As some companies in the paper industry struggle to shift from commodity grades to value added products, technical challenges and opportunities have grown tremendously. These new products require more stringent manufacturing specifications and improved performance relative to those of lignocellulosic fibers currently being produced. Hence, topochemical and mechanical modifications of pulp fibers have moved to the forefront of many corporate strategies. Researchers are beginning to develop new tools to help better understand the fundamental mechanisms of fiber modifications and how to most efficiently apply them. Two novel approaches are presented. First, a new method to observe single fiber crossings is developed. It was found that refining reduces the stepheight in the fiber crossing for both hardwood and softwood kraft pulps by increasing the tendency of the fibers to collapse, deform, and assume a lens like shape. The effect of pulp type, bleaching, drying, wet pressing, and fiber charge were also investigated. Graphs of stepheight versus freespan were linear through the origin suggesting that the freespan (flexibility) of the crossing fiber is largely unimportant to the formation of fiber crossings. Quite surprisingly, the ratio of stepheight to freespan remained relatively constant no matter the treatment. Only bleaching and the addition of surface charge via CMC had any independent impact on freespan. The data do not fit bending or shear mechanisms that have been developed in the literature suggesting that another mechanism may be responsible for the deformation behavior of single fiber crossings. Also, a method employing fluorescence microscopy and fluorescence resonance energy transfer is used to image the areas of a fiber-fiber interface while they were bonded. Analysis of the FRET signal from fiber crossings indicate that wet pressing increased the FRET occurring between the two dyed fiber surfaces. The results are consistent with the increased amount of interdiffusion expected with higher levels of wet pressing. Two novel techniques are used to investigate fundamental aspects of fiber deformation behavior and fiber-fiber bond formation. As these methods are further refined and utilized they will provide new avenues for researchers to explore and expand the property space of fibers and paper sheets.

The major topic of this dissertation is how to improve the image quality and application of digital watermarking techniques. Most traditional digital watermarking techniques focus on the development and improvement of embedding algorithm. But fewer people really care about the degradation of the image quality of digital watermarking techniques. Meanwhile, the application of digital watermarking technique seems to be limited in the copyright protection. Therefore, the techniques used to improve the image quality and to expand the application of digital watermarking technique are proposed in this dissertation. The concept of the proposed technique used to improve the image quality of digital watermarking technique is different from the concept of traditional watermarking techniques which directly modify the features of image to embed digital watermark. Dissimilarly, the proposed technique uses the relation between the features to embed the digital watermark. In this way, the probability of modifying the feature can be efficiently reduced. Therefore, the image quality of watermarked image can be improved. Besides, the proposed technique works like a pre-process. The proposed technique can be easily applied to present traditional digital watermarking techniques without changing the original embedding and extracting process. The expansion of digital watermarking techniques application consists of two techniques. The first one uses the digital watermarking technique to provide the ¡§Image Refining¡¨ function for digital images. In the proposed technique, the RS (Reed-Solomon) codes of original image are used as a watermark and are embedded in the original image. The watermarking information can provide the error correction capability while the original image is distorted (refining function). If there is some alterations made to the watermarked image and they are within the error correction capability of the RS parities, the alterations will be corrected by the RS decoding to restore the original image. The second one applies the digital watermarking techniques on the Pay-TV system. Conventional key distribution methods used in Pay-TV system emphasize on the method¡¦s refinement in order to reduce the frequency of the keys distributed over network. The proposed method uses the digital watermarking technique to hide the cryptographic keys into routine encrypted video program without any increasing of video program size for the economy of network bandwidth and degradation in perceptual quality. The purpose of this thesis is to improve the practicability of digital watermarking techniques. The proposed techniques could supplement the incompleteness of the traditional digital watermarking techniques with additional functions and applications. In this way, traditional digital watermarking techniques can not only be used for copyright protection but also be the new choice of resolving problem in the future digital environment.

Constructd wetland system is one of the ecological engineering technologies used on wastewater treatments. In this study, we discussed the treatment efficiencies of oil refining and steel-milling wastewater by four lab-scale constructed wetland systems (0.8-m long by 0.4-m wide by 0.7-m deep), which were all filled with gravel media, and planted with Phragmites communis. The constructed wetland systems were designed into two types: free water surface (FWS) and subsurface flow (SSF) wetland systems, which were discharged with two different types of wastewater (oil refining and steel-milling). The experiments of this study were run by five stages. The experimental results showed that almost all of the contaminants could be reliably removed from wastewater by the constructed wetland systems, especially in the SSF systems. During the experiments, the second stage of the experiments had the best treatment efficiencies, in which the flowrate was controlled at 5mL/min. The hydraulic retention time (HRT) in FWS and in SSF werecalculated equal to 7.5days, and 5.36days, respectively.

In recent years, interest in wastewater treatment through constructed wetlands has been significantly increased because of their low cost and energy requirement. In this study, pilot-scale constructed wetland systems were developed to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness on the treatment of oil-refining and steel-milling wastewater. The constructed wetland used to treat the oil-refining wastewater included one free water surface system (FWS) filled with sandy media and one subsurface flow system filled with gravel media. The plants grown on the wetland were Phragmites communis. The hydraulic retention time for the two systems was approximately 7 and 5 days, respectively. A two-stage subsurface flow constructed wetland system was used to treat steel-milling wastewater. This system, which filled with gravel media were planted with Phragmites communis (the first stage) and Typha orientalis (the second stage). The hydraulic retention time for this system was approximately 7 days. Experimental results showed that the two constructed wetland systems for the oil-refining wastewater treatment could remove most of the wastewater pollutants. Moreover, the first system (FWS) played a more important role on the wastewater treatment. The efficiency of the first stage of the wetland system, which was used for steel-milling wastewater treatment was not significant due to the inhibition of the plant growth by the wastewater. However, the treatment efficiency was increased at the second stage after planting new plants. Results from the two-stage treatment system indicate that higher treatment efficiencies were observed except for ammonium. Results from this study would be very useful in the design of constructed wetlands for practical application to treat oil-refining and steel-milling wastewaters.

<p>Modern air battles are very dynamic and fast, and put extreme pressure on pilots. In some unpredictable situations, like new discovered threats or mission plan deviation because of enemy aircraft, the pilots might need to replan their predefined flight route. This is very difficult, if not impossible, to do since numerous factors affect it. A system that can help the pilots to do such a thing is needed. P</p><p>revious work in this field has involved methods from artificial intelligence like A*-search. In this master thesis, implementation of a replanning system based on a control theory method, Model Predictive Control (MPC), is examined. Different factors influencing the path, such as terrain and threats, are included in the algorithm. </p><p>The results presented in this thesis show that MPC solves the problem. As with every method there are some drawbacks and advantages, but as a summary the method is a very promising one and is worth further development. </p><p>Proposals of future work and different improvements of the algorithms used here are presented in this report as well.</p>

<p> </p><p>The correlation between pulp properties and operating conditions in high consistency (HC) refiners at Holmen Paper AB were studied. Two types of HC refiners were investigated: the Andritz RTS refiner at the Hallstavik Mill and the Sprout-Bauer Twin 60 refiner at the Braviken Mill. The objective of the study was to clarify the relationship between the pulp properties and refining conditions such as electrical energy input, housing- and feed- pressure and plate wear in high consistency refining.</p><p>The results of this project show that worn segments reduce the operating energy maximum input and the pulp and handsheet properties in negative aspects such as lower tensile- and tear index, and shorter average fibre length. Energy input is an important factor in the refining process and influence Canadian Standard Freeness and the tensile index as evident from the probability residuals. Housing pressure and feed pressure influence the pulp quality and should be adjusted in order to optimise the refining process, although the effect is not as great as for energy input or plate wear.</p><p>The results of the study indicate that Braviken Mill is operating at its optimum for the parameters measured in this project. Hallstaviks goal, to avoid fibre shortening and to obtain better tensile index, can be reached by making slight changes in pressure condition.</p><p> </p>

No description available.

The sugar refinery process used by Lantic Sugar Ltd generates three by-products having characteristics that give them potential as soil amendments or fertilizers, particularly as a phosphorous and calcium source. Laboratory and a field trials were conducted in order to examine the changes in agronomic properties of soil produced by the application of these residues. / During the laboratory experiment, the by-products examined were spend bone char (SBC), filter-press mud (FPM), clarification scum (SCU) and a compost (COM) produced using FPM and SCU, where as in a field experiment, COM, SBC and a mixture (MIX) made of FPM and SCU, were compared to a commercial fertilizer (TSP) and non-treated soils. / The orthic humic gleysol of clay texture and low pH soil conditions in which the field experiment was conducted resulted in high P fixation of all the applied residues. Contrasts analysis showed that TSP behaved as the soils unamended P for all nutrient concentrations in tissues over two cropping seasons (1993 and 1994), on two crops, namely wheat (Triticum aestivum, L.) and corn (Zea mays, L.). Treatments (residues at different rates of application) did not significantly increase the Ca levels in COM plots nor did they increase the wet aggregate stability of soil under either crop. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

A compost consisting 95% of the sugar mill byproducts: bagasse, filter press mud, and fly ash, applied at 5 t ha$ sp{-1}$, increased vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal infection of sugarcane roots in one of three experimental fields in Barbados. In a plant cane field, compost stimulated formation of intracellular hyphal coils and arbuscules, but not vesicles or hyphae. Infection was greater in roots 35 cm and 65 cm than 5 cm distant from the plant stem, and compost effects were not significant at 5 cm. Two other sources of phosphorus, filter press mud and triple superphosphate, did not affect and suppressed mycorrhizal infection, respectively. Two ratoon crops showed no residual effect of compost on mycorrhizal infection. Compost also stimulated tillering, phosphorus content, and perhaps yield of cane, but did not differentially effect high versus low tillering or sloped versus flat areas. Root length, weight, and specific root length were unaffected by compost addition, but root branching was decreased.

Crystallization is done in the sugar industry using natural circulation vacuum evaporative crystallizers known as vacuum pans. the fluid which is known as massecuite consists of a suspension of crystals in concentrated molasses. It is highly viscous and slightly non-Newtonian, and laminar conditions prevail in the apparatus. Research on forced convection boiling heat transfer, pressure drop and vapour holdup has been done mostly in turbulent flow under pressures higher than atmospheric, but no studies have been made when boiling viscous fluids under vacuum. This thesis describes a series of experiments which were undertaken with the following objectives: (a) to determine the influence of the pertinent variables on heat transfer, friction losses and vapour holdup while boiling under laminar conditions (b) to produce a method for the calculation of the evaporation and circulation rates in vacuum pans, as this would make possible the optimization of this type of equipment. The apparatus used consisted of a single tube steam heated forced circulation evaporator. The void fraction, pressure and centerline temperature were measured along the tube. The fluids used were syrup, molasses and massecuite covering a thousandfold change in viscosity. The tests were conducted under different conditions of vacuum and steam pressures with varying tube inlet velocities. The experimental results show that the boiling heat transfer coefficient can be correlated as a function of the two phase Reynolds number and dimensionless density ratio and that it is inversely proportional to the tube length to the power of one third. The pressure drop can be estimated using the equation of Oliver and Wright (1964) for bubbly flow. Equations are proposed for calculating the void fraction in the highly subcooled region and point of bubble departure. These equations form the basis of a computer program which by a stepwise and iterative method simulates the boiling process along the tube. Measurements taken on a natural circulation pan with tubes of different length show that this method predicts the effect of the tube length with reasonable accuracy. The limitations of this study are that the experiments were done with a single diameter tube so that the effect of diameter has not been established with certainty. Only sugar products were used in the experiments, and caution is necessary if this method is applied to other fluids. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1985.