Recent Patents on Engineering - Volume 7, Issue 2, 2013

TiO2 nanotubes have recently been studied extensively due to their high surface areas and finite length scales, allowing highly efficiency electron-hole charge separation and reduced recombination. Owing to these properties they can be used for instance in photocatalysis and lithium-ion batteries. The preparation of TiO2 nanotubes through hydrothermal process has received much attention. However, the practical application of TiO2 nanotubes is significantly hindered by their intrinsic energy band gap > 3 eV, which ensures that these materials cannot be excited by visible light. Visible-lightactivated TiO2 can be prepared by doping through incorporation or decoration with other metal ions, non-metal ions, and semiconductors. This review discusses various types of dopants, doping methods, and applications of doped TiO2 nanotubes.

Lipase is an enzyme which catalyzes hydrolysis, esterification and transesterification processes. Type (origin) of lipase affects process conditions and final conversion. Use of these biocatalytic properties of lipase in modification of various vegetable oils is depicted in different patents, leading to varieties of beneficial products. Production and concentration of polyunsaturated fatty acids like eicosapentanoic acid, docosapentanoic acid and docosahexanoic acid were carried out through lipase catalyzed hydrolysis. Hydrolysis followed by reesterification was also employed in some patents to concentrate long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in triacylglycerol fraction or free fatty acid fraction as per specific requirements. Ethanolysis of fish oil hexyl esters was also described in some studies to concentrate similar fatty acids. Combined ethanolysis and esterification, ethanolysis and transesterification were also conducted in some patents to concentrate these desirable fatty acids. Degumming using phospholipase and biodiesel production with lipase as catalyst were also carried out leading to some notable patents. Reactor configuration for maximizing conversion was also patented. Removal of diacylglycerols from their mixture with triacylglycerols led to specifically designed triacylglycerol mixture for catering certain purposes.

Pyrolysis is the destructive distillation of the biomass at high temperature in absence of oxygen. Depending upon the heating rate and residence time of vapors during the pyrolysis process, it is classified into slow and fast pyrolysis. Slow pyrolysis generally produces less amount of bio-oil and higher amount of charcoal than fast pyrolysis. This is attributed to the longer residence time for slow pyrolysis. A critical review on this subject has been elucidated in this article. It implies that the different constituents of biomass i.e. cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin are degraded at different temperature ranges. Moreover, the elemental composition of the initial biomass found to govern the bio-oil production such as C, H, N and O which are primarily dependent upon the types of waste materials. Thus, actual bio-oil production potential depends on feed materials, type of reactor, operating temperature, heating rate, volatile matter, carbon content, sweep gas flow rate and residence time. Bio-oil chemical compositions are also affected by the operating temperatures during the pyrolysis of biomass. The kinetic study of different biomass materials and methods applied to evaluate activation energy, accordingly, are also reviewed and listed. In this review article, a critical analysis of the factors upon which bio-oil production depends are emphasized with appropriate citation. It also covers an extensive literature review to ascertain the effect of operating parameters on pyrolysis of biomass. This article also focuses about the estimated waste biomass potential in India. Efforts are also made to highlight the estimated potential of biomass sources for bio-oil production in Indian perspective. An estimate shows that approximately 7% of petroleum crude oil can be compensated with the bio-oil if all the waste biomasses available in the country were properly used.

This work reviewed the patents related to biobutanol production from biomass, giving the reader an overview of the topic. The main characteristics and trends about biobutanol production were compiled and discussed. It was pointed out that the future production of biobutanol will be driven by the selection of a new microorganism or the development of an engineered strain which will be able to overproduce butanol. In addition, a microorganism that produces low content of acetone and ethanol and tolerates high butanol concentration in the medium is highly desirable, since it is the main bottleneck in the process nowadays.

A detailed description of an automated metering reading system development is presented. The project includes visual computing - VSN (Visual Sensor Network), techniques for image treatment implemented at an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and data treatment through a service-oriented software structure. The elements of image acquisition and treatment are composed of an embedded system which associates CCD (Charge-coupled device), DSP (Digital Signal Process) and ZigBee Modules of communication. The control interfaces start with a ZigBee-Ethernet communication module and a service-oriented middleware in charge of the abstraction and treatment of the management data of the AMR (Automation Meter Reading) for the application layer. With this system, ZigBee sensors are integrated and form a wireless mesh; the information is then sent to a concentrator. An important characteristic is that this system can be adapted to any kind of energy meter and water meter in Brazil. The total cost of this system is about USD$ 66.00 and it is of easy implementation and operation.

We modeled an ultra wide band (UWB) transmitter system composed of a seventh derivative Gaussian pulse generator and a Vivaldi antenna through the study of recent patents correlated to this system. The system consists of a fifth derivative Gaussian pulse generator (PG) combined with a RLC circuit to generate a seventh derivative Gaussian pulse. The circuit is designed using 180nm CMOS Mosis-IBM process. Spice simulations illustrate the pulse with 145mVpp amplitude and 380ps width. The planar antenna is designed with copper film and RO3206 substrate. The simulated pulse spectrum complies partly with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum mask, in the 6- 10GHz frequency range. The dynamic energy consumption is 0.4pJ and average power consumption of 1.1mW/pulse at 1.8V power supply with a pulse repetition rate (PRR) of 100MHz. The electromagnetic simulations show the main lobe with an average gain of 5.1dBi at 6GHz, and a beam angular width of the 138° x 62°. This circuit can be applied in the UWB impulse radar for human monitoring in hospitals and others health facilities.

In today’s world, the prevalence of insulin dependent patients is increasing worldwide. In light of advancing in technology at biomedical science, the new approach and methods in recent years show the potential to solve the problems. In addition, advances in biomedical instruments have led to new opportunities such as real time patient tracking for mobile healthcare purposes. In this sense, wireless tracking of diabetic patients in home environment has been proposed as an alternative to conventional tracking. It can enhance the performance of processes in terms of reduction of expert person, cost, ease of use, and decrease the compliance of patients. In this study, wireless diabetic tracking system (WDTS) is developed. The application system concerns mainly wireless tracking of diabetic patients from their home environment. It is focused on the insulin dependent Type-2 diabetic patients. Main aim of the system is to facilitate tracking of diabetic patients. Satisfactory results are obtained by applying the system to six patients. Revision and summary of the most important and prominent patents regarding diabetes mellitus management, mobile tracking and treatment are also presented in this study. The patents examined concern a period extending from the years 2000 up to date. The paper ends with a description of the future improvements expected in the subjects covered.