Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna

About: Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna is a education organization based out in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Ćuk converter & Dielectric. The organization has 369 authors who have published 514 publications receiving 3537 citations.

Study of bio-oil and bio-char production from algae by slow pyrolysis

Abstract: This study examined bio-oil and bio-char fuel produced from Spirulina Sp. by slow pyrolysis. A thermogravimetric analyser (TGA) was used to investigate the pyrolytic characteristics and essential components of algae. It was found that the temperature for the maximum degradation, 322 °C, is lower than that of other biomass. With our fixed-bed reactor, 125 g of dried Spirulina Sp. algae was fed under a nitrogen atmosphere until the temperature reached a set temperature between 450 and 600 °C. It was found that the suitable temperature to obtain bio-char and bio-oil were at approximately 500 and 550 °C respectively. The bio-oil components were identified by a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The saturated functional carbon of the bio-oil was in a range of heavy naphtha, kerosene and diesel oil. The energy consumption ratio (ECR) of bio-oil and bio-char was calculated, and the net energy output was positive. The ECR had an average value of 0.49.

Analysis and Design of a Modular Three-Phase AC-to-DC Converter Using CUK Rectifier Module With Nearly Unity Power Factor and Fast Dynamic Response

Abstract: In this paper, the analysis and design of a modular three-phase AC-to-DC converter using single-phase isolated Cuk rectifier modules is discussed based on power balance control technique. This paper analyzes the operation of a modular converter as continuous-conduction-mode power factor correction (CCM-PFC). Design equations, as well as an average small-signal model of the proposed system to aid the control loop design are derived. It is used to obtain the inductor current compensator, thus the output impedance and audio susceptibility become zero, and therefore, the output voltage of the converter presented in this paper is independent of the variations of the dc load current and the utility voltage. The control strategy consists of a single output voltage loop and three-inductor current calculator. The main objective of the proposed system is to reduce the number of stages and improve dynamic response of DC bus voltage for distributed power system. The proposed scheme offers simple control strategy, flexibility in three-phase delta or star-connected, simpler design, fast transient response, good inductor current sharing, and power factor closed to unity. Both simulation and experimental results are presented. They are in agreement with the theoretical analysis and experimental work.

Application of Firefly Algorithm and Its Parameter Setting for Job Shop Scheduling

Abstract: Job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is one of the most famous scheduling problems, most of which are categorised into Non-deterministic Polynomial (NP) hard problem. The objectives of this paper are to i) present the application of a recent developed metaheuristic called Firefly Algorithm (FA) for solving JSSP; ii) investigate the parameter setting of the proposed algorithm; and iii) compare the FA performance using various parameter settings. The computational experiment was designed and conducted using five benchmarking JSSP datasets from a classical OR-Library. The analysis of the experimental results on the FA performance comparison between with and without using optimised parameter settings was carried out. The FA with appropriate parameters setting that got from the experiment analysis produced the best-so-far schedule better than the FA without adopting parameter settings. Keywords : Scheduling, Job shop, Metaheuristics, Firefly Algorithm, Experimental design, Parameter setting (Selected from 1st Symposium on Hands-on Research and Development, Chiang Mai)