Modeling and Simulation of Electromutagenic Processes for Multiscale Modification of Concrete
Concrete contains numerous pores that allow degradation when chloride ions migrate through these paths and make contact with the steel reinforcement in a structure. Chlorides come mainly from the sea or de-icing salts. To keep the reinforcement from being exposed to chlorides, it is possible to electrokinetically force nanoparticles into the pores, blocking access. This procedure is called electrokinetic nanoparticle treatment. When the particles used are reactive in nature, the process becomes both structural and chemical in nature. We use the term electromutagenic processing to describe such extensive electrochemical remodeling. Filling the pores in a block of concrete with solid materials or nanoparticles tends to improve the strength significantly. In this paper, results obtained from modeling and simulation were aimed at multi-scale porosity reduction of concrete. Since nanoparticles and pores were modeled with spheres and cylinders having different sizes, the results were compared with traditional sphere packing problems in mathematics. There were significant differences observed related to the sizes of spheres and allowable boundary conditions. From traditional sphere packing analysis the highest porosity reduction anticipated was 74%. In contrast, the highest pore reduction obtained in this work was approximately 50%, which matched results from actual electrokinetic nanoparticle treatments. This work also compared the analytical and simulation methods used for several sizes of nanoparticles and pores.
A modeling and simulation framework for electrokinetic nanoparticle treatment
The focus of this research is to model and provide a simulation framework for the packing of differently sized spheres within a hard boundary. The novel contributions of this dissertation are the cylinders of influence (COI) method and sectoring method implementations. The impetus for this research stems from modeling electrokinetic nanoparticle (EN) treatment, which packs concrete pores with differently sized nanoparticles. We show an improved speed of the simulation compared to previously published results of EN treatment simulation while obtaining similar porosity reduction results. We mainly focused on readily, commercially available particle sizes of 2 nm and 20 nm particles, but have the capability to model other sizes. Our simulation has graphical capabilities and can provide additional data unobtainable from physical experimentation. 
The data collected has a median of 0.5750 and a mean of 0.5504. The standard error is 0.0054 at α = 0.05 for a 95% confidence interval of 0.5504 ± 0.0054. The simulation has produced maximum packing densities of 65% and minimum packing densities of 34%. Simulation data are analyzed using linear regression via the R statistical language to obtain two equations: one that describes porosity reduction based on all cylinder and particle characteristics, and another that focuses on describing porosity reduction based on cylinder diameter for 2 and 20 nm particles into pores of 100 nm height. 
Simulation results are similar to most physical results obtained from MIP and WLR. Some MIP results do not fall within the simulation limits; however, this is expected as MIP has been documented to be an inaccurate measure of pore distribution and porosity of concrete. Despite the disagreement between WLR and MIP, there is a trend that porosity reduction is higher two inches from the rebar as compared to the rebar-concrete interface. The simulation also detects a higher porosity reduction further from the rebar. This may be due to particles aggregating before reaching the rebar that can easily be seen in the graphical representation of the simulation cylinders. 
The dissertation author has created a web based framework to allow an interdisciplinary team to work in concert with access to the simulation and the results generated. The results are stored into a MySQL database. The database currently holds 271 simulation runs. Simulation requests can be entered into a web interface and will automatically be processed in the order entered and the results stored into the database. Results can also be retrieved from the database and filtered based on any simulation parameter. Statistical analysis can be completed on the data points stored in the database by using version of Rweb modified by the dissertation author. The result is a collaborative framework that can be extended to address future investigations into pore packing and chloride blocking.
Numerical and experimental investigation on air distributor design of fluidized bed reactor of sawdust pyrolysis
Abstract An improved biomass conversion in a lab-scale fluidized bed reactor (FBR) is achieved by optimizing the air distributor orifice size and number. Two approaches for introducing air were numerically and experimentally examined. These included perforated plate and downward orifice sparger. 3 mm and 5 mm orifice diameters, and 7, 9 and 13 holes were simulated at flow velocities of 2, 4, 6, and 8 times the minimum fluidization velocity, Umf. The simulation results revealed that increasing the orifice number has a positive effect on gas holdup, particularly for the perforated plate, which showed a uniform distribution of bubbles. The sparger configuration produced larger bubbles sizes, which could lead to better recirculation of solid flux, while stagnant particle zones were observed at the lower section of both distributors. A pyrolysis unit is also inserted at the top of freeboard of the FBR. For perforated plate with 6Umf, the pyrolysis process achieved thermal and cold gas efficiencies of 82.91% and 52.03%, respectively, while combustible gases with 41.6%mol CO, 8.7%mol CH 4 and 2.17%mol HC, were obtained. For sparger pipe and 6U mf _sp, 35.33 ppm NOx and 111 ppm SO 2 were measured in flue gas from combustion process at bed region.