Volume VIII Issue X

Tank cascade systems in the dry zone are considered as one of the traditional land water management systems and have evolved in order to manage the surface water resources efficiently. Ulagalla cascade is a prominent cascade located in Anuradhapura district with nineteen small tanks and highly utilized for agricultural purposes. Therefore, a systematic monitoring of surface water quality is vital. This study was conducted to assess the variation of surface water quality in Ulagalla cascade and its suitability for irrigation. Water samples were collected once a month during October, 2015 to February, 2016 from each tank for chemical analysis. Electrical conductivity (EC), pH, concentrations of sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, alkalinity, nitrogen (NO3--N), and available phosphorous (PO43--P) were tested. Salinity, sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) and sodium percentage (Na %) were calculated using the measured parameters. Based on the sodium percentage 5%, 90% and 5% of the tanks water were categorized as excellent, good and permissible for irrigation respectively. As per the US salinity hazard diagram 5% of the tanks had low salinity low sodium (C1S1) water while, 95% of the tanks had medium salinity low sodium (C2S1) water. Surface water in Ulagalla cascade can be used to irrigate most crops provided with considerable amount of leaching.

Our manuscript aims to develop a system which will lead to energy conservation and by doing so, we would be able to lighten few more homes. A circuit with LDR sensor, Arduino UNO as a main processor, and few of electronic components is designed and implemented to control the electricity based on night.Night light control has been designed and constructed based on LDR sensor as the lightrange sensing device. The microcontroller (MCU) ATMega8/168/328 allows dynamic and faster control and the LDR makes the system user-friendly. Sensed LDR and AC light levels are simultaneously.

Agriculture being one of the major occupations in India, it is very essential to discover and implement new idea in this field, though lot of work has been done in this area. It is unfortunate that, these ideas are not been implemented properly in actual field. This is due to high cost and is complicated for rural people. Multipurpose Farming Machine is basic and major equipment involved in agriculture for maximum yielding. Conventional method of planting and cultivating crops is a laborious process and hence for that reason there is a scarcity of labors, this result in delayed agriculture to overcome these difficulties, multipurpose agriculture equipment is designed. This Agricultural vehicle is an agricultural machine of a considerable power and great soil clearing capacity. This multipurpose system gives an advance method to sow, plow, water and cut the crops with minimum man power and labour making it an efficient vehicle. The machine will cultivate the farm by considering particular rows and specific column at fixed distance depending on crop. Moreover the vehicle can be controlled manually by driving the vehicle using seating arrangement. This agricultural vehicle will be running with batteries. Batteries will be charged using Solar Energy. So ultimate aim is to develop a agricultural vehicle which uses renewable sources for operation.

Green the corporate is the new mantra in the name of green wave, green training, green globe, eco ideas; environmental friendly is the new alluring buzz today. To be more prosaic, green is the seductive, new black today. With alarm bells ringing over the corporate folklore, go green is getting more belligerent than before in corporate. Be its green buildings, green products, green processes, green systems and green jobs, the list is endlessly long and if this is not enough HR departments in many companies are increasingly greening their processes in the name of Green Human Resource Management. The researcher’s paper discusses how the concept of go green/green wave is an emerging trend in the professional world, industry 4.0, digital era and economic sustainability.

Concrete is one of the widely used construction material. However, its inherent poor tensile and flexural strengths make it prone to cracking and a gradual increase of brittleness with increase of compressive strength also brings numerous problems in its application. In developing countries, concrete is used in extent greater than that of the structural steel. And also maintenance and repair of concrete structure is a growing problem involving significant expenditure. In recent years cement based materials have been developed, with compressive strength greater than 200MPa; one such material is Ultra High Strength Concrete (UHSC). UHSC is a ductile material formulated by combining Portland cement, silica fume, quartz flour, fine silica, water reducing admixtures and steel or organic fibers with very low water cement ratio. Recent researches on UHSC revealed that it has high compressive strength and high tensile strength. Also large ductility continues to develop even after cracking in cooperation with fibers. The compressive strength ranging from 200 to 800MPa, flexural strength 30 to 50MPa and Young’s modulus 50 to 60GPa have been achieved by using UHSC. The possibility of achieving high strength, durability, and improved ductility with the use of UHSC encourages researchers and engineers to use this modern material in many practical applications like nuclear waste containment structures, high rise structures, long span bridges, and walkways. Despite these potential, UHSC has not received wide attention in India. Its utility is nil in India, because of non availability of sufficient experimental data regarding the performance of UHSC. It is also still research stage which needs lot of experimental works. The basic objective of this research is to remove some of the barriers to the adoption of UHSC technology in India by developing a degree of experience with its production. Because the cement dosage of UHSC is generally as high as 800 to 1000 kg/m3 to achieve ultra-high strength under very low w/c ratios, a high amount of cement not only affects the production costs, but also has negative effects on the environment due to the emission of carbon-di-oxide gas and heat of hydration which may cause shrinkage problems. Mineral admixtures can be a feasible solution to overcome these problems in UHSC. So an attempt has been made in this experimental work to produce UHSC using locally available sustainable materials like fly ash and rice husk ash to determine the effect of mineral admixtures on the mechanical properties of UHSC.

Planning in the Arab Republic of Egypt in the previous decades conspicuously followed the comprehensive central methodology that proved to be insufficient in responding to the needs and priorities of different stakeholders and different planning levels (economic regions, governorates, centers, cities and villages). Besides, the problems of integrated development are due to the loss of different levels of government to integrated plans that take into account the spatial aspect. This is in addition to the incompatibility of the outputs of strategic and detailed plans (proposed projects) at different levels with the process of preparing sectoral plans by various concerned ministries and their annual budgets. Moreover, local administrations do not care for participating in the preparation of the strategic and detailed plan. However, they only discuss and debate on land use and urban areas without being benefitted from the previous studies and recommendations that have resulted in these plans, which would greatly support the sectoral plans with an audited technical effort. Also, they waste the effort and resources specialized for preparing these detailed and strategic plans, which are reflected in the following:  Lack of real coordination between sectoral plans, schemes and strategic and detailed plans  Weak of actual participation of stakeholders in the planning process  Lack of funds and financial resources allocated to projects, which ensures the implementation of projects on time.  Lack of mechanisms to implement strategic and detailed plans In view of the actual reality of the implementation of the strategic plans of cities in Egypt and the shortcomings and lack of clarity, the lack of implementation of the detailed strategic plans for cities in Egypt is a result of the non-organized relation between the main axes that have a great impact on the implementation process. However, in case there is a frame that regulates this relation, these plans are guaranteed to be in accordance with the local reality and the possibility of its efficient implementation.

In the present work it is intended to investigate the drag on a wind turbine airfoil, whose chord is 0.4 m and is set in the real operating conditions. The airfoil is installed in the real operating conditions and is covered partially with a riblet film at different sections to check the optimal riblet location. Four different symmetrical V-shaped riblets are tested, and their sizes are 40, 58, 96, and 144m. Three days during the winter are chosen, and the wind speeds in these days corresponded to three Reynolds numbers whose values are; 653000, 798000 and 976000. Different angles of attack were tested in each case. The results exhibited that the magnitude of drag reduction Varied with the angle of attack, Reynolds number, riblet size, and riblet location. A drag reduction of about to 6% was obtained when using the riblet, whose size is 58 m, for all values of the range of Reynolds numbers. Also, for each Reynolds number value, there is a riblet size that exhibited the best performance. The optimal Reynolds number value decreased with the increase in riblet size.

Indian manufacturing output growth was slowest in the last fifteen months in August 2019. The recent drop observed in the Index of Industrial Production and Rupee depreciation has added worries to continued weakening Indian economy. Recent policy changes and rising costs for Paper Products Manufacturing Industry have opened up challenges. Awareness resulting in ban on one time plastic use materials in India has opened up new market for the industry. Here an attempt is made to understand whether the capacity utilization is high and what is the level of business confidence among the paper product manufacturing companies located in Hubbali.

The present work is a continuation of my previous work in which, an experimental investigation was accomplished for the nucleate pool boiling of an aqueous solution of surfactant. The surface temperature and the ambient surfactant temperature are measured for three tubes that are made of brass, aluminum, and stainless steel with almost the same surface roughness. Each one of these tubes is tested with three aqueous solutions of surfactant; TRITON X-100, SLES, and SDS. Each one of the three aqueous surfactant solutions is investigated at concentrations of 0, 200, 500, 1000 and 1500 ppm. This concentration range is different from that used in my previous work to allow additional validation for the studied phenomena. To relate the bubble distribution to the heat flux, the measured superheat temperature and heat flux along with their corresponding surfactant physical properties of the solution are fed into suitable published relations that relate the bubble distribution to the minimum cavity radius. From these relations, it was possible to suggest three formulas that correlate the heat flux to the bubble distribution, the measured superheat temperature and the type and concentration of the used surfactant. The experimental investigations showed that, for all cases, the density of bubble distribution increased with the superheat temperature, the heat flux, and the surfactant concentration. For TRITON-X, the bubble distribution increased with the increased surfactant concentration until the value of about 500 ppm, and beyond this value, the distribution varied very slightly.

The enormous growth and human societies development were always synchronized with some buildings activities that lead to compelled the mutual influence between architecture and other specialties, on the other hand, the mandatory consequence to development and growth was the increase in worldwide energy consumption& waste and emissions of greenhouse gases arising from burning of fossil fuels to generate energy that leads to climate change and global warming. The concept of nature friendly buildings idea arose with efficient buildings energy wise, the negative designs, Zero Energy, zero Carbon, zero waste buildings and green buildings are different definitions but all have common dominator which is the establishment of new designs and construction techniques with high consideration to environmental and economic challenges that affected life in different topics at current time. Consequently, this research aimed to obtain local standards for design treatments applicable in Triple Zero Buildings with applications of high flexibility leading to architectural composition to consume the minimum possible energy with integrated effective systems, lower carbon emissions and lower production of waste. And measuring how close the building is to real Triple Zero Building.

Green architecture, sustainable buildings, environmentally friendly, and other terms have recently become popular in the construction fields among both professionals and non-professionals. Although it is mostly needed and highly feasible, the application of these ideas is not yet at the same level of popularity in Egypt. The aim of this research is to propose a method to be used in solving the energy problem and carbon emissions in the building sector in Egypt. Since it is concerned with the existing building stock, the methodology will be addressing retrofitting strategies not new design strategies. The research utilizes energy and carbon simulation to validate its initial assumptions and to test the feasibility of the proposed guideline. The final outcome of the research is a method that combines both design treatments and renewable energy strategies that suit the Egyptian context and potential to convert existing buildings to ZEB & ZCB buildings. The study starts with the defining ZEB, ZCB, concept to familiarize the reader with its different aspects. The empirical part of the study utilizes simulation to validate the proposed guideline by applying it on an already existing residential building. The detailed steps of converting an already existing residential building to zero-energy & zero-carbon building are the final outcome of the research.

Design of ferroconcrete structures is ruled by the nonlinear manner of concrete and by its completely different strengths in tension and compression. The aim of this text is to show a computational process for optimum theoretical design of reinforced concrete structures, supported topology optimization with elastic-plastic material modeling. Concrete and steel are both considered as elastic-plastic materials, also the acceptable yield criteria and post-yielding response. The same process is applied also for topology optimization of alternative material compositions where nonlinear response should be considered. Optimized distribution of material is achieved by introducing interpolation rules for the each; elastic and plastic material properties. Many numerical models illustrate the capability and potential of the planned process.

With current uprising in the cost of construction of modern building and bridges in developing nations, owing to the sudden rise in the price of construction materials especially cements commonly used as binder of other materials and the frequent reports of building collapse in most of our urban cities have necessitated the need to investigate alternative source of binder or reinforcement of cements based sandcrete using some common agricultural by product. In the study, we investigate the use of sugar cane baggase ash as a possible replacement or partial replacement of the spontaneous binding medium(cement) in the production of cement based sandcrete. Sugarcane Bagasse Ash calcined at temperature between 550oC and 600oC were mixed with commercial Portland cements like Dangote, Elephant and Sokoto cements at different percentage up to 50% partial substitution. The resulting mixtures were subsequently used to mould sandcrete block. Strength analysis of the blocks produced maximum strength of 5.8 N/mm2, 4.7 N/mm2and 4.2 N/mm2 for samples from Dangote, Elephant and Sokoto cements respectively, after 91 days curing period as against 1.75 N/mm2 minimum strength set by Nigerian National Building code (2006). Compressive strength analysis of Sandcrete blocks produced after 28 days curing period showed a maximum and minimum compressional strength of 3.6 N/mm2 and 2.7 N/mm2 for Dangote, 3.9 N/mm2 and 2.3 N/mm2 for Elephant and 4.3 N/mm2 and 1.9 N/mm2 for Sokoto Cements, values considered better when compared with the minimum standard of 1.75 N/mm2 recommended by the Nigerian National Building code (2006) for individual blocks and 2.0N/mm2 by British Standard for non-load bearing walls, thus making introduction of this waste material a potential way of economic cost reduction in the production of cement based sandcrete.

This study modeled the effect of biochar on soil polluted with petroleum using plantain peel to prepare the biochar by method of local pyrolysis. The soil was collected from an agricultural farm land; it was polluted with petroleum product and mixed properly to achieve proper contamination. A total of five (5) microcosms was setup which included two (2) controls, one containing soil alone and the other containing soil and petroleum (polluted) while the other three (3) included polluted soil containing biochar. The microcosm containing polluted soil with biochar was kept moist by exposure to atmospheric condition for remediation process to take place. Each microcosm was taken to the laboratory after every two weeks for a total of six weeks. The samples were analyzed and results documented, the biochar material was also analyzed to determine its physicochemical properties. The results for T.N show that at the unpolluted stage the soil sample was 0.17, but at pollution level it moved to 2.36 while the biochar is 4.59. At remediation with plantain peel-biochar, T.N was 2.06 close to its natural level and increased at 42 days to 2.21. The analysis for pH shows that at the unpolluted stage the soil sample was neutral, but at pollution its pH level moved towards the Acidic to a pH of 6.0, the biochar itself was having a pH of 8.2. When applied to the polluted soil the pH level at 42 days increased to 8.0 which was close to its natural state. Hydrocarbon Utilizing Bacteria (HUB) was constantly increasing, this is because of its high content in the material. HUB is required so as to reduce the carbon content, bacterial necessary for self-remediation was reduced to the state of pollution, plantain - peel biochar when applied to the soil started restoring these bacterial. The results obtained when compared with the results of the controls proved that petroleum when in contact with the soil can reduce most of its physicochemical properties. Therefore, the use of plantain peel biochar to enhance petroleum biodegradation in the soil could be one of the severally sought bioremediation strategies of remediating natural environment contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons.

This study considered the effect of biochar on soil polluted with petroleum using maize husk to prepare the biochar by method of local pyrolysis. The soil was collected from an agricultural farm land; it was polluted with petroleum product and mixed properly to achieve proper contamination. Five replicates were setup which included two (2) controls, one containing soil alone and the other containing soil and petroleum (polluted) while the other three (3) included polluted soil containing biochar. The replicates containing polluted soil with biochar were kept moist by exposure to atmospheric condition for remediation processes to take place leading to the eventual removal of these petroleum hydrocar­bons. The bioremediation ex­periments were carried out after every two weeks for a period of six weeks under laboratory conditions. The results for pH showed that at the unpolluted stage the soil sample was neutral, but at pollution its pH level was 6.5, the biochar itself was having a pH of 7.4. When applied to the biochar amended soil the pH level at 42 days increased to 7.2 which was close to its natural state. It was observed that the hydrocarbon utilizing bacteria (HUB) was constantly increasing ranging from 5.1 × 104 at unamended contaminated level to 3.36 × 106 (14 days), 4.51 ×107 (28 days) and 2.95 ×108 (42 days) due to its high content in the material. The results showed that the soil amendment with biochar enhanced the petroleum hydrocarbon biodegradation in comparison with the unamended contaminated soil. Therefore, the maize husk biochar proved to be adequate as potential agent for bioremediation processes of soils contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons.