The present work presents and discusses experimental performance and gaseous emission results of the use of ternary mixtures of diesel oil, biodiesel and ethanol in an ASTM-CFR engine. Eight different mixtures with biodiesel content equal to 8%, 20% and 60%, and ethanol content equal to 0%, 5% and 8% were analyzed. After the selection and preparation of the mixtures, the determination of the cetane number for each one was performed following the ASTM D613 standard. After cetane number evaluation, two off-standard operating conditions were selected, and performance and emissions were obtained. A thermodynamic analysis and a Bayesian inverse approach were applied and physical quantities of interest, such as indicated work, maximum pressure, rate of heat released by the fuel, ignition delay, and combustion duration, were obtained. In-cylinder pressure data were obtained through an AVL Indicating system installed in the ASTM-CFR engine. The heating values of each mixture were determined using a bomb calorimeter and thermal and indicated efficiencies were evaluated based on the total heat released by the fuel and the indicated work. Finally, a gaseous emissions analysis was conducted to evaluate the influence of the blend compositions, as well as of their cetane numbers, on the formation of NOx, CO and CO₂.

In the past decade, a growing demand for sustainable cosmetic ingredients has yielded numerous biodegradation protocols. While OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) aquatic assays are suitable for water-borne chemicals, it is crucial for the personal care industry to consider the persistence of plastics in soil, compost, and municipal sludge. Adopting this cradle-to-grave holistic approach would strengthen product appeal, while increasing the accuracy and ethical integrity of green-product labeling. Our study employs quantitative CO2 detection and thermophilic composting protocols specified in ASTM D5338, along with pass level criteria outlined in ASTM D6400, to assess the mineralization of plastics commonly formulated into personal care products. The results indicate that many cellulose ethers, cationic guars, starches, and labile polyesters demonstrate satisfactory disintegration, biodegradation, and seed germination rates to secure an ASTM D6400 compostability claim. In contrast, macromolecules designed with carbon-carbon backbones resisted acceptable mineralization in composting experiments, suggesting that unadulterated municipal compost lacks the microbial diversity to enzymatically digest many synthetically derived resins. Additionally, polymers that demonstrated acceptable biodegradability in internal and published OECD aquatic studies—including chitosan and polyvinyl alcohol—exhibited limited fragmentation in local municipal compost; hence, untested correlations between aquatic, soil, and compost testing outcomes should never be assumed.

Money launderers prefer to use financial services as the ideal medium to launder. The study aimed to provide an overview of the global AML/CFT regulations, application and how they should evolve in this dynamic environment. To gather more insight, a qualitative study was undertaken with relevant documents analysed. The main findings were: country implementation of the global AML/CFT regulations differed due to political and economic factors amongst others. While the various AML/CFT enforcements done by sampled countries were mainly cease and desist orders and monetary penalties which were publicized; and drawbacks of global AML/CFT regulations centered on application of these regulations and emerging trends. These include among other definitions of money laundering, reference to the three stage of money laundering, link between penalty and violations, technological innovations and regulations paradigm shift, cyber-attacks and data privacy. The study contributes to application and growing body of knowledge in that the advent of technology has resulted in better consumer experiences, new payment platforms, products, and services. However, these innovations have broadened emerging money laundering risks and risks in general to the financial system. Hence the need to conduct research based FATF Recommendations as risk is dynamic and not static.

This paper investigates the evolution of microstructures and precipitations of an ultra-low iron alloy 625 subjected to long term aging treatment by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction(XRD). Use ASTM G28A acid Fe3(SO4)2 erosion to represent intergranular corrosion weightlessness and corrosive morphology. The result shows that alloy at 750C by aging treatment for 40h, precipitated γ'' phase in the grain boundary. In high density area of γ'' phase, occurs γ'' phase to δ phase degeneration transformation by aging treatment for 200h and the needle-like δ phase becomes more with time prolonged. And γ'' phase degenerated to δ phase completely until treated for 1000h. The sample which has aging treatment tends to have intergranular corrosion and mainly because alloy element spreading leads to dilution area and grain boundary precipitated phase, plus interlaced δ phase’s dissolving, which makes sample grain particle fall off and this results in apparent weightlessness. The weightlessness rate(WLR) is related with precipitated volume score. With aging sensitization time change, can be described by Johnson-Mehl-Avrami equation, i.e.: $WLR=44.32\left[1-\text{exp}\left(-\frac{t}{10.99}\right)\right]+44.62\left[1-\text{exp}\left(-\frac{t}{327.8}\right)\right]+1.267\left(mm/a\right)$

Insoluble contaminant or a varnish is a result of oil degradation by products and sometimes depleted additive molecules. This process is in most cases initiated by thermal stress placed on the oil. In tribology varnish becomes a significant problem for modern complex machinery lubrication systems as it has severe debilitating effects such as loss of operating clearances and heat transfer. Problems arising from varnish build-up in lubricants can be inhibited by timely oil analysis which gives us important information about oil-degradation level and current insoluble contaminants potential of oil. There are several laboratory testing methods to describe varnish potential. The most applied one is a colorimetric analysis, also known as MPC (Membrane Patch Colorimetry) as it tends to be reasonably quick and cost-effective. This study applies principles generally used for MPC test of turbine oils to measure lubricant generated insoluble contaminants of hydraulic fluids. For this purpose, in-service oil samples were taken from hydraulic circuits of rubber vulcanizing presses and analyzed using testing method based on method defined by standard ASTM D7843 – 21. Accuracy of this testing method is dependent on development time of tested sample. Therefore, we not only try to proof applicability of this method for hydraulic oils but also want to determine incubation time needed for efficient and accurate determination of concentration of insoluble contaminants in the sample.

This paper is the continuation of a previous study, which highlighted some inconsistencies in the RILEM guidelines for the interpretation of the diagonal compression test. Although improved compared to the ASTM guidelines, in fact, the RILEM guidelines underestimate the state of hydrostatic stress induced by the diagonal compression test at the center of the wallette. The new interpretation of the diagonal compression test proposed in this article shows that the RILEM guidelines actually underestimate both the hydrostatic and the deviatoric stress states at the center of the wallette. The new formulation complies with the linear elastic theory and allows us to use the the diagonal compression test to identify the three elastic coefficients of masonry. In particular, it allows the identification of the Poisson ratio, which instead takes on a conventional value in the RILEM and ASTM guidelines. The difference of one order of magnitude between the conventional and proposed Poisson’s ratio is in agreement with the experimental results on another brittle material, namely concrete. Finally, the new proposal fills the gap between the results provided by the two tests usually performed to identify the shear behavior of masonry: the diagonal compression test and the shear-compression test.

This work studied the corrosion of welded pipes and how welding destroyed surface film of pipes. Surface reaction of a welded pipe is key to understanding phenomena and important factors during the corrosion. This paper presents experiment and CFD modeling approaches of a welded pipe corrosion under salt vapor condition. The pipes were welded at currents of 60 A,70 A and 80 A to observe the effect of welding current on corrosion. A welded pipe is a stainless-steel ASTM A312 grade 304L and period of experiment about 0-600 hours that they are tested in vertical and horizontal alignments. In CFD software, there is not direct model of corrosion but it can use surface reaction and create add-on species and chemical reaction technique for imitating the corrosion mechanism. The modeling approaches of corrosion have presented in 3-dimensional transient times in CFD simulation. Surface reactions were performed by Species Model which involve site species. Site species in Species Model took place at gas-solid interfaces and in this case are salt vapor and surface pipe. Chemical reaction rate on the surface controls lost weight of a welded pipe and the model can be validated with experiment. In conclusion, in period 0-600 hours error between CFD modeling and experiment have error trend decreased. The error at 600 hours is 6% both of vertical pipe and horizontal pipe test. The modeling approaches closely with the performed experiment and can be accepted. Moreover, the model is able to predict corrosion of a welded pipe of different sizes and their lost weight after 600 hours without experiment. Also the model can predict lifetime of pipe.

Miniaturization of electronics devices is often limited by the concomitant high heat fluxes (cooling load) and maldistribution of temperature profiles (hot spots). Thermal energy storage (TES) platforms providing supplemental cooling can be a cost-effective solution, that often leverages phase change materials (PCM). Although salt hydrates provide higher storage capacities and power ratings (as compared to that of the organic PCMs), they suffer from reliability issues (e.g., supercooling). ‘Cold Finger Technique (CFT)’ can obviate supercooling by maintaining a small mass fraction of the PCM in solid state for enabling spontaneous nucleation. Optimization of CFT necessitates real-time forecasting of the transient values of the melt-fraction. In this study artificial neural network (ANN) is explored for real-time prediction of the time remaining to reach a target value of melt-fraction based on the prior history of the spatial distribution of the surface temperature transients. Two different approaches were explored for training the ANN model, using: (1) transient PCM-temperature data; or (2) transient surface-temperature data. When deployed in a heat sink that leverages PCM based passive thermal management systems for cooling of electronic chips and packages, this maverick approach (using the second method) affords cheaper costs, better sustainability, higher reliability and resilience.

This paper explores the Wilsonian renormalization group of probe-D-branes, focusing on the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action. The analysis involves deriving the constant of motion and formulating the Wilsonian renormalization group equation. The study extends to the infrared regime, considering both zero and non-zero temperatures. Additionally, thermodynamic aspects related to the functional form of the grand potential are discussed. The investigation provides insights into the renormalization of probe-D-branes and their thermodynamic properties.