IOSR-JESTFT   Volume-2 ~ Issue-3 ~ Nov–Dec 2012

Abstract: Presence of heavy metals in water bodies due to industrialization has led to serious health problems. In the present study, an adsorbent prepared from the raw bark of the Pongamia pinnata tree was used for the removal of Lead from aqueous and waste water containing heavy metals. The effectiveness of this adsorbent was studied in batch studies for various size fractions of adsorbent at different pH, concentration of metal ion, amount of adsorbent, contact time, agitation and temperature. The pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order and Elovich models were applied to test the kinetic experimental data. Pseudo second order model best fitted the adsorption of Lead ions. The Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherm models were applied for the results. The Langmuir isotherms were best fitted by the equilibrium data. The maximum adsorption was found to be 34.36mg/g in waste water at a temperature of 300 C..
Keywords:Adsorption, Adsorption isotherms, Heavy metals, Industrial effluents, Lead

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Abstract: Automobile industries requière manufacturing véhicules at optimum coste and with greater safety. For this purpose every component of vehicle is analysed for critical conditions. In this work car rim is considered for optimization by using finite element method. The optimization is carried to minimize the weight of rim without exceeding allowable strain. The intention is to create the geometry utilizing parameters for all the variables, deciding which variables to use as design, state and objective variables to obtain an accurately converged solution. FEM software OptiStruct is used for optimization of rim. If the stress & strain values are within the permissible range, then certain dimensions are modified to reduce the amount of material needed. The procedure is repeated until design changes satisfy all the criteria. For experimental verification similar type of object is used and stresses in it are calculated for set load with suitable instrumentation. Then same is calculated in OptiStruct software and Experimental results are compared with FEM results
Keywords:Impact factor, Strain gauge, Vonmises stress,Optistruct, Strain indicator.

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Abstract: One of the characteristics of African cities is uncoordinated urbanization with a trend of 4% annually, but the rate differs according to regions. Several factors are associated with urbanization such as lifestyle, consumption habit and pattern. The environment today is facing challenges from urbanization as consumption of resources such as land; water; energy, and air have changed to artificial environment. Energy consumption has been the driving force in global warming. Overtime, urbanization has been a great threat to sustainability of urban environment. However, kerosene and LPG that are supposed to be the major source of energy for cooking becomes unaffordable to low income households. This research was conducted in two residential areas of the identified neighbourhood and the choice of this neighbourhood is influenced by the fact that the phenomenon under study is more prevalent in the high and medium density localities. The effect of increase in electricity tariff, kerosene and LPG has shifted the focus of household source of cooking energy to biomass and this has been the cause of the environmental problems in the area which includes Indoor Air Pollution, Deforestation and Desertification. The analysis however shows a significant relationship between choice of energy and income.
Keywords:Deforestation; Energy Consumption, Households; Environment; Urbanization.

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Abstract: Tetrapleura tetraptera (Schum and Thonn) is a valued forest species in Nigeria for its medicinal and culinary uses. But the plant is uncultivated, and its seeds are dormant. This poses an obvious challenge in efforts aimed at its conservation. Different pretreatment protocols (scarification) were tested for their efficiency to break the hard seed coat of T. tetraptera. Mature fruits of T. tetraptera were collected from Oban west forest in Cross River State, and the seeds extracted and scarified before germination. Mechanical scarification was done by rubbing the seeds against a rough cement wall; chemical scarification by soaking the seeds in concentrated sulphuric acid, concentrated hydrochloric acid and concentrated nitric acid for 15 minutes; while heat scarification was done by soaking the seeds in hot water. Seed dormancy was successfully broken either by mechanical or chemical scarification. Significant difference (p<0.001) was observed in germination and imbibition percentage within the non-scarified and scarified seeds. While the non-scarified seeds had the least germination (18.3%), seed scarified with sulphuric acid had the highest (90%) followed by mechanically scarified seeds (85%) and nitric acid scarified seeds (81.7%). Imbibition percentage increased up to 100% in the scarified seeds in contrast to 66.6% in the non-scarified seeds. This study shows that sulphuric acid scarification is an effective method for breaking seed coat-imposed dormancy in Tetrapleura tetraptera.
Keywords:germination, seed dormancy, scarification, Tetrapleura tetraptera.

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