Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Department of Mechanical Engineering

World University root node

Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering

Preface

As stated in the European Commission’s waste framework directive, the geographic proximity of wastes to the potential recovery/disposal site is of paramount importance in attaining an effective resource recycling paradigm. The global interest in achieving an end-of-waste scenario encourages the recovery of useful products/secondary raw materials from locally available waste materials. Sugarcane bagasse ash is an abundantly available waste (44,200 tonnes day–1) from sugar plants in India which has the potential to be used as a partial replacement to cement in ready-mix concrete plants. Although pozzolanic performance of sugarcane bagasse ash and its ability in reducing the carbon emissions associated with concrete production have been reported in earlier research studies, its use in concrete is hindered due to the lack of availability and accessibility data. In this study, the geographical distribution of sugar plants and the available quantity of sugarcane bagasse ash in India have been determined. In addition, a detailed network analysis using a geographic information system was conducted to quantify the geographic proximity of bagasse ash, fly ash and slag sources to ready-mix concrete plants. The study results indicate that for most of the ready-mix concrete plants in India, the probability of having a bagasse ash source in proximity is higher than the probability of encountering slag/fly ash sources. © The Author(s) 2020.

Department of Civil Engineering

Waste Management and Research

Quantification of geographical proximity of sugarcane bagasse ash sources to ready-mix concrete plants for sustainable waste management and recycling

Sugarcane bagasse pyrolysis is an effective way of producing renewable and sustainable energy. A combined study on characterisation of primary and secondary by-products of sugarcane towards the effective use of bagasse as an energy feedstock and biochar is not yet available in the existing literature. This study is an attempt to bridge this gap and to understand the complete valorisation potential of sugarcane bagasse and its by-products. In this study, the elemental, structural and compositional analyses of sugarcane bagasse collected from various sources were carried out and their thermal decomposition behaviour under pyrolysis conditions was investigated using thermogravimetric data. The composition of all sugarcane bagasse samples showed remarkable similarity, except for the presence of high soluble sugars in two of the six samples. The hemicellulose content in the lignocellulosic bagasse samples was found to have a distinct thermal decomposition pattern, resulting in deconvolved derivative thermogravimetric curves with peaks centred at around 300 °C. A detailed analysis of the thermogravimetric data indicated a complex multi-step thermal degradation behaviour for bagasse under pyrolysis conditions. The pyrolysis reaction kinetics of sugarcane bagasse were developed by using iso-conversional and model-fitting methods. Further, SEM–EDS analysis revealed that the biochar obtained from bagasse fast pyrolysis experiments was predominantly siliceous. X-ray diffraction studies on biochar indicated that there were no crystalline phases, even at pyrolysis temperature of 700 °C. © 2020, Society for Sugar Research & Promotion.

Sugar Tech

Thermochemical Conversion of Sugarcane Bagasse: Composition, Reaction Kinetics and Characterisation of By-Products

Pretreatment processes on rice husk ash (RHA) influence its properties and in turn, the performance of concrete. However, most of the available literature captures only the influence of the RHA usage in concrete without focusing on the systematic pretreatment process and optimization of RHA dosage on physical and chemical perspective. Further, the replacements were done on weight basis, leading to higher binder volume and inaccuracies in the performance evaluation. The main objective of the present study is to adopt adequate pretreatment process and to systematically optimize the RHA dosage (vol. %) towards better strength and durability properties. Hence, the current study focuses on understanding the nature of RHA through characterization, followed by suitable pretreatment processes for enhancing the properties of RHA. The enhancement in the chemical activity of the treated RHA was assessed through pozzolanic activity tests (strength activity index, lime consumption test and soluble silica). Based on the physical properties (particle size, surface area and packing density), chemical characteristics (strength activity index) and the energy required, the grinding time (30 min) was optimized rationally. The optimized dosage of RHA (20% by vol.) was evaluated for its performance through fresh, mechanical and durability properties. From the results, it is evident that adequate pretreatment, along with systematically optimized RHA dosage yields enhanced performance in concrete properties. © 2020 fib. International Federation for Structural Concrete

Structural Concrete

Suitable pretreatment process for rice husk ash towards dosage optimization and its effect on properties of cementitious mortar

Alkali-activated binders are sustainable alternatives to carbon-intensive conventional cements. A comprehensive review of the potential of different agro-waste ashes and their performance as precursors in alkali-activated binders are essential to enable their acceptance in the construction sector. Hence, the present study focusses on a systematic review of the alkali-activation of bagasse ash, rice husk ash, corn cob ash, palm oil fuel ash, wheat straw ash and sugarcane straw ash. Moreover, their influence on the mechanical and durability characteristics of alkali-activated concrete is also presented. Based on the review, it is found that except for rice husk ash, all the other agro-waste ashes have almost similar silica content as that of fly ash. The morphologies of the different agro-waste ashes are found to be distinct. Incorporation of agro-waste ashes in fly ash-based binders results in better resistance to acid attack than slag-based binders. Addition of agro-waste ashes brought down the drying shrinkage of slag-based binders significantly. Ambient curing is beneficial for bagasse ash-based alkali-activated mortar specimens. Water absorption is higher for agro-waste ash based alkali-activated binder specimens due to the porous cellular structure of agro-waste ashes. Enhanced performance at elevated temperatures is observed for agro-waste ash based alkali-activated binders. Rice husk ash-based binders are remarkably stable at elevated temperatures. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Journal of Cleaner Production

Agro-waste ash based alkali-activated binder: Cleaner production of zero cement concrete for construction

The authors would like to clarify that besides the para-functionalized product shown in Table S4 (page S8), they were able to detect a meta-functionalized minor byproduct, of which the data was omitted. While this finding does not show any visible inconsistency or conflict to the whole context of the manuscript, they have included these data in the Supporting Information. The original file has been replaced by an updated Supporting Information file. The authors apologize for the error and for any inconvenience caused. © 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH

Department of Chemistry

Chemistry - A European Journal

Corrigendum: Recyclable Ruthenium Catalyst for Distal meta -C−H Activation (Chemistry – A European Journal, (2020), 26, 66, (15290-15297), 10.1002/chem.202003622)

Reactions of the hindered N-heterocyclic carbene,:C{(MesNCH)2} (IMes; Mes = mesityl), with a series of β-diketiminatomagnesium(II) hydride and dimagnesium(I) complexes were carried out at 80 °C. The reactions involving the magnesium hydrides, [{(ArNacnac)Mg(μ-H)}2] [ArNacnac = [(ArNCMe)2CH]-, where Ar = 2,6-diethylphenyl (Dep) or 2,6-diisopropylphenyl (Dip)], proceeded via activation of an exocyclic C-N bond of IMes, giving magnesium imidazolyl compounds [(ArNacnac)Mg(μ-H)(μ-Imid)Mg(ArNacnac)] (Imid = [NC2H2N(Mes)C]-) and mesitylene. A low-yield IMes methyl C-H activation product, [(DepNacnac)Mg(IMes-H)], was also obtained, via H2 elimination, from the reaction between IMes and [{(DepNacnac)Mg(μ-H)}2]. Reactions between IMes and dimagnesium(I) compounds [{(ArNacnac)Mg}2] [Ar = 2,6-dimethylphenyl (Xyl) or Mes] afforded isostructural C-H activation products [(ArNacnac)Mg(IMes-H)] but in higher yields. Density functional theory calculations suggest that the reactions do not progress via stable adduct complex intermediates, which are sterically inaccessible. © 2021 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.

Inorganic Chemistry

C–N and C–H Activation of an N-Heterocyclic Carbene by Magnesium (II) Hydride and Magnesium (I) Complexes

Thermodynamics of quantum systems and quantum thermal machines are rapidly developing fields, which have already delivered several promising results, as well as raised many intriguing questions. Many-body quantum machines present new opportunities stemming from many-body effects. At the same time, they pose new challenges related to many-body physics. In this short review we discuss some of the recent developments on technologies based on many-body quantum systems. We mainly focus on many-body effects in quantum thermal machines. We also briefly address the role played by many-body systems in the development of quantum batteries and quantum probes. © 2021 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Department of Physics

Fulltext

Journal of Physics Condensed Matter

Many-body quantum thermal machines

We propose a deterministic scheme of generating genuine multiparty entangled states in quantum networks of arbitrary size having various geometric structures - we refer to it as entanglement circulation. The procedure involves optimization over a set of two-qubit arbitrary unitary operators and the entanglement of the initial resource state. We report that the set of unitary operators that maximize the genuine multipartite entanglement quantified via generalized geometric measure (GGM) is not unique. We prove that the GGM of the resulting state of arbitrary qubits coincides with the minimum GGM of the initial resource states. By fixing the output state as the six-qubit one, we find the optimal way to create such states according to the available resource. Moreover, we show that the method proposed here can be implemented by using logic gates, or by using the time dynamics of realizable spin Hamiltonians. In case of an ordered system, GGM varies periodically with time while the evolution via disordered models lead to a low but constant multipartite entanglement in outputs at a critical time, which decreases exponentially with the increase of the strength of the disorder. © 2022 American Physical Society.

arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.

Circulating Genuine Multiparty Entanglement in Quantum Network

A tournament is a directed graph in which there is a single arc between every pair of distinct vertices. Given a tournament T on n vertices, we explore the classical and parameterized complexity of the problems of determining if T has a cycle packing (a set of pairwise arc-disjoint cycles) of size k and a triangle packing (a set of pairwise arc-disjoint triangles) of size k. We refer to these problems as Arc-disjoint Cycles in Tournaments (ACT) and Arc-disjoint Triangles in Tournaments (ATT), respectively. Although the maximization version of ACT can be seen as the dual of the well-studied problem of finding a minimum feedback arc set (a set of arcs whose deletion results in an acyclic graph) in tournaments, surprisingly no algorithmic results seem to exist for ACT. We first show that ACT and ATT are both NP-complete. Then, we show that the problem of determining if a tournament has a cycle packing and a feedback arc set of the same size is NP-complete. Next, we prove that ACT is fixed-parameter tractable via a 2 O(klogk)nO(1)-time algorithm and admits a kernel with O(k) vertices. Then, we show that ATT too has a kernel with O(k) vertices and can be solved in 2 O(k)nO(1) time. Afterwards, we describe polynomial-time algorithms for ACT and ATT when the input tournament has a feedback arc set that is a matching. We also prove that ACT and ATT cannot be solved in 2o(n)nO(1) time under the exponential-time hypothesis. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.