Optimization for all disciplines is very important and relevant. Optimization has played a key role in the design and operation of industrial reactors, separation processes, heat exchangers and complete plants in Chemical Engineering. In this paper, a novel hybrid meta-heuristic optimization algorithm which is based on Differential Evolution (DE), Gradient Evolution (GE) and Jumping Technique (+) named as Differential Gradient Evolution Plus (DGE+) is presented. The main concept of this hybrid algorithm is to enhance its exploration and exploitation ability. The proposed algorithm hybridizes the above mentioned algorithms with the help of an improvised dynamic probability distribution, additionally provides a new shake off method to avoid premature convergence towards local minima. The performance of DGE+ is investigated in thirteen benchmark unconstraint functions and the results are compared to the other state-of-the-art meta-heuristics. The comparison shows that the proposed algorithm is able to outperform the other state-of-the-art meta-heuristics in almost all benchmark functions. To evaluate the efficiency of the DGE+ it has also been applied to complex constrained non-linear chemical design problems such as optimal operation of alkylation unit, reactor network design, optimal design of heat exchanger network, optimization of an isothermal continuous stirred tank reactor, the results of comparison revealed that the proposed algorithm is able to provide very compact, competitive and promising performance

Hydrodynamics of semi-fluidized bed was investigated using water as liquid phase and sand & quartz as solid phase. The fluidizer was composed of Perspex column of 0.05 m internal diameter and 1 m height. The investigation was performed for the constant initial head position of 0.035 m and the restrain position was varied as 9, 10 and 11. The effect of restrain position, bed materials and particle size of bed materials on the hydrodynamic parameters were analyzed using with and without internals. Results showed that the increase of restrain position reduced the pressure drop due to the decrement in top backed bed height. The usage of internals decreased the bed pressure drop and the helical internal displayed the greater reduction in pressure drop due to more restriction to the movement of particles. Further, the particle size of bed material influenced on the bed pressure drop and the decrement in bed pressure was observed while increasing the particle size owing to more restriction was experienced by the large size particles. In addition, while comparing the effect of bed material on hydrodynamic parameters, the quartz particle exhibited more pressure drop compared to that of sand particle due to the superior density of the quartz particles.

In a three years field experiment the effect of two energy crop rotations, including double cropping per year, and five tillage treatments on soil organic matter (SOM) and nutrients content were studied, under total aerial biomass removal. The five tillage treatments tested were: conventional tillage, reduced tillage using heavy cultivator, rotary cultivator, disc harrow and no till. At 0-15 cm depth for crop rotation A, SOM % increased in the no-till and disc harrow treatments, by 44% and 25.8% respectively. For crop rotation B, SOM% increased for no-till, disc harrow and rotary cultivator treatments by 49.1%, 39.5 % and 46.6 % respectively. At the same soil layer, increases of available P, Cu, Zn and Mn, were observed while available K forms were decreased, for both rotations. At the 15-30 cm soil depth only in the crop rotation B the rotary cultivator, heavy cultivator and conventional tillage showed statistically significant higher SOM content, 18.6%, 35.6%, 27.3 % respectively after three years of cultivation. These results offer a solution to avoid soil degradation when all above ground biomass will be removed if second generation biofuels will offer an economic solution to energy shortages and environmental impact of GHG emissions from fossil fuels.

Lichen species diversity, composition, and distribution vary across the difference in geographical areas and environmental conditions. This study aims to explore how lichen diversity, composition, and distribution vary with altitude ranging from 0-1493m and environmental factors (temperature and relative humidity). This study was conducted at Gunung Nuang, Selangor with 5 sites were chosen as sampling station. The diversity, composition, similarity, and correspondence of lichen species in Gunung Nuang, Selangor were analyzed. Based on this study, 44 lichen species were identified. Lichen species diversity, composition, and distribution were varied by forest’s altitude with lichen family of Graphidaceae and Physciaceae were present at all altitudes. Lichen diversity, composition, and distribution were higher at higher forest’s altitude compare to a lower altitude. The montane forest’s altitude can be classified into two types according to whether they had higher forest’s altitude (601-1493m) or lower forest’s altitude (0-600m). Also, the dominance lichen species were changing from lower to higher forest’s altitude, with species of Parmeliaceae were only found at higher forest’s altitude while C. xanthina and few species from Physciaceae only presence at lower forest’s altitude.  Lichen species diversity, composition, and distribution were significantly correlated to the forest’s altitude and environmental factors. These findings will provide additional information about the tropical montane forest of Malaysia’s lichen plus, enhancing knowledge on how to manage and sustain lichen in tropical montane forest.

The aim of the work is to investigate the Abrasive Water Jet Machining (AWJM) process parameters on titanium alloy(Grade 5).The parameters are considered are abrasive mesh size, abrasive flow rate, number of passes on Depth of Cut (DOC), Material Removal Rate(MRR), Kerf Taper(KT), Top Kerf Width(TKW). Abrasive Waterjet machining is one of the most common unconventional machining processes used for machining materials which are difficult to machine. It is also used in other than cutting operation such as turning, threading, slotting, pocket milling, etc. A multipass performance study using Abrasive Waterjet machining is provided on the basis of the Titanium Alloy done this experimental investigation. It has been studied the effect of abrasive properties as input parameters on the cutting profile of the machined workpiece cross-section, in which multiple pass milling is also found to have significantly better properties compared to single pass cutting. The experiments were conducted using L27 Orthogonal Array using Taguchi\'s design and ANOVA analyzes are performed to define significant process parameters, and their corresponding response graphs have been plotted. Garnet is used in three different mesh sizes such as #60, #80 and #100 in this study. The varying abrasive flow rates and cutting passes to achieve required cut profiles for the milling. Such profiles are then analyzed and examined into the various zones of the cut. Machining at the higher abrasive flow rate gives very low cutting depth. Furthermore, the angle of taper observed in these profiles is also found to be comparatively high in comparison to the other machining profiles.

Tarbela Dam is a wetland of Pakistan but due to deforestation lot of natural landscape has been cahnged into agricultural, rural urban land. These points kept in mind and designed this study, the main objective of the study was to caculate diversity of waterbirds. This one year study extending from March, 2018 through Feberuary, 2019 was conducted along at 80 km long belt of Tarbela reservoir. The data were collected at early morning (4:00 am to 7:00 am) and before sunset (5:00 pm to 6:00 pm) hours and a total of 63 waterfowl species belonging to 44 genera, 18 families and 9 orders were recorded from the study area. Throughout the year a total of 1208 birds recorded from agriculture land (kalabat town), 488 from Forest habitat (kiara), 710 from non vegetative Habitat (Labadam), 1316 from marshy Habitat (pehur), 896 from urban vegetative habitat (sobera), 647 from Agri. Rural forest habitat (Balongi), 743 from Agriculture rural habitat (Kabbal) and 1543 from rural Habitat (Gala). Indices were calculated through PAST (version 3.00 C) statistical software. Shannon-Weiner diversity index at agriculture land (kalabat town) was 3.414, at Forest habitat (kiara) was 3.675, at non vegetative Habitat (Labadam) was 3.407, at marshy Habitat (pehur) was 3.398, at urban vegetative habitat (sobera) was 3.622, at Agri. Rural forest habitat (Balongi) was 3.412, at Agriculture rural habitat (Kabbal) was 3.414while at rural Habitat (Gala) it was 3.515. It is concluded from this research that the Tarbela Dam is waterbirds rich and should be declared as Ramsar site.

The duplicate and insignificant attributes existing in the data to cause long-term difficulty in the classification of network or web traffic. It not only decreases the classification performance but also prevents a classifier for making accurate decisions, exclusively when substantial volumes of data are managed. In this paper, we proposed a new hybrid feature selection technique by combining Ensemble of Feature Selection (EFS) and Teaching Learning-based Optimization (TLBO) methods, called EFSTLBO. In the proposed method, firstly, EFS method is applied that ranked the attribute for selecting the optimal subset of relevant data. Then, teaching learning-based optimization method is employed to identify important attributes from the reduced datasets produced by EFS method that can contribute to determining the type of attack. TLBO algorithm uses the extreme learning machine (ELM) as a fitness function to select the most efficient features and to maximize the classification accuracy. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using a benchmark dataset of intrusion detection as NSL-KDD data. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high predictive accuracy, detection rate, false alarm rate, and provide more significant features than other techniques.