The aim of this work is to quantify the concentration of chromic acid (CA) in a saturated solution of chromium trioxide and sodium dichromate using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). A set of titration curves was obtained by automated acid-base titration according to a factorial experimental design that was developed for this purpose. These titration curves were divided into three subsets, a learning, training and test set for use by ANNs. Once trained, ANNs have the ability to recognize, generalize and relate the input to a particular output. Concentration of chromic acid (CA), total chromium(VI) and/or dichromate was used as the outputs and titration curves as the inputs to ANNs. Our aim here was to establish whether ANNs would be able to predict the concentration of chromic acid with an absolute error below 1%. For real world problem, the neural networks are only given the inputs and are expected to produce reasonable outputs corresponding to that inputs without any prior ‘knowledge’ about theory involved – here, no interpretation of titration curves was performed by ANNs. The test set of data that was not used for learning process, was used to validate the performance of the neural networks, to verify whether the ANNs learned the input-output patterns properly and how well trained ANNs were able to predict the concentrations of chromic acid, dichromate and total chromium. A number of ANNs models have been considered by varying the number of neurons in the hidden layer and parameters related to the learning process. It has been shown that ANNs can predict the concentration of chromic acid with required accuracy. A number of factors that affect the performance of the neural networks, such as the number of points in a titration curve, number of test points and their distribution within the training set, has been investigated. This work demonstrates that ANNs can be used for online monitoring of an electrolytic industrial process to manufacture chromic acid. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Chemistry / unrestricted

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:07:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DjalmaRS.pdf: 1628891 bytes, checksum: d4993a3fdaeab8a1baca119c6780c3ac (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-03-01 / Petr?leo Brasileiro SA - PETROBRAS / This thesis has as objective presents a methodology to evaluate the behavior of the corrosion inhibitors sodium nitrite, sodium dichromate and sodium molybdate, as well as your mixture, the corrosion process for the built-in steel in the reinforced concrete, through different techniques electrochemical, as well as the mechanical properties of that concrete non conventional. The addition of the inhibitors was studied in the concrete in the proportions from 0.5 to 3.5 % regarding the cement mass, isolated or in the mixture, with concrete mixture proportions of 1.0:1.5:2.5 (cement, fine aggregate and coarse aggregate), superplasticizers 2.0 % and 0.40 water/cement ratio. In the modified concrete resistance rehearsals they were accomplished to the compression, consistence and the absorption of water, while to analyze the built-in steel in the concrete the rehearsals of polarization curves they were made. They were also execute, rehearsals of corrosion potential and polarization resistance with intention of diagnose the beginning of the corrosion of the armors inserted in body-of-proof submitted to an accelerated exhibition in immersion cycle and drying to the air. It was concluded, that among the studied inhibitors sodium nitrite , in the proportion of 2.0 % in relation to the mass of the cement, presented the best capacity of protection of the steel through all the studied techniques and that the methodology and the monitoring techniques used in this work, they were shown appropriate to evaluate the behavior and the efficiency of the inhibitors / Esta tese tem como objetivo apresentar uma metodologia para avaliar o comportamento dos inibidores de corros?o nitrito de s?dio, molibdato de s?dio, dicromato de s?dio, bem como a suas misturas, no processo de corros?o para o a?o embutido no concreto armado, atrav?s de diferentes t?cnicas eletroqu?micas, bem como as propriedades mec?nicas desse concreto n?o convencional. Estudou-se a adi??o dos inibidores no concreto nas propor??es de 0,5 a 3,5 % em rela??o ? massa do cimento, isolados e em mistura, num tra?o 1,0:1,5:2,5 (cimento, areia e brita), superplastificante 2,0 % e rela??o ?gua/cimento 0,40. No concreto modificado foram realizados ensaios de resist?ncia ? compress?o, consist?ncia e a absor??o de ?gua, enquanto que para analisar o a?o embutido no concreto foram efetuados ensaios de curvas de polariza??o. Foram executados tamb?m ensaios de potencial de corros?o e resist?ncia de polariza??o com intuito de diagnosticar o in?cio da corros?o das armaduras inseridas em corpos-de-prova submetidos a uma exposi??o acelerada em ciclo de imers?o e secagem ao ar. Concluiu-se que, dentre os inibidores estudados, o nitrito de s?dio, na propor??o de 2,0 % em rela??o ? massa do cimento, apresentou a melhor capacidade de prote??o do a?o atrav?s de todas as t?cnicas estudadas e que a metodologia e as t?cnicas de monitoramento utilizadas neste trabalho mostraram-se adequadas para avaliar o comportamento e a efici?ncia dos inibidores