Effects of temperature and moisture fluctuations for suitable use of raw-crushed wind-turbine blade in concrete.

Raw-crushed wind-turbine blade (RCWTB), a waste from the recycling of wind-turbine blades, is used as a raw material in concrete in this research. It contains not only fiberglass-composite fibers that bridge the cementitious matrix but also polyurethane and balsa-wood particles. Therefore, concrete containing RCWTB can be notably affected by moisture and temperature fluctuations and by exposure to high temperatures. In this research, the performance of five concrete mixes with 0.0%, 1.5%, 3.0%, 4.5%, and 6.0% RCWTB, respectively, is studied under moist/dry, alternating-sign-temperature-shock, and high-temperature-shock tests. Two damage mechanisms of RCWTB within concrete were found through these tests: on the one hand, micro-cracking of the cementitious matrix, which was verified by microscopic analyses and was dependent on concrete porosity; on the other, damage and degradation of the RCWTB components, as the polyurethane melted, and the balsa-wood particles burned. Both phenomena led to larger remaining-strain levels and reduced concrete compressive strength by up to 25% under temperature and humidity variations, although the bridging effect of the fiberglass-composite fibers was effective when adding RCWTB amounts higher than 3.0%. The compressive-strength loss after the high-temperature-shock test increased with the RCWTB content, reaching maximum values of 8% after an exposure time of 7 days. Statistical analyses revealed that effect of the RCA amount in the concrete was conditioned by the exposure times in all the tests. The accurate definition of those times is therefore key to set an RCWTB content in concrete that ensures its suitable behavior under the environmental conditions analyzed.

Predicting chlorine demand by peracetic acid in drinking water treatment.

Peracetic acid (PAA) may be used in drinking water treatment for pre-oxidation and mussel control at the intake. PAA may exert a downstream chlorine demand, but full details of this reaction have not been reported. There are three possible mechanisms of this demand: (1) PAA may react directly with chlorine; (2) PAA exists in equilibrium with hydrogen peroxide, which is known to react with chlorine; and (3) as H2O2 reacts with chlorine, PAA will hydrolyze to form more H2O2 to re-establish PAA/H2O2 equilibrium, thereby serving as an indirect reservoir of chlorine demand. While the H2O2 reaction with chlorine is well known, the other mechanisms of possible PAA-induced chlorine demand have not previously been investigated. The observed molar stoichiometric ratio of PAA to free chlorine (n) for the presumed direct PAA + free chlorine reaction was determined to be approximately 2, and the corresponding observed reaction rate coefficients at pH 6, 7, 8, and 9 were 2.76, 3.14, 1.61, 10.1 M-n·s-1, respectively (at 25 °C). With these estimated values, a kinetic model was built to predict the chlorine demand by PAA. The results suggest that chlorine demand from PAA is likely to be negligible over the course of several days (e.g., < 20% chlorine loss) for most conditions except for high pH (e.g., >8) and high PAA:Cl2 molar ratios (e.g., >2:1).

Influence of Work Hardening on the Surface of Backup Rolls for a 4-High Rolling Mill Fractured during Rolling Campaign.

Backup rolls are the main tool in a four-high rolling mill; the rolling forces applied in load cells promote the fatigue of the material due to mechanical contact between backup rolls and work rolls. This work investigated the causes of recurrent failures in backup rolls, with cracking always initiated on the surface of the roll body and finishing in the main radius between neck and roll body. Aiming to find the causes of failure, visual inspection and morphology of the fracture were performed, complemented with mechanical tests of hardness on the stress concentration area, in addition to validating the results by applying the finite element method, using ANSYS Mechanical Static Structural Software. It was concluded that the fatigue crack initiated on the surface of BUR due to work hardening continued growing up over the fatigued material, creating beach marks, and finally, a fracture occurred in the main radius of BUR due to stress concentration. The work hardening is the main cause of spalling on BURs and other mechanical components exposed to mechanical contact.

Polyphenolic Composition and Antioxidant Activity of Uncaria tomentosa Commercial Bark Products.

Uncaria tomentosa, which is widely commercialized as an herbal medicine, constitutes an important source of secondary metabolites with diverse biological activities. For instance, we have previously reported, for the first time, of a polyphenolic profile rich in proanthocyanidins from extracts of U. tomentosa plants, as well as their antioxidant capacity, antimicrobial activity on aerial bacteria, and cytotoxicity on cancer cell lines. These promising results prompted this research to evaluate the polyphenolic contents of U. tomentosa commercial products. We report a detailed study on the polyphenolic composition of extracts from U. tomentosa bark products (n = 18) commercialized in Costa Rica and Spain. Using HPLC-DAD/TQ-ESI-MS, a total of 25 polyphenolic compounds were identified, including hydroxybenzoic and hydroxycinnamic acids, flavan-3-ol monomers, procyanidin dimers, procyanidin trimers, as well as propelargonidin dimers. Our findings on the polyphenolic profile for all commercial samples show analogous composition to previous reports on U. tomentosa bark material, for instance a 41-49% content of procyanidin dimers and the presence of propelargonidin dimers (8-15%). However, most of the 18 commercial samples exhibit low proanthocyanidin contents (254.8-602.8 µg/g), more similar to previous U. tomentosa inner bark reports, while some exhibit better results, with one sample (SP-2) showing the highest contents (2386.5 µg/g) representing twice the average value of all 18 commercial products. This sample also exhibits the highest total phenolics (TP) and total proanthocyanidins (PRO) contents, as well as the highest Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) value (1.31 µg TE/g). One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with a Tukey post hoc test indicated significant difference (p < 0.05) between products from Costa Rica and Spain for TP and PRO findings, with samples from Spain exhibiting a higher average value. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis results showed a positive correlation (p < 0.05) between TP, PRO, and ORAC results, and an especially important correlation between ORAC antioxidant values and procyanidin dimers (r = 0.843, p < 0.05), procyanidin trimers (r = 0.847, p < 0.05), and propelargonidin dimers (r = 0.851, p < 0.05) contents. Finally, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) results indicated some variability in the composition regardless of their origin. However, only one sample (SP-2) stands out significatively, showing the highest PC1 because of its particularly high proanthocyanidins contents, which could be attributed to the 15% bark polyphenolic extract labeled in this commercial product, which differentiate this sample from all other 17 commercial samples. Therefore, our findings confirmed previous results on the value of extracts in the elaboration of potential commercial products from U. tomentosa, rich in proanthocyanidins and exhibiting high antioxidant activity.