Sharif Digital Repository

This paper provides an overview of the power sector development in Iran for the period 1984–2014. A retrospective optimization approach is applied to assess economic and environmental benefits that would have been achieved through appropriate long-term planning. MESSAGE, a systems engineering optimization model, is used for this analysis. Two alternative scenarios are defined to explore the impact of supply- and demand-side strategies on the power generation mix, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The focus on the past choice of energy scenarios provides some insights for future scenario design. The results of the cost-optimal scenarios with international fuel prices are compared with the... 

Despite the abundant renewable energy sources, the Iranian energy sector relies almost entirely on fossil fuel energy resources. Power sector is dominant source of CO2 emissions and responsible for about 35% of total CO2 emissions in the country. Additionally, long-term electricity demand of Iran is expected to grow quickly, which in turn requires extensive investment to meet the growing demand over the next decades. On the other hand, increasing domestic fossil fuel consumption had been a serious challenge due to high costs of oil and gas. Current study pays particular attention to the possible penetration rates of renewable electricity technologies and their implications for fossil fuel... 

The current study aims to provide insights into the drying of agro products, with a specific focus on Capsicum annum L. (red pepper). Among open sun drying (OSD), polyethylene bag drying (PBD), and polycarbonate sheet drying (PCSD), PCSD was efficient requiring around 24 hours with a maximum yield of 350 g of dried product per 1000 g of supplied fresh peppers. The PCSD dried chili also showed greater retention of antioxidant markers (capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin) than OSD and PBD as evidenced by UV-VIS spectroscopy. Additionally, the PCSD dried chili demonstrated highest antioxidant potential via ABTS (2, 2'-Azinobis-3-Ethylbenzothiazoline-6-Sulfonic Acid). Interestingly, the presence of... 

Background: The contemporary research was conducted to explore the ethnomedicinal potential of wild flora exploited by the indigenous communities of Palas valley of Kohistan, Northern Pakistan. It constitutes an important contribution to the knowledge of biological resources used for treatment of ailments through traditional practices. Methods: Rapid appraisal approach (RAA), semi-structured interviews, and personal monitoring, group discussion with community and interviews with herbalist were carried out to obtain information of ethnomedicinal values. The data gathered from the site was examined using quantitative ethnobotanical indices, viz., informant consensus factor (ICF), use value... 

Simultaneous extraction of zinc and cadmium by a mixture of di-2-ethyl hexyl phosphoric acid (DEHPA) and mono-2-ethyl hexyl phosphoric acid (MEHPA), and the synergistic effect of MEHPA on co-extraction of zinc and cadmium with DEHPA have been investigated. It was shown that the extraction of zinc and cadmium by DEHPA and/or MEHPA can be increased by an increase of pH. The results also illustrate that the pH0.5 of zinc, by increase in MEHPA from 0.1 to 8 vol%, did not vary significantly while that of cadmium varies from 0.63 to 2.4. In other words MEHPA prevents selective extraction of zinc from aqueous media containing both zinc and cadmium. Studies on the selective separation parameter... 

Within this research, we examined the convective flow of a blend of ternary hybrid nanofluids and single nanofluids with a stagnation point caused by a stretched cylinder. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of using a ternary hybrid nanofluid instead of a single nanofluid. Water is used as the base fluid in this investigation. The single nanofluid is made of copper and the ternary hybrid nanofluid is made of Molybdenum disulfide, copper, and silver. The impact of the curvature parameter, nanoparticle volume fraction, mixed convection parameter, velocity ratio, shape factor, conjugate number and Eckert number parameters on temperature and velocity profiles has been... 

The present work is concerned with the steady incompressible flow through a parallel plate channel with stretching walls under an externally applied magnetic field. The governing continuity and Navier-Stokes equations are reduced to a fourth order nonlinear differential equation by using vorticity definition and similarity solution transformation. The obtained equations are solved by applying the analytical homotopy perturbation method (HPM). The method is called order of magnitude suggested for simplifying series solution to finite expression that is useful in engineering problems. The results are verified by comparing with numerical solutions and demonstrate a good accuracy of the obtained... 

In the last decade, many potent analytical methods have been utilized to find the approximate solution of nonlinear differential equations. Some of these methods are energy balance method (EBM), homotopy perturbation method (HPM), variational iteration method (VIM), amplitude frequency formulation (AFF), and max-min approach (MMA). Besides the methods mentioned above, the Akbari-Ganji method (AGM) is a highly efficient analytical method to solve a wide range of nonlinear equations, including heat transfer, mass transfer, and vibration problems. In this study, it was constructed the approximate analytic solution for movement of two mechanical oscillators by employing the AGM. In the derived... 

At SCN 2018, Fiore and Pagnin proposed a generic compiler (called “Matrioska”) allowing to transform sufficiently expressive single-key homomorphic signatures (SKHSs) into multi-key homomorphic signatures (MKHSs) under falsifiable assumptions in the standard model. Matrioska is designed for homomorphic signatures that support programs represented as circuits. The MKHS schemes obtained through Matrioska support the evaluation and verification of arbitrary circuits over data signed from multiple users, but they require the underlying SKHS scheme to work with circuits whose size is exponential in the number of users, and thus can only support a constant number of users. In this work, we propose... 

The ride comfort of high-speed trains passing over railway bridges is studied in this paper. A parametric study is carried out using a time domain model. The effects of some design parameters are investigated such as damping and stiffness of the suspension system and also ballast stiffness. The influence of the track irregularity and train speed on two comfort indicators, namely Sperling's comfort index and the maximum acceleration level are also studied. Two types of railway bridges, a simple girder and an elastically supported bridge are considered. Timoshenko beam theory is used for modelling the rail and bridge and two layers of parallel damped springs in conjunction with a layer of mass... 

In this research, the flow of kerosene oil with ternary hybrid nanoparticles on a stretchable exponential surface has been investigated. There is also a discussion about the entropy analysis of the flow of hydromagnetic radiation by the surface. The ternary hybrid nanofluid (THyNF) contains graphene oxide (GO), magnesium oxide (MgO), and zinc oxide (ZnO) as nanoparticles and kerosene oil as a base fluid. Using useful transformations, differential equations with partial derivatives (PDEs) were transformed into ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Then, the ODEs were solved using the RK5th method. Furthermore, the impacts of parameters like radiation parameter ((Formula presented.)),... 

This study delves into the impact of the pre-ionization technique, facilitated by an optimal shunt resistor, on a DPF device operating with deuterium gas. The investigation unveils enhancements in critical parameters within the plasma column environment during the pinch phase, specifically the total and plasmoid hard x-ray yields. Employing a combination of time-resolved detectors, such as plastic scintillator and magnetic probe arrays, alongside time-integrated detectors like pinhole camera, and just by using this technique, the research illustrated an augmented plasma sheath velocity during the axial phase. Notably and other than the enhancement of hard x-ray yield, the optimal pressure of... 

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate natural convection in a porous wavy-walled enclosure that is including a cylinder cavity in the middle of it and filled with a hybrid nanofluid contains 1-Butanol as the base fluid and MoS2–Fe3O4 hybrid nanoparticles. Design/methodology/approach: The domain of interest is bounded by constant temperature horizontal corrugated surfaces and isothermal vertical flat surfaces. The numerical outputs are explained in the type of isotherms, streamline and average Nusselt number with variations of the Rayleigh number, Hartmann number, nanoparticle shape factor and porosity of the porous medium. For solving the governing equations, the finite... 

Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is applied to evaluate the performance of a new micro gas sensor (MIKRA) for mass analysis of ammonia in the rarefied gas. In order to simulate a rarefied gas inside the micro gas detector, Boltzmann equation is applied to obtain high precision results. This study performed comprehensive studies to reveal the main mechanism of force generation and applied this for the analysis of the gas mixture. Our findings show that value of generated Knudsen force significantly varies when the percentage of the NH3 varies in the mixture. According to obtained results, the maximum Knudsen force increases when the fraction of the ammonia decreases. Our findings... 

The present article pertains to the assessment of thermoelastic damping (TED) in rectangular nanoplates by incorporation of size effect within the constitutive and heat conduction relations. With the purpose of establishing size-dependent coupled thermoelastic equations, nonlocal elasticity theory and dual-phase-lag heat conduction model are utilized. By considering time-harmonic vibrations, nonclassical frequency equation affected by thermoelastic coupling is derived. By solving this equation and extracting the real and imaginary parts of damped natural frequency via some mathematical operations, an explicit expression for description of TED in circular nanoplates is obtained. With the goal... 

Heat exchangers (HE) are one of the vital heat transfer equipment that have various applications in disparate industries. In this regard, countless methods have been implemented to increase and optimize the heat transfer process inside them. However, passive techniques have received more attention due to the absence of external power consumption. In this study, the impact of employing turbulators with various geometries on the overall heat transfer coefficient (HTC), flow pressure drop (PD), and temperature distribution in the shell-and-tube heat exchanger (STHE) has been computationally investigated. Moreover, for a better examination, the effect of variation of the middle diameter of the...