AuthorBY- DIVYA BHAVAANI M.B Water without minerals such as, salt etc. called de-mineralized water or demi water or de-ionized water. With low mineral content, demi water has some changed expected properties such low conductivity, low corrosive effects etc. Demi water has some specific uses in industrial applications such as, boiler, pipeline etc. Why demi water is used: Regular water with mineral contents has some corrosive effects to metals or conductivity issues for certain applications. Additionally, minerals deposits or residues might settle in the metal surface, which in time become hard. This is called Scaling effects. Demi water is used extensively for all most all of the industrial applications in which there are water use provisions. Without demi water, the expensive parts of would be of shorten life time with simple water. How demi water is prepared: Demi water is prepared through ion exchange resin. These are special types of insoluble matrix (or support structure) normally in the form of small (0.5-1 mm diameter) beads, fabricated from an organic polymer substrate. What ion exchange polymer does is just trap certain ions in exchange of releasing of other ions. Ion exchanger resin beads used for demi water preparation In case of basic demi water preparation, ion exchange resin releases hydrogen, hydroxide, and traps minerals ions. For specific application and usages, the ion exchange process may vary with additional steps. Quality of Demi water: Demi water quality and specification varies as per the use. Usually the manufacturer of the equipment dictates specification of the demi water in which it is going to be used. Even the equipment manufacturer itself provides some time provided the demi water system.
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AuthorBY- SUPRAJA G.S Before diving deep let’s see some basics, what actually a normal solar cell is ?, Solar cells work under the effect of the Photovoltaic effect which actually is the generation of voltage and electric current in a material upon exposure to light. It is a physical and chemical phenomenon. Majorly silicon is used in the production of solar cells. Today let’s see how Carbon Nanotubes and Quantum dots can be used to meet our objective of reducing the production cost while increasing efficiency. Let’s start with the problems that are faced in primitive solar cells and how Nanotechnology aids them. QUANTUM DOTS: Primitive Solar cells are not capable of converting the entire received light to proposed energy since few particles of light can evolve into the air. Added to it, light rays occur in multi-colors or spectrum as we know and the cells harness blue night and function at a slow rate in conversion of reddish light & Infrared. Silicon has more bandgap which requires more energy to pull out the electrons from the excitons. Semiconductor quantum dots are used as the absorbing photovoltaic material which adjusts the bandgap thereby absorbing the longer wave light and increasing the output. When the quantum dots of 1 nm diameter was used it was observed that 67 % of blue light and 60 % of red Quantum dots also have a high possibility of multiple exciton generation. in which one-photon absorption will emit 2 + excitons that mean more than two electron-hole pairs is obtained, whereas only one electron-hole pair is generated in normal solar cells. With all these put together, quantum dots has proved to improve the efficiency of the solar cell up to 55%. CARBON NANOTUBES: Now lets see how Carbon nanotubes(CNT) are useful. In primitive solar cells, The electrons that are freed by the interaction of the sunlight within the semiconductor material creates an electron flow as the free electrons move together around an external circuit. Usually electrons follow through a complex path to reach electrodes, but easier ballistic transport of electrons on solar cell surface was achieved successfully by using the CNT’s along the axis, with high current density and reduction in loss.
Another major problem is heat generated during the day time, which decreases the efficiency. But with the help of carbon nano tubes we can harness them as well, heat specifically infrared heat from the sun, solar cells that are designed with array of cavities patterned into a film of aligned carbon nanotubes as shown in the figure, absorbs and channels the heat into a form that solar cells can use and the convert to electricity. All these put-together carbon nanotubes have proved to improve the efficiency of the solar cell upto 80%. Advantages : ➢ Nanotechnology with the utilization of solar cells would help to preserve the environment. ➢ The inexpensive photovoltaic cells which are enough to cover with the roofing materials. This will decrease the fossil fuels and helps to reduce pollution. ➢ The nanotechnology improves the standard of living up to billions of people. To generate the power the car coating with photovoltaic solar cells and solar cell windows were used. Scientists are finding a way to incorporate both Quantum dots and carbon tube nanotubes in a much more efficient way. To produce solar cells with much more efficiency. With this, I conclude Nanotechnology infused solar cells is a boon to human society and the best aid to the future energy source for mankind. AuthorBY- ANUSHRI .M As we all know that nation is facing energy crisis and it is very important to come up with new solutions to cope up with this. Have you ever thought about electricity from fish scales? Believe me this method is eco-friendly as well as cost effective. Physicists Sujoy Kumar gosh and Dipankar Mandal of Jadavpur university have come up with this innovative idea. PRINCIPLE The piezoelectric property of collagen fibres contained in fish scales, generally thrown away as waste, is used to make electric generators. Collagen consists of three polypeptide chains that twist together to form a triple-helical structure. Hydrogen bonds between the polypeptide chains all orientate in the same direction and act as molecular dipoles, resulting in spontaneous electrical polarization and piezoelectric properties. WORKING Piezoelectric materials respond to mechanical stress by separating positive and negative electrical charge, and therefore can be used to convert mechanical energy of vibrations into electrical energy. Fish scales replace traditional batteries, which contain toxic elements and also produce e-waste. The intrinsic strength of fish scales is around 5 picocoulombs per newton(pC/N).They show 12-14 percent efficiency in converting mechanical energy to electrical energy. APPLICATIONS This feature could be possibly applied in transparent electronics, biocompatible electronics, edible electronics, self-powered implantable medical devices, surgeries, e-healthcare monitoring ,as well as in in vitro and in vivo diagnostics. One particular application is to implant the nanogenerator into a heart for pacemaker devices, where it will continuously generate power from heartbeats for the operation of the pacemaker. Such a nanogenerator would degrade when no longer needed. With heart tissue being composed of collagen, the bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator is expected to be very compatible with the heart.
AuthorBY- DIVIYA BHAVAANI M.B. Perhaps you have already heard of Sophia, a humanoid robot woman. Sophia is an intelligent humanoid robot created by Hanson Robotics and most famous for being the first robot to be awarded citizenship of a country, Saudi Arabia. She is equipped with self-learning software and, according to the manufacturer, can process visual data, recognize faces, and imitate human gestures and facial expressions. Robot Sophia is able to answer questions about predefined topics and hold simple conversations on its own. Together with her developer and a digital artist, Sophia has tackled another important topic, namely art and creativity. The resulting self-portrait was sold via the Internet in a live auction. AI and art: Is it called Robo art or AI art? In order for Sophia to develop creativity, the humanoid robot is first fed with information. Thanks to artificial intelligence, robot Sophia manages to learn from the data and then makes independent decisions. The self-portrait was created in collaboration with Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto. He created a digital image of the humanoid robot in advance and fed it into Sophia's neural networks. The robot Sophia was thus able to draw inspiration from Bonaceto's digital art. Through the humanoid robots’ knowledge gathered in the past, an independent interpretation of the painting was created ,self-portrait of Sophia. The artist emphasized that all decisions regarding the interpretation of the painting were made without human help. The artwork includes a 12-second MP4 file that shows the transformation of Bonaceto’s painting into a digital painting. The AI art was then sold in a live auction on the IV Gallery platform. Bonaceto, as well as the developers of Hanson Robotic, are thrilled with the humanoid robot's reactions to the original artwork. The auction also includes physical artwork of the painting made by the advanced artificial intelligence (AI). An art collector who goes by the name of 888 then paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure ownership of the non-fungible token (NFT) for the artwork, as well as the physical version of Sophia’s painting. They were also fascinated by the process of humans and robots creating something together. Sophia is now scheduled to have its first exhibition in a Los Angeles gallery at the end of the year. “WE ARE FASCINATED BY ROBOTS BECAUSE THEY’RE MACHINES THAT CAN MIMIC LIFE.”
-KEN GOLDBERG AuthorBY- SUPRAJA G.S The water flowing in a river, Air we breathe, the milk we drink has minute suspended particles in it, Certain suspended particles are quite useful but others such as Arsenic, Pathogens, etc can be quite harmful to our health, so it is important to determine the various particles that are present and their concentration before intaking, especially in the case of water, if the water has suspended particles due to scattering of light by the particles we can see the particles, we call it as Turbid water. Turbidity is the opaqueness or cloudiness of the water due to the presence of suspended particles. What all of this has to do with Nephelometry & turbidimetry? Well, Nephelometry and turbidimetry are closely related analytical techniques, used to determine the turbidity of the given sample by measuring the intensity of transmitted or scattered radiation of light. Let’s discuss it in detail. How they work and their applications. WORKING: The instrumentation of both Nephelometry and Turbidimetry is the same. They consist of a light source usually a laser, quartz lamp, or xenon lamp. And the light is converted to monochromatic light. And we have the collimating convex lens which collects the monochromatic light and directs to the sample cell which holds the sample, usually the sample cells are cylindrical tubes, but here Rectangular tubes are preferred to decrease the absorption and reflection of light radiation, and Nephelometry uses semi-octagonal cells to maximize the 90o scattering light to reach the detector. We have lens again to collect the transmitted radiations and finally, we have the detectors, which is usually a photomultiplier, which converts the transmitted radiation to electric signals and the readout meter decodes and produces the readings which are displayed on a computer screen.
So what’s the difference between these two methods, well, Turbidimetry deals with the transmitted light where the detector is placed in the principal axis of light radiation. Whereas, Nephelometry deals with the scattered light where the detector is placed in 90 degrees relative to the path of the incident radiation. Since both methods are used to measure turbidity, which method is most widely used. Turbidimetry, cause it can works better in high concentrations of suspended particles when compared to Nephelometry, cause at high concentrations scattering is minimum so nephelometry is not effective. Applications: 1. Analysis of Water – Clarity, Concentration of ions 2. Determination of Inorganic substances . Sulphate – Barium Sulphate . Ammonia – Nessler’s Reagent . Phosphorous – Strychine molybdate 3. Biochemical Analysis 4. Quantitative analysis – PPM level 5. Miscellaneous Water treatment plants, sewage work, refineries, paper industry. |