Journal of Advances in Science and Engineering
Not a member yet
74 research outputs found
Sort by
Detecting defects in noncommissioned oil and gas pipelines using a ground robotic vehicle with thermal image processing
No full textLeak detection is one of the most crucial aspects of oil and gas pipeline operation. These leaks are a result of defects that may have been present before laying the pipes. Early defect detection helps a lot to save both service and maintenance costs, as well as prevent possible operational shutdowns and damages. Several methods are used for leak detection and defect identification, but most often, the approaches are usually from the external structural view of the pipes. This paper presents an internal pipe approach to defect detection through the application of a robot equipped with a thermal imaging system. The robot is developed around a Raspberry Pi B+ ARM11-based microcomputer with a Graphic Processing Unit to support a video/photographic camera. Image capture points were obtained by the location of object distance and image frame sizing. Acquired images are processed with a modified image processing algorithm using Gaussian and Sobel filters with morphological transformation in OpenCV. Results show good performance of the robot’s movement and image capture points at distances less than 80cm. Processed images also indicate areas of defects within the pipe internals
Implementation of an Internet-linked system for smart control of home appliances based on remote speech interaction via the Google home app
No full textSmartphones have made life easier than it has ever been because they are equipped with a lot of applications and at the same time, compact and pocketable. Several apps are available today for Internet shopping, banking, medical consulting, stock trading, and a range of other tasks. In addition to these applications, smartphones can now be employed to control our home appliances at the touch of a button or the use of voice commands. To further demonstrate the viability of this technology, a remote home control and automation system was designed and implemented. The system was based on a NodeMCU/ESP8266 Internet of Things device, Sinric Pro cloud system, and Remote Speech Interaction via Google Home App. The constructed device was tested and found to be working effectively as three light bulbs representing the home appliances, were remotely switched ON and OFF from Sinric Pro Website and also from a Smartphone via voice command on Google Home App. This device which can be mass-produced locally is hereby recommended to homes in Nigeria as this will make life easier and more comfortable
Comparative assessment of the phytochemicals of the leaves and seeds of pigeon pea (Cajanus Cajan (L.) Huth) plant
Get PDFThe pigeon pea plant is one of the plants cultivated in the semi-arid tropics; it is widely cultivated in Nigeria. It is utilized as food and serves medicinal purposes. This study was carried out with the aim of assessing the phytochemicals. Pigeon pea leaves and seeds were purchased from farmers in Uromi, Edo state, and Rumugbo phase-2, Obia Akpor Local government area of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The phytochemical components of both the fresh and dried leaves and seeds were determined using the standard method and the results obtained from this study showed that in both the fresh and dried leaves of pigeon peas alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, steroids, phytosteroids, saponins, tannins, phenol, anthraquinones, quinones, xanthoproteins, and phlobatannin were detected while the acidic compound was absent. While in the fresh and dried seeds of pigeon pea, results obtained revealed that alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, steroids, phytosteroids, saponins, anthraquinones, and quinones were present while tannins, phenol, xanthoproteins, phlobatannin, and acidic compound were absent. Phytochemical compounds of the ethanolic extract of the fresh and dried leaves and seeds of pigeon peas were determined using Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectroscopy and a total of 30, 13, 32, and 38 bioactive constituents were detected in the fresh leaves, dried leaves, fresh seeds, and dried seeds respectively using their retention times (RT) and mass-to-charge ratios (m/z)
Fabrication of a GSM-based intruder detection system prototype based on ultrasonic sensor
No full textThe design and construction of GSM based ultrasonic intruder detection system for detecting an intruder through a protected environment was carried out and presented in this paper. An alarm is triggered when intrusion is detected through the use of ultrasonic sensor. Also, SMS is sent in the form of text to the owner’s mobile number via the GSM module being installed. The configuration and coordination required for the system units to function effectively were carried out by a programmed ATMEGA16 microcontroller. AC and DC voltage supplies were incorporated into the system to provide a constant power supply. The fabricated system was tested and found to work successfully in accordance with the target design specifications carried out as the intruder was successfully detected and SMS sent
Emotionally intelligent chatbots-designing for empathy and emotional support: A review
No full textThe integration of emotional Intelligence into chatbots for empathy and support has brought dramatic development to many sectors. The development has led researchers to continue experimenting and studying diverse design techniques (novel and existing) to find the method(s) that best suit the building of emotionally intelligent chatbots. To address this challenge, this paper provides a reviewed literature that extracted features such as the work done, findings, limitations, and the design techniques adopted to either improve an existing model or design a new model. Findings from the reviewed papers indicate that the reviewed paper mostly used the sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) model framework while incorporating it with other design techniques to improve on the seq2seq model. This is done based on the domain the model is built. However, other design techniques adopted by other reviewed papers are conditional variational auto-encoder, transformers, and a host of others. Although the researchers also incorporated other models with their main design technique to have a better system model
Performance analysis of a grid-connected photovoltaic/fuel cell micro-grid system in a university campus
No full textA grid-connected photovoltaic/fuel cell micro-grid optimized for university buildings is analyzed. The objective is to establish the techno-economic and environmental merits of integrating renewable power resources into an erratic electric power grid. The energy-balance method was used for the design. Case study simulations were carried out for the electric load of an information and communication technology infrastructure at Ambrose Alli University campus (latitude 6°44.0′N, longitude 6°5.1′E) using 22-year period datasets gathered from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The results show that hybridization of a photovoltaic generator (340kW), power converter (80kW), fuel cell system (22kW) with electrolyzer (21kW) and hydrogen tank (28kg) can sustainably augment the existing grid-diesel generator system. The potential deployment of this design on university campuses in African cities would represent great strides towards decarbonization
Reliability investigation of power system in Nigeria
No full textPower systems meet the demands of the consumers. However, largely unavoidable interruptions contribute to the unavailability of power supply. The sustained interruptions are the cause that greatly affects both the utility company and its customers. In this study, the investigation of power system reliability in the Ikeja Distribution Network was evaluated using the reliability indices. The analysis was done using statistical analytical methods and MATLAB software. Statistical analytical methods provide useful and higher accuracy of result since it provides high tolerance to uncertainties. The reliability data obtained from the utility substation was analysed as the outages from the utility company. The simulation indices results are shown as follows; Average Service Availability Index (ASAI) is 0.8841pu, the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) is 0.7239 f/customer in a year, the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) is 3.8004 h/customer in a year, the Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI) is 8.38 h/customer interruption in February and ASAI has as highest 0.9772 in December, SAIFI has 0.1418/customer has highest in January. While the Average Service Unavailability Index (ASUI) has an average value of 0.1159 pu/y
Leaching of Ibute-Nze kaolin iron-oxide impurity with oxalic acid process optimization of dissolution conditions using response surface methodology
Get PDFThe goal of this research was to remove iron oxide from Ibute-Nze kaolin by dissolving the clay mineral in an aqueous oxalic acid solution and optimizing the process. The chemical composition of the raw and modified clay was determined using x-ray fluorescence, and the morphology of the solid sample was determined using a scanning electron microscope. The best conditions for the oxalic acid leaching of iron-oxides impurity from Ibute-Nze kaolin were determined using response surface methodology based on Box-Behnken design. The studies were carried out within the following process parameter ranges: 40–90 leaching temperature; 0.075-0.355mm particle size; 1–6 mol/dm3 acid concentration; 0.02–0.12 g/cm3 kaolin sample to acid ratio and 30-240 min contact time. The characterization revealed that Ibute-Nze clay is kaolinitic in nature and calcination at 750 opens more pores for its leaching. According to the analysis of variance, a second-order polynomial regression equation provided the best fitting for the experimental data. The predicted and experimental response values were shown to be correlated (R2 = 0.9276) in the experimental runs. The following were found to be the best conditions for the leaching process variables: 83.2051 leaching temperature, 0.0827mm particle size, 3.6179mol/dm3 acid concentration; 0.0287g/cm3 kaolin to acid ratio and 217.932min reaction time. The chemical leaching process was 92.6035 per cent under these conditions, which made the clay good for industrial applications
Design and implementation of a fingerprint-based biometric access control system
Get PDFSecurity systems are often penetrated by sophisticated criminals, thus there is always a need for new solutions to be devised to give sufficient security to houses and other locations. The goal of this project is to build and deploy a fingerprint-based biometric access control system. The fingerprint is a pattern of ridges and valleys on the surface of a fingertip. Among various biometrics, fingerprint recognition is the most extensively and internationally accepted biometric because of its uniqueness, accuracy, cost-effectiveness, non-transferability, and ease of use. Presented is the system architecture for the system development that demonstrates component augmentation, detail extraction, and matching methodologies. MATLAB and the programming language C were used to develop a software application that was used to build algorithms for improvement, minutiae extraction, and matching processing. The software works by extracting meaningful features known as minutiae points from the person’s fingerprint, then records and stores these minutiae points to verify the person’s identity in the future. The resulting minutiae information is used to find matching fingerprints and to register these fingerprints in the system database. Finally, a verification system and identification system were realized. The proposed automatic door access control system was implemented using the Arduino Atmega 328p microcontroller. The proposed system was tried-out in real-time, and its performance was deemed adequate
Stability analysis of three-dimensional thick rectangular plate using direct variational energy method
Get PDFThis study investigated the elastic static stability analysis of homogeneous and isotropic thick rectangular plates with twelve boundary conditions and carrying uniformly distributed uniaxial compressive load using the direct variational method. In the analysis, a thick plate energy expression was developed from the three-dimensional (3-D) constitutive relations and kinematic deformation; thereafter the compatibility equations used to resolve the rotations and deflection relationship were obtained. Likewise, the governing equations were derived by minimizing the equation for the potential energy with respect to deflection. The governing equation is solved to obtain an exact deflection function which is produced by the trigonometric and polynomial displacement shape function. The degree of rotation was obtained from the equation of compatibility which when equated to the deflection function and put into the potential energy equation formulas for the analysis were obtained after differentiating the outcome with respect to the deflection coefficients. The result obtained shows that the non-dimensional values of critical buckling load decrease as the length-width ratio increases (square plate being the highest value), this continues until failure occurs. This implies that an increase in plate width increases the probability of failure in a plate. Hence, it can be deduced that as the in-plane load on the plate increase and approaches the critical buckling, the failure in a plate structure is abound to occur. Meanwhile, the values of critical buckling load increase as the span-thickness ratio increases for all aspect ratios. This means that, as the span-thickness ratio increases an increase in the thickness increases the safety in the plate. It also indicates that the capacity of the plate to resist buckling decreases as the span-depth ratio increases. To establish the credibility of the present study, classical plate theory (CPT), refined plate theory (RPT) and exact solution models from different studies were employed to validate the results. The present works critical buckling load varied with those of CPT and RPT with 7.70% signifying the coarseness of the classical and refined plate theories. This amount of difference cannot be overlooked. The average total percentage differences between the exact 3-D study (Moslemi et al., 2016), and the present model using polynomial and trigonometric displacement functions is less than 1.0%. These differences being so small and negligible indicates that the present model using trigonometric and polynomial produces an exact solution. Thus, confirming the efficacy and reliability of the model for the 3-D stability analysis of rectangular plates