Determination of Specific Refractive Index Increment (dn/dc)_μ at a Constant Chemical Potential,for Solutions of Polymer in Mixed Solvents by the GPC Method

A new chromatographic method is described for the determination of specific refractive index increment（dn/dc）μ at a constant chemical potential,for polymer/mixed solvent systems.In this method the（dn/dc）is obtained by measuring the areas of solvated-polymer peaks when the mixed solvent is used as an eluent.Values of（dn/dc）μ for the poly（dimethylsiloxane）（PDMS）-benzene-methanol system,determined by the proposed method are in good agreement with those determined by the conventional dialysis method.The new approach has the advantages of simplicity,fast speed,and high reproducibility.The experimental results for stearic acid-chloroform-methanol system show that this method can also be applied to nonpolymer/mixed solvent systems for the determination of（dn/dc）μ.

Development of a drill energy utilization index for aiding selection of drill machines in surface mines

Drill machines used in surface mines, particularly in coal, is characterized by a very poor utilization （around 40%） and low availability （around 60%）. The main purpose of this study is to develop a drill selec- tion methodology and simultaneously a performance evaluation technique based on drill cuttings produced and drilling rate achieved. In all 28 blast drilled through were investigated. The drilling was accomplished by 5 different drill machines of Ingersoll-Rand and Revathi working in coal mines of Sonepur Bazari （SECL） and Block-II （BCCL）. The drills are Rotary and Rotary Percussive type using tri- cone rock roller bits. Drill cuttings were collected and sieve analysis was done in the laboratory. Using Rosin Ramler Diagram, coarseness index （CI）, mean chip size （d）, specific-st trace area （SSA） and charac- teristic particle size distribution curves for all the holes drilled were plotted. The predictor equation for drill penetration rate established through multiple regressions was found to have a very good correlation with an index of determination of 0.85. A comparative analysis of particle size distribution curves was used to evaluate the drill efficiency. The suggested approach utilises the area under the curve, after the point of trend reversal and brittleness ratio of the respective bench to arrive at drill energy utilization index （DEUI）, for mapping of drill machine to bench, The developed DEU1 can aid in selecting or mapping a right machine to right bench for achieving higher penetration rate and utilizations.

A hybrid specific index-related process monitoring strategy based on a novel two-step information extraction method

A two-step information extraction method is presented to capture the specific index-related information more accurately.In the first step,the overall process variables are separated into two sets based on Pearson correlation coefficient.One is process variables strongly related to the specific index and the other is process variables weakly related to the specific index.Through performing principal component analysis(PCA)on the two sets,the directions of latent variables have changed.In other words,the correlation between latent variables in the set with strong correlation and the specific index may become weaker.Meanwhile,the correlation between latent variables in the set with weak correlation and the specific index may be enhanced.In the second step,the two sets are further divided into a subset strongly related to the specific index and a subset weakly related to the specific index from the perspective of latent variables using Pearson correlation coefficient,respectively.Two subsets strongly related to the specific index form a new subspace related to the specific index.Then,a hybrid monitoring strategy based on predicted specific index using partial least squares(PLS)and T2statistics-based method is proposed for specific index-related process monitoring using comprehensive information.Predicted specific index reflects real-time information for the specific index.T2statistics are used to monitor specific index-related information.Finally,the proposed method is applied to Tennessee Eastman(TE).The results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method.