Abstract: Spray drying is a commonly used method of drying a liquid feed through a hot gas. This study aims to obtain the empirical model of the spray drying process of full cream milk using a nozzle atomizer spray dryer, Lab-Plant SD 05 Laboratory Scale Spray Dryer. Inlet air temperature was chosen as the manipulated variable and outlet air temperature was the controlled variable. No disturbance was considered in this process. The model was obtained from empirical model development and it can be represented using first order plus time delay (FOPTD). The empirical dynamic model of the spray drying of full cream milk was simulated using SIMULINK to evaluate the performance and robustness. The PI and PID controllers were applied to implement the control strategies of the process. The effects of parameter uncertainties were investigated. From the observation, the direct synthesis tuning method has been found as a good controller tuning for both controllers in spray drying control system.

Abstract: The characterizations of coconut milk fouling deposits formed during pasteurization process at temperature from 70 to 80ºC were investigated. Both in-situ (using lab-scale plate heat exchanger) and ex-situ methods (using shakable water bath) were applied in preparing the fouling sample and for cleaning study. A few microanalyses such as proximate analysis, texture analysis and microstructure analysis were carried out to examine the characteristics of the coconut milk fouling deposits. Selection of raw material and determination of the optimal process parameters for pasteurization process were done to obtain a typical pasteurization condition as applied in the coconut milk product industry in Malaysia. The changes of the overall heat transfer coefficient (U) during the process were studied. The removal/cleaning of coconut milk fouling deposit was also studied at 80°C, 2 LPM and with 2 %V/V hydroxide of alkaline solution (optimal condition obtained from ex-situ method). The results indicate that fouling period was occurred during coconut milk pasteurization and it caused a resistance to heat transfer. Coconut milk fouling deposit which contains of high fat content (29.25%) can be removed by applying single stage clean-in-place (CIP) method with alkaline solution. The factors causing fouling were studied

Abstract: The application of wireless sensor network (WSN) for a water quality monitoring is composed of a number of sensor nodes with a networking capability that can be deployed for an ad hoc or continuous monitoring purpose. The parameters involved in the water quality determination such as the pH level, turbidity and temperature is measured in the real time by the sensors that send the data to the base station or control/monitoring room. This paper proposes how such monitoring system can be setup emphasizing on the aspects of low cost, easy ad hoc installation and easy handling and maintenance. The use of wireless system for monitoring purpose will not only reduce the overall monitoring system cost in term of facilities setup and labor cost, but will also provide flexibility in term of distance or location. In this paper, the fundamental design and implementation of WSN featuring a high power transmission Zigbee based technology together with the IEEE 802.15.4 compatible transceiver is proposed. The developed platform is cost-effective and allows easy customization. Several preliminary results of measurement to evaluate the reliability and effectiveness of the system are also presented.

Abstract: This paper proposes a new resonant gate driver circuit for a soft switching synchronous buck converter in a fixed load condition. The switching energy can be fully recovered during current commutation phase in the gate driver while the diode conduction losses in the low and high side switches can be substantially reduced by employing additional L and C resonant in the circuit. Using PSpice simulation, the optimization technique has been studied. From the predetermined pulse width of the generated signals, the optimized resonant inductor current is observed to generate less oscillation and hence lower the switching loss. In addition, an optimized dead time interval is inserted between high side and low side of the transistors in the synchronous buck converter to minimize their body diode conduction losses. The detailed operations of both circuits are analyzed.

Abstract: The paper aims to develop an intelligent controller to control the ship trajectory. This requires a procedure to acquire the control rules for a moving ship to avoid collision with another moving object and then steer back to reach a certain destination. This objective can be achieved by applying fuzzy logic approach. A linear 4 Th order mathematical model is developed to represent the ship dynamics. The model and the control algorithm are simulated on a PC using C++ language. The obtained results affirmed that the proposed control algorithm is powerful to realize the tracking and regulation objectives.

Abstract: This paper presents a scheme for the rapid measurement of weighting sequences of in-operation linear systems. Finite duration sequences are used as test signals to the system under test, whose response to the sequence is processed by an appropriate digital filter. The test sequences are here required to have high energy ratio and low sidelobes in their auto-correlation function. It is shown that in the absence of noise an inverse filter is optimum while in very heavy noise matched filter is the best.

Abstract: TCSC devices are used to improve real power and eliminate line loses in ac systems. An additional task of TCSC is to increase transmission capacity as result of power oscillation damping. In this paper eigenvalue-based methods for analysis and control of power system oscillations using TCSC have been developed. The characterization of power system oscillations using the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the state matrix is detailed. Design of power system damping controllers using residue method is addressed for two area four machine systems. The result shows the effectiveness of the method used

Abstract: Evaluating worker’s suitability for a job is an important tool for Human Resources Managers (HRMs) to select the better candidates under various evaluation criteria. A problem of workers' assignment is studied in this paper in order to find the best assignment of workers to vacancies ensuring assigning a specified worker in a specified job. The objectives might be minimizing the total time to complete a set of tasks, minimizing the cost of assignments, and maximizing skill ratings. The problem is not so simple to quantify all those measures in one tangible variable. Therefore, in this paper the use of verbal information for representing the vague knowledge in terms of natural linguistic labels is proposed. It allows the problem to be recognized as it is in a real life. For such types of problems, an analysis using the fuzzy number approach promises to be potentially effective. The fuzzy suitability evaluation is executed coupled with the memetic algorithm. Also, real case study is presented. The results demonstrate that the workers' assignment problem can be solved effectively for the multiple-criteria decision-making processes.

Abstract: This paper presents a study of the effect of various CO2 injection modes on miscible flood performance for a reservoir in Malaysia. Using a black oil numerical simulator, four injection techniques namely continuous, simultaneous water and gas (SWAG), water alternate gas (WAG) and hybrid WAG; were simulated on the reservoir. From the results of the simulations, the respective optimum injection modes for this case study reservoir were established. Comparing all the various optimum CO2 injection modes, SWAG injection with a CO2 injection rate of 15,000 Mscf/d and a SWAG ratio of 1:1 is the most efficient recovery method for the reservoir. This is because it yields the highest recovery factor of 54.8% OOIP, a water cut that is below the limit of 0.9 and a relatively low CO2 breakthrough.

Abstract: Haptics, the sensation of physical touch to the virtual objects, is the most recent enhancement to virtual environment. With haptic simulation, virtual objects with different properties could be created to touch using haptic device. In current medical practice, haptics technology is being used to aid surgeons to perform surgical procedures such as needle insertion. It is vital that the penetration of the needle does not cause injury to the patients. However, the available technology does not address issues such as tissue texture and the depth of penetration. This project is about the simulation of sensory mode interaction of virtual objects of different stiffness and friction using PHANToM Haptic device. The penetration depth and force exerted into the objects should be within limit to avoid any deformity to the objects. PID controller is incorporated into the system to eliminate steady state errors as well as to ensure better transient response. To conduct the specified work, MATLAB software was used. Experimental results on the sensory mode interaction have proven the ability of the system to touch the objects within specified object limits. Simulated results on the system response have also shown the capability of the controller to provide fast and accurate response of the haptic device.

Abstract: Rock characterization and acoustic wave velocity analysis are very important stage in the petroleum reservoir characterization and seismic exploration. Meanwhile carbonate rocks are worthy of attention since they contain at least 40% of the world’s known hydrocarbon reserve and have some complexity in porosity, lithology facies and acoustic wave behavior. This paper present detail relationship between porosity and permeability, effect of pressure and temperature to the acoustic wave parameters such as compressional and shear wave velocities. Data collected includes petrography analysis, SEM image, detail core description, and laboratory experimental of acoustic wave velocities measurements in variation of overburden pressure and temperature. Some acoustic wave parameters were simulated as close as possible to the reservoir conditions. Based on the petrophysical data and acoustic wave measurement, the porosity is the main controlling factor of acoustic wave parameter. A plot of porosity versus velocity displays a clear inverse trend to porosity which an increasing of porosity resulting in decreasing of velocity. In addition, increasing of permeability will results in decreasing velocity value. The overburden pressure causes compaction, porosity reduction and increasing in velocity. This performance is slightly changed when temperature increase from 28.73 oC to 62.07 oC, generally both Vp and Vs value become lower. The results can be used for better seismic analysis performance, correspond to increase hydrocarbon discovery from the carbonate rock in the future.

Abstract: The optimization of 45nm NMOS device was studied using Taguchi Method. This method was used to analyze the experimental data in order to get the optimum results. In this paper, there are four factors were varied for 3 levels to perform 9 experiments. Silicide on the poly-Si gate electrode was used to reduce the gate electrode resistance. The virtually fabrication of 45nm NMOS device was performed by using ATHENA module. While the electrical characterization of device was implemented by using ATLAS module. The values of oxide and silicide thickness after optimization approach were 1.52709nm and 25.26nm respectively. The result of the threshold voltage (VTH) is 0.148468 Volts. In this research, silicide thickness and oxide thickness are the main factors were identified as the source of the inability of the transistors to perform. The oxide thickness also was identified as one of the factors that has the strongest effect on the response characteristics.

Abstract: Piping systems in refineries and petrochemical plants are exposed to corrosive environment causing various types of degradation mechanisms. One of the damage mechanisms experienced is gradual wall thinning that causes the pipe to leak. Since the piping systems carry hydrocarbons or other process fluids, the presence of small leak may lead to a hazardous situation. Therefore, proper inspection and maintenance of these systems is essential for maintaining a safe and continuous operation. Risk-based inspection (RBI) strategy has been adopted to establish the inspection strategy for piping systems where the strategy is based on risk calculated. Risk is defined as the product of the probability of failure and its consequences of failure. Assessing the failure probability for piping systems in RBI approach typically follows the guideline by American Petroleum Institute (API 581) where the method is deterministic. This study explores the available probabilistic analysis techniques in estimating the piping failure probability, namely, degradation analysis and first-order reliability method (FORM). The objective of this paper is to estimate the pipes failure probability using these two techniques where both models require different input data. Degradation analysis only uses the pipe wall thickness data that are usually being collected during inspection for pipes subject to wall thinning. Conversely, FORM model requires data on material properties and physical geometric of the piping system to estimate the failure probability. The failure probability estimated by these two techniques are then compared and discussed. The results showed that the degradation analysis is more conservative compared to FORM.

Abstract: The flow over sharp-edged wings is almost always separated. The control of separated flows is possible and benefits can be achieved but only in a time average sense. A new design of an actuator was designed and tested which can achieve a wide range velocity of without frequency dependence, is free of oscillating components as well as free of secondary frequencies and therefore can be scaled up easily, unlike a traditional synthetic jet. The actuator can achieve a considerable amount of jet vectoring, thus aligning the disturbance with the leading edge shear layer. Results indicate that unsteady mini-jet actuation is an effective actuation device capable of increasing the lift in the stall region of the airfoil. Moreover, pressure measurements showed that two parameters could be altered to maximize the lift. The momentum coefficient needed a minimum value to exert influence and the actuating frequency need not be at exact the natural shedding frequency to improve the lift and can be operated at harmonics of the natural shedding frequency and obtain improvements.

Abstract: Conventional Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) mainly deals with scalar data such as temperature, humidity, pressure and light which are very suitable for low rate and low power IEEE 802.15.4 based networking technology. The commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) CMOS camera has fostered researchers to push WSN a step further. The unique properties of multimedia data delivery pose novel challenges for resource-constrained sensor network. Transmitting raw data is very costly while limited processing power prevents sophisticated multimedia processing. This paper presents the development of a low cost, low power WSN hardware platform named TelG embedded with an operating system called WiseOS, system software, and also a simple best effort JPEG images transmission over the network. The experimental results from the testbed illustrate that the performance of our designed WSN platform are comparable to the existing ones in the market in terms of packet reception rate (PRR) and received signal strength intensity (RSSI) with respect to the distance. It also shows that the end-to-end delay increases proportionally with the number of hops. At an average data rate of 48.38Kbps, we conclude that our platform not only can support real-time multimedia data delivery but also a low voice coding standard such as G.729a (8kbps).

Abstract: In specialty chemical industry, nano-sized materials exhibit a key role. Their synthesis routes involve noxious chemicals as well as expensive precursors. Super critical water offers a relatively simple route which is inherently scaleable and chemically benign. In this work, experimental observations of a high pressure optical cell are simulated and these preliminary results are compared with mixing at room temperature. Opposed-tee geometries are constructed and investigated for high temperature water mixing. Convective flow strongly influenced the mixing pattern was observed simulating the runs using CFD package. Mixing direction also affects the flow pattern. Further modifications are proposed in the design on the basis of these results.