto para detectar linhas do que que os kernels monotonicamente decrescentes usados pelo WLD. Por fim, desenvolvemos uma maneira de obter uma estimativa de largura de linha partindo da densidade local associada a similaridade entre pixels, revertendo o processo usado pelo WLD para estimar qual kernel deve ser usado. Diversos experimentos foram realizados com o método proposto considerando diferentes parâmetros, além da comparação com o WLD tradicional, para analizar a eficácia do método. / Line detection algorithms are used by many application fields, such as computer vision and automation, as a basis for more complex analysis. For instance, line information can be used as input to object detection algorithms or even attitude estimation in flying robots. One way to detect lines is to use an isotropic nonlinear filtering procedure called the Wide Line Detector (WLD). This algorithm is effective to highlight the line pixels in gray scale images, separating dark or bright lines. However, line detection algorithms are not normally concerned with the pixel-wise estimation of thickness. If available, such information could be further explored by computer vision algorithms. Furthermore, color is extensively used in computer vision as an object discriminant, but not by the WLD. In this work, we propose the extension of the WLD to color images. We also develop a method that allows the estimation of the line width locally using only the density information and no border or center line information. Finally, we develop a new monotonically increasing kernel that is more efficient and yet effective to detect lines than the monotonically decreasing kernels used by the WLD. Finally, we devise a way ro obtain the wideline thickness from the density estimate obtained from the similarity between pixels, reverting the process used by the WLD to determine which kernel should be used. We perform several experiments with the proposed method, considering different parameters, and comparing it to the traditional WLD algorithm to assess the effectiveness of the method.

O processo de espessamento e clarificação dos efluentes das usinas de beneficiamento de carvão mineral com a adoção de sedimentadores é uma prática consagrada ao longo de todo o mundo uma vez que é necessário o reaproveitamento da água utilizada tanto por questões econômicas como ambientais. O primeiro sedimentador, tipo espessador, a entrar em operação industrial na região carbonífera de Santa Catarina foi instalado na Mina Barro Branco da Carbonífera Rio Deserto em 2007. O equipamento era dotado de lamelas de PVC e foi instalado como alternativa às bacias de decantação, que apresentam alto custo de construção e operação. Contudo, o equipamento se mostrou ineficaz devido a deposição de sólidos nas lamelas. Essa dificuldade levou a adoção de outros modelos de sedimentadores de fluxo vertical que não utilizam lamelas. Esse trabalho apresenta os dados disponíveis da operação do equipamento com as lamelas na Mina Barro Branco e resultados atuais da operação dos sedimentadores da Mina Esperança sem lamelas. Nesse segundo caso foi medida a vazão, concentração de sólidos e dos metais ferro, alumínio e manganês, nos fluxos de entrada e saída. No efluente clarificado mediu-se ainda o pH e a turbidez. Registraram-se dados de uma operação satisfatória, com impacto importante na redução dos custos no transporte e deposição dos rejeitos finos e no tratamento do overflow clarificado possibilitando o descarte de acordo com a Legislação Ambiental. / The process of thickening and clarifying the effluents of mineral coal processing plants with the use of settlers is a well-established practice throughout the world since it is necessary to reuse the water used for both economic and environmental reasons. The first settler, a thickener type, to enter into industrial operation in the Santa Catarina coal region was installed at the Barro Branco Mine of the Carbonifera Rio Deserto in 2007. The equipment was equipped with PVC lamellae and was installed as an alternative to the decantation basins, which have a high cost of construction and operation. However, the equipment proved to be ineffective due to deposition of solids in the lamellae. This difficulty led to the adoption of other models of vertical flow settlers that do not use lamellae. This work presents the available data of the operation of the equipment with lamellae in the Mina Barro Branco and current results of the operation of the settlers in the Mina Esperança without lamellae. In this second case the flow, concentration of solids and iron, aluminum and manganese metals in the inflow and outflow were measured. In the clarified effluent the pH and turbidity were also measured. Data were recorded for a satisfactory operation, with a significant impact on the reduction of costs in the transportation and deposition of the fine tailings and in the treatment of the clarified overflow, allowing the disposal according to the Environmental Legislation.

O minério de ferro produzido no complexo de Carajás traz consigo características mineralógicas que conferem um elevadíssimo teor de Fe em todas as suas frações granulométricas. Dessa forma, ao final da cadeia produtiva, tanto os produtos comerciais mais grosseiros quanto os finos contem cerca de 62% de Fe contido na sua composição. Importante destacar que em Carajás as fases no processamento desse minério são apenas para cominuição e classificação por tamanho. Não existem etapas de concentração e os produtos são diferenciados por suas respectivas curvas granulométricas: o “granulado” - mais grosseiro (> 13 mm), o “Sinter-Feed” (< 13 mm e > 0,5 mm) e o “pellet feed” (< 0,15 mm). Garantir a correta distribuição granulométrica da matéria prima é uma premissa de mercado. A ultima etapa da classificação é feita através de hidrociclones e gera um overflow ultrafino de altíssima superfície específica maior que 6.500 Blaine e com 45% até 95 % < 7 μm. E ainda possui um elevado teor de Fe - cerca de 62 %. Dessa forma os objetivos gerais dessa pesquisa buscaram a solução para essa oportunidade de recuperar e vender esses rejeitos. O estudo sugeriu através de ensaios com tecnologias capazes de desaguar os ultrafinos gerados para 9,00 % de umidade, que é o valor que permite a movimentação e o manuseio desses rejeitos, além de permitir sua incorporação na blendagem de produtos mais grossos. Desse modo, foram realizados experimentos em diversos laboratórios externos e em escala piloto na Usina de Carajás com amostras dos dois rejeitos ultrafinos das duas fases de hidrociclonagem: o natural e o moído. Ficou evidente que o equipamento tem de combinar necessariamente e de forma eficiente dois fatores essências ao desaguamento: elevadíssimas pressões e altas temperatura na operação desses ultrafinos. A produtividade atingida foi da ordem de 50 t/h x m² para o rejeito da hidrociclonagem do Sinter Feed e 40 t/h x m² para o rejeito dos hidrociclones da Moagem. / The Iron ore that is produced in Carajás mining complex brings mineralogical characteristics that give a very high Fe content in all its size fractions. Thus, at the end of the production chain both coarser and fine contains about 62% Fe contained in its composition. Importantly, in Carajás stages in the processing of this ore are for reduction and classification by size. There is thus no concentration steps and products are differentiated by their respective size distribution curves: the "grain" - coarser (> 13 mm), the "Sinter-Feed" (<13 mm and > 0.5 mm) and the "pellet feed" (<0.15 mm). Ensure proper particle size distribution of the raw material is a market premise. The last step of classification is made using hydrocyclones and generates an overflow ultrafine high specific surface area greater than 6.500 Blaine and with 45% to 95% <7 μm. And has a high Fe content - about 62%. The overall objectives of this research sought the solution to this opportunity to recover and sell these “tailings”. The study suggested by testing with technologies capable of flowing into the ultrathin generated to 9.00% of moisture, which is the value that allows movement and handling these wastes, and allows their incorporation into the blending of thicker products. Thus, experiments were carried out in several external laboratories and pilot-scale plant in the Carajás with samples of both ultrafine “tailings” of the two phases of hydrocycloning: the natural and the ground. It was evident that the equipment must necessarily match and two efficiently factors essences to dewatering: very high pressure and high temperature operation of these “tailings”. The productivity achieved was around 50 t/h x m² in reject of the Sinter Feed hydrocycloning and 40 t/h x m² to reject of the grinding hydrocyclones.