A Fast Optical Method for the Determination of Liquid Levels in Microplates
Parallel liquid handling systems are widely used in different applications of life sciences. In order to avoid false positive or negative results which lead to higher costs due to the replication of the experiments it is necessary to monitor the process and success of liquid delivery. An easy method for the determination of the liquid levels in microplates has been developed and evaluated. The optical method bases on the measurement of the liquid level using CCD cameras followed by special algorithms for the evaluation and visualization of the measured data. The proposed method was tested in changing environmental lighting for two different liquids. These tests confirm our approach towards optical liquid level determination for smallest volumes in microplates and also show the challenges regarding environmental lighting and different physical properties of fluids.
Noncontact level sensing technique using computer vision
Various types of sensors have been developed for measuring the depth of liquids in tanks, such as a fuel tank in an aircraft. Almost all of these methods require the sensor to come in contact with the liquid with low-voltage electrical leads carrying the signal from the sensor to an external computer for processing. A particular concern when such in-contact sensors are used in fuel tanks is the potential for an electrical discharge through the sensor leads resulting in an explosion. In this paper, we propose a computer vision-based noncontact technique for measuring the level of a liquid in a closed container using an optical imaging system coupled with an appropriate set of image-processing algorithms. An experimental setup was specially designed and constructed for simulating the environment of vibrating fuel in the gas tank of aircrafts for demonstrating the effectiveness of the technique. The experimental results of this paper may be used for studying the feasibility of implementing an actual system, which could be incorporated in aircrafts as a part of the aircraft's fuel gauge system.
Thermodynamics on the Carbochlorination of Titanium-bearing Ores
The equilibrium compositions of the multi-component, multi-phase and multi-reaction system of carbochlorination of titanium-bearing ores are calculated with HSC, a computational chemistry software. The thermodynamic equilibrium calculation of the reaction system shows that a complete conversion of titanium-bearing ores is feasible at a temperature near 200oC. At temperatures ranging from 800 to 1600oC, the products of the reaction system are all in gaseous phase. Thermodynamic analysis accords with the industrial practice. The simulated results provide reasonable scientific basis for improving suitable technological conditions of the carbochlorination reduction.