Flame in gravity vs flame in space

This is how a flame looks like in space (ie. in microgravity in orbit).

Passive solar building design

The world being more and more carbon constrained, needs means of energy that are environment friendly and produce minimum emissions. Along with acquisition of better means of energy and resources, reducing the emissions themselves by reducing environmental impact of emission sources is another essential factor to consider. As in case of buildings and construction, most buildings and infrastructures have a high impact on the environment and has been deteriorating to the environment since the industrial age. Modern buildings need to be built with environment friendly and resource efficient technologies. The strategy proposed for a building to keep its carbon emissions near zero is to make it a passive solar building. Such a design will reduce the cost of heating, ventilation and air conditioning to a new minimum and further reduce the building’s environmental impact (Doerr 2012). Passive solar concept aims to put the climate to its advantage. The building is constructed is such a way that the climate conditions favour the heating and cooling of the building which is well distributed throughout the structure by design (Doerr 2012). Many factors can affect the design of such concept, some being thermal insulation, thermal mass, shading, insulation type, glazing type and window placement. Correct use of these factors can help attain a balanced construction that can admit sunlight in winter, and reflect it in summers.

Keeping in mind that the winter sun is low on the horizon while the summer sun is high in the sky, the windows of the building are proposed to be constructed in angles that are facing the equator for maximum solar gain from the low winter sun. With a well insulated window pane angled south (towards the equator) the solar gain will further by complemented by preventing the loss of warm air through convection currents. Additionally, the building walls are proposed to be constructed with preplanned insulation to retain maximum warmth in winters and to avoid letting the summer heat in. The construction material can either be used in combination with insulation or the whole building can be constructed of insulative materials. Where the building interior is being kept warm in winters, summer sun’s glare can act like a furnace for a well insulated building. Although prevented by the window angles that are facing the sun in winters but are relatively at an angle of reflection to the sun in summers so as to act as reflective mirrors to prevent solar gain, the windows are to be complemented by correct shading from above that do not allow direct illumination from the sun when it is high up in the sky.

An affective design under this proposed strategy will assure the building’s environmental impact to be minimum and will lessen the need of energy wastage on heating and cooling. Operable windows and shading might just appear to be the only thing missing in this setup. To add comfort and avoid extra bright rooms in the building at times of year when sun directly faces the windows, the movable or rollable shades can help control the interior heating and lighting. The north side of the building does not get to benefit by the strategy directly as it doesn’t get direct sun light at right time of the year. This area can benefit from a implementing a good heat distribution design throughout the building. The central and the northern sides will still be identified as the areas needing mechanical ventilation and air conditioning though, due to limitations of passive solar strategy. The northern face of the building is proposed to be fitted with air conditioning equipment that follows the corridors or rooms to the central part. These areas will be equipped with suitable ductwork to distribute mechanical ventilation and air conditioning. As an additional strategic measure, it is also proposed that the seasonal wind flows be considered for the facing walls knowing which face of the building will be kept cooler by the natural wind flow and the roof might be lined with ‘through hole bricks’ that allow airflow through the roof to keep it cool, yet insulated (given that air is a good insulator as well) by the air gap. This kind of solar gain and insulation can also benefit from solar radiation by using a convection current through ductwork to allow warm air to reach the central parts of the building. The solar gain from one side or the roof of the building can be transferred to the central areas by passive heating techniques.The low energy strategy proposed also involves the ‘Green Building’ concept (Bauer et. al 2010; Mortgage Banking 2009).

It is proposed that the building be made suitable for the green building concept for a minimum CO2 impact on the environment. This includes installing well shading trees in front of windows that gain heat during summers. This can be optimized through making the best use of nature. Installing trees that shed leaves in winters will be the best optimization in this case. The trees will effectively act as season operated curtains that will gave way to sun light only in winters and provide efficient shading and cooling in summers. The approach to be considered is sustainability (Bauer et. al 2010) in terms of energy utilization. The building being energy efficient can further allow for more suitable ‘green’ or even zero energy integration. The green building concept is now not anymore a part of the future. Easily and cost effectively doable in the present, the concept can be used as a strategy to eliminate energy requirements for most situations significantly reducing the carbon footprint of the building in question (Anderson 1994).

References

Anderson, Katherine (1994). The Green Building - No Longer Just a Mirage? Journal of Property Management, Vol. 59, No. 4.

Bauer, Michael; Mèosle, Peter; Schwarz, Michael (2010). Green Building: Guidebook for Sustainable Architecture. Springer.

Doerr, Thomas (2012). Passive Solar Simplified. 1st ed. Alithea Press.

Editorial (2009). Reports Spotlight Growing Popularity of Commercial 'Green' Building. Mortgage Banking, Vol. 69, No. 4.

Ad hoc on the go Wifi from Evo Wingle without a power socket

At Highbrows Engineering & Technologies, we love staying connected to the internet. As we go for developing engineering products, we never forget our core vision of creating an internet of things in Pakistan. This is why we  never stop experimenting on anything that we get our hands on to make the technology dirt cheap to pay for and easy to access whenever it comes to the domestic gadgets without compromising on essentials.

Our Chief Engineering Executive, Shehryar, has recently taken on an out-of-the-box approach for getting connected to mobile WiFi. You might have seen people connecting to the internet with PTCL Evo and other such products making use of the wireless internet. One of such products that has become Shehryar's favourite is Evo Wingle - so he decided to experiment. Why carry the laptop everywhere, or search for power sockets, why pay for GPRS / 3G and why go searching for WiFi hotspots when Wingle could provide internet to external devices.

All it needed was power... so the need was to give it on the go battery operated power... and that's exactly what was given to it. Shehryar created a hardware interface that connected an 'off-the-shelf' battery with Wingle letting it power up and create a local WiFi network for his cell phone. Now a laptop or a power socket is not needed to be hurled around to make use of the high speed internet you already paid for; just a pocket interface gadget, Wingle device, the battery and ofcourse the cell phone which one would never leave home anyway. Once the device powers up, you can connect to the WiFi with the cell phone or a tablet (or even let your friends connect to it on the go).

Check out some of the images we took for sharing with you and drop your comments:

If you would like us to create custom gadgets or develop specific products based on your need, you can leave us an email at info@highbrows.pk.

Cold worked glass

How a piece of cold worked glass looks like.

Quantum Dot Nanosensors for Visual Sensing

As we advance into artificial sensing technology, it is pertinent that use of such technology be made to advance the interests of humans in general and improve the quality of life. Such motives have mostly been the driving force of technologies. For what is invented for space exploration helps fight diseases on earth and other examples include what was designed for war later supplementing great engineering technologies. The end result is usually the driving force or as a side motive at minimum. The advancement of nanotechnology means much more components in the same space and hence much smaller equipments. Sensors, were they small enough, could be used to replace the complicated biological and natural sensors in humans or animals and even be given to computers and robots.

Usage of Quantum Dots explore such a use of a nanosensor and design it so as to restore the vision of visually impaired humans or give eyesight to computers; not using something as crude and huge in size as a camera or a lens rather targeting the core of sensing itself. Inherently, this research targets the retina itself. An artificial replacement for retina would enable humans to benefit from a restored vision without invasive brain surgeries. Computers, at the same time, will be able to detect photons with a much much greater sensitivity than a normal digital camera based optical detection method. Photo-detection needs a complicated device or materials engineered to the extent that the sensor would not be a physical obstruction in terms of its size when placed in the human eye or as an attachment to it as well as be biocompatible. To keep up with both these de facto requirements and many others implications of them, extensive study of the mechanism and biocompatibility has been done in research work for the selection of the materials and the literature shows an in-depth detail on why the materials chosen would make graphene and graphite based quantum dots a great candidate combination for such sensors. They can be used with two routes in the basic design; the generation of photocurrent via quantum dots on detection of photons or polarization of human nerves to fire neurons via quantum dots whenever photons are detected.

Works on the topic:

Cheng, Shih-Hao et al. All Carbon-Based Photodetectors: An eminent integration of graphite quantum dots and two dimensional graphene. Scientific Reports 3, Article number: 2694. Published: 18 September 2013.

Tang, L. et al. Deep ultraviolet photoluminescence of water-soluble self passivated graphene quantum dots. ACS Nano 6, 5102–5110 (2012).

Li, Y. et al. An Electrochemical Avenue to Green-Luminescent Graphene Quantum Dots as Potential Electron-Acceptors for Photovoltaics. Adv. Mater. 23, 776–780 (2011).

Li, X. et al. Large-area synthesis of high-quality and uniform graphene films on copper foils. Science 324, 1312–1314 (2009).

Katherine Lugo et al. . Remote switching of cellular activity and cell signaling using light in conjunction with quantum dots. Vol 3.(2012)

Quantum Dots – A Definition, How They Work, Manufacturing, Applications and Their Use In Fighting Cancer Printable Document. Online Document: Accessed on: 27 May 2014.

Lin, Rieke and Research groups. Quantum Dots and Cells. Website: Accessed on 27 May 2014.

K. S. Novoselov, A. K. Geim, S. V. Morozov, D. Jiang, Y. Zhang, S. V. Dubonos, I. V. Grigorieva, and A. A. Firsov, Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films, Science 306, 666 (2004)

K. Novoselov, D. Jiang, F. Schedin, T. Booth, V. Khotkevich, S.Morozov, and A. Geim, Two-dimensional atomic crystals, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102,10451 (2005).

Carion O., Mahler B., Pons T., Dubertret B., “Synthesis, encapsulation, purification and coupling of single quantum dots in phospholipid micelles for their use in cellular and in vivo imaging,” Nat. Protoc. 2(10), 2383–2390 (2007).10.1038/nprot.2007.351

Chaoxu Li, J. A.. “Biodegradable nanocomposites of amyloid fibrils and graphene with shape-memory and enzyme-sensing properties”, Nature Nanotechnology, 421–427 (2012)

Kian, P. L., Qiaoliang, B., Goki, E. & Manish, C. Graphene oxide as a chemically tunable platform for optical applications. Nat. Chem. 2, 1015–1024 (2010).

Galande, C. et al. Quasi-molecular fluorescence from graphene oxide. Sci. Rep. 1, 85 (2011).

Jingzhi, S. et al. The Origin of Fluorescence from Graphene Oxide. Sci. Rep. 2, 972 (2012).

Sargent, E. H. Photodetectors: A sensitive pair. Nat. Nanotech. 7, 349–350 (2012).

Konstantatos, G. & Sargent, E. H. PbS colloidal quantum dot photoconductive photodetectors: Transport, traps, and gain. Appl. Phys. Lett. 91, 173505–173508 (2007).

Zhang, D., Gan, L., Cao, Y., Wang, Q. & Guo, X. Understanding Charge Transfer at PbS-Decorated Graphene Surfaces toward a Tunable Photosensor. Adv Mater. 24, 2715–2720 (2012).

Konstantatos, G. & Sargent, E. H. Nanostructured materials for photon detection. Nat. Nanotech. 5, 391–400 (2010).

Shen, J., Zhu, Y., Chen, C., Yang, X. & Li, C. Facile preparation and upconversion luminescence of graphene quantum dots. Chem. Commun. 47, 2580–2582 (2011)

Furnace simulation

 

As the research of Highbrows Engineering on furnace development specifically for Pakistani industry progresses, we would like to share it with every one else to keep it open sourced.

On the course of furnace simulation development, we have been reviewing and testing furnace simulators online and any options that might be there in the form of desktop applications so as to develop FurnoSim, the Pakistani bred industrial furnace simulator. The aim is to benefit both the industry as a commercial product as well as an academic product for students and professionals and it is on our to do list of products that are coming up.

Steeluniversity.org shares a free online furnace simulator which can calculate some basic cycles for some preset processes such as alloying. Although these do not cater the professional needs but they can be very exciting for fresh professionals or students to learn the processes without actually wasting energy and material. Go ahead and test their online electric arc furnace training simulator, for example. On the main page they also have other metallurgy and testing related simulation links that may come in handy for atleast learning and academic presentations.

On the side, keeping our promise of sharing the research with the world, our physics and electronics research side has been making progress and will be coming up with products soon. As a treat, a theoretical moving particle simulation is shared below with explanation:

This moving charge simulator shows for how +ive / -ive acceleration of electron emits light / radiation - fields point radially towards the charge and when the charge accelerates, the difference of where the charge should have been with previous velocity and where the charge is now with the change is a perpendicular shift of the field lines. This shift travels away form the charge at the speed of light as radiations. This can also be taken as a mathematical version of light where the light is considered as mathematical correction of the difference being updated through out the universe at the maximum speed possible (which is the speed of light). This changes with respect to relativity when you accelerate the electron to the speed of light and is also shown in the simulation (if you accelerate it to that point in the settings).

Nanotechnology for engineering applications

If you wish to deign alienware, you would be better off asking a science fiction author to suggest an approach for science. Which is why, yesterday's science fiction is today's technology.

A number of reasons have contributed to the fact that we are now looking towards the applications of smaller and smaller equipment. Nanotechnology can be used to compliment almost any other technology as it allows for 'more' literally. In some cases, nanotechnology is needed simply because only a component that small could fit in there without much disturbance or due to physical dimensions. Nanometer scale sensors make the possibilities of even the craziest ideas look real.

The idea of nano robots is one of the factors that drives nano scientists' motivation. It might be extremely useful to create a nano robot that is equipped with a nano scale sensor to measure localized real time stresses in structures. Structural integrity of a engineering equipment, constructions and large sized installations is vital in most cases. Materials engineers usually have to perform non destructive and destructive tests time and again to make sure that the structure will hold. This results in a lot of man hours and expenses. Furthermore, it is mostly mixed qualitative and quantitative decision by the engineer about when the structure needs to be reinforced, totally replaced or retested for cracks or failures again. An engineer might be wrong (human error) and might delay the test above a duration before which the structure might fail or the engineer might wrongly predict the duration period itself. This can result in catastrophic structural failures and result in either the equipment being shut down / totally replaced or even accidents.

To avoid such errors and to further add continuous monitoring, nano sensors can be placed within the structure itself which can then monitor the structure for local stresses. The combination of local stresses at different point can then give the overall view of stresses in the structure. When nano sensors are placed within the structure itself and are able to send the data to a monitoring computer, it would be able to not only monitor the real time stresses of the structure, but it would also give statistics for how the structure is used, what tasks put the most amount of stresses (and hence fatigue) on the structure. A higher fatigue would mean a higher degradation and early failure of the structure. Such statistics from actual real time monitoring rather than by timed testing can be of more use. As compared to the timed and scheduled testing, real time monitoring will give usage data of each second, enabling the computer to plot a graph of the statistics. This data will help engineers decide how to best use their equipment so that its structure gets minimum fatigue. In short, this will result in optimization and minimum wastage.

This can be easily done by using nano sensors that detect stresses. Piezoelectric materials would be a good category to start looking for the possible implementation materials and designs as they convert compression and tension into electricity (that can be used as the signal for computer to interpret).