Biomass residues have been used to produce activated carbons. On this process, the activation method and the raw composition determine the properties as porosity and surface area of the charcoal. After the extraction of castor oil, there is a solid byproduct (cake) of low added value, which was used in the production of activated carbon to add value to this waste. For this purpose two traditional methods were used, first, physical activation using as activating agents steam, CO2 and mixture of both, and additionally chemical activation using K2CO3 as the activating agent. Some activated carbons were characterized using N2 adsorption isotherms, BET surface areas varied between 255.98 (m2/g) and 1218.43 (m2/g). By SEM and EDS analysis was possible to observe that materials obtained by the two types of activation are principally amorphous and morphological characteristics of the carbon obtained by physical activation are very different from those obtained by chemical activation. Finally, through impregnation of inorganic phases of Ni and Mo was revealed that the high dispersion characteristics, these carbonaceous materials will have potential to be used as catalyst support.

Due to the increasing demand for food produced by the increase in population, water as an indispensable element in the growth cycle of plants every day becomes a fundamental aspect of production. The demand for the use of this resource is necessary to search for alternatives that should be evaluated to avoid potential negative impacts. In this paper, the changes in some physical properties of soil irrigated with synthetic gray water were evaluated. The experimental design involved: one factor: home water and two treatments; without treated water (T1) and treated water (T2). The variables to consider in the soil were: electrical conductivity (EC), exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), average weighted diameter (MWD) and soil moisture retention (RHS). The water used in drip irrigation high frequency was monitored by tensiometer for producing a bean crop (Phaseolous vulgaris L). As filtration system used was employed a unit composed of a sand filter (FLA) and a subsurface flow wetland artificial (HFSS). The treatments showed significant differences in the PSI and the RHS. The FLA+HFSS system is an alternative to the gray water treatment due to increased sodium retention.

Since few years ago, the parallel processing has been embedded in personal computers by including co-processing units as the graphics processing units resulting in a heterogeneous platform. This paper presents the implementation of swarm algorithms on this platform to solve several functions from optimization problems, where they highlight their inherent parallel processing and distributed control features. In the swarm algorithms, each individual and dimension problem are parallelized by the granularity of the processing system which also offer low communication latency between individuals through the embedded processing. To evaluate the potential of swarm algorithms on graphics processing units we have implemented two of them: the particle swarm optimization algorithm and the bacterial foraging optimization algorithm. The algorithms’ performance is measured using the acceleration where they are contrasted between a typical sequential processing platform and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX480 heterogeneous platform; the results show that the particle swarm algorithm obtained up to 36.82x and the bacterial foraging swarm algorithm obtained up to 9.26x. Finally, the effect to increase the size of the population is evaluated where we show both the dispersion and the quality of the solutions are decreased despite of high acceleration performance since the initial distribution of the individuals can converge to local optimal solution.

This paper presents the design and simulation of a global controller for the Reaction Wheel Pendulum system using energy regulation and extended linearization methods for the state feedback. The proposed energy regulation is based on the gradual reduction of the energy of the system to reach the unstable equilibrium point. The signal input for this task is obtained from the Lyapunov stability theory. The extended state feedback controller design is used to get a smooth nonlinear function that extends the region of operation to a bigger range, in contrast with the static linear state feedback obtained through the method of approximate linearization around an operating point. The general designed controller operates with a switching between the two control signals depending upon the region of operation; perturbations are applied in the control signal and the (simulated) measured variables to verify the robustness and efficiency of the controller. Finally, simulations and tests using the model of the reaction wheel pendulum system, allow to observe the versatility and functionality of the proposed controller in the entire operation region of the pendulum.

The electrocardiographic signal is an electrical signal and its amplitude is 1 mV approximately and spectral components between 0.7 and 100 Hz. The electrocardiographic signal represents the electrical behavior of the human heart and it has a group of waves called the cardiac complex. Waves comprising the cardiac complex are: P, Q, R, S and T. The R-wave corresponds to the positive wave of greater amplitude of the electrocardiographic signal and the time between each wave allows the calculation of instantaneous heart rate. The calculation of the time between R wave requires implementation of a filtering system that allows an attenuation of the spectral components that do not belong to this waveform. Then proceed to a thresholding process that consists of generating a binary signal which takes the value of one in the sample that records the wave R and zero in the other samples. The principal goal of this paper is to present the results to implement an algorithm for setting the threshold based on the calculation of the histogram of the electrocardiographic signal that has been previously addressed through a system based on filter banks.

This research characterized and quantified the effect of the legislative policy, regulations, and trade policies in the level users satisfaction of the mobile phone service in Colombia. For this, we conducted a market and commerce analysis of mobile telephone, as well as legislative, regulatory, quality and satisfaction policies of service users in Colombia, for the period 2000-2012. As a result seven mathematical models were formulated of the level users satisfaction in Colombia and prepaid and postpaid segment of the three operators with greater market share, through three factors like value of importation of mobile phones, quantity of phones approved and market sharing between operators, levels not reported by regulator were estimated for the period 2010-2012 and a consistent trend of about 70% was discovered. We conclude that in the mobile phone market there are regulatory effects additional to the measured and reported by the regulator, which limit the guarantee of a minimum level of quality of service as an operational requirement within the market. The presence of the importation factor in all models reflects the effects of market evolution on the user satisfaction of mobile phone service, given by the implementation of new technologies, new services offers and the participation of new mobile phone operators.

This paper presents the design and implementation of a virtual platform that allows simulation and local and remote command and control of the SCARA robot arm called UV-CERMA, which is installed at the Robotics Laboratory of the Escuela de Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad del Valle. The robot has been underutilized for some years due to the obsolete control system. The platform, focused on the engineering education methodology, consists of two applications which simulate the robot and permit its remote and local command and control. One of the applications was implemented on LabVIEW software of National Instruments and the other application was programmed on free software using the open source language Java. Both applications implement forward kinematics and inverse kinematics, have a module for trajectories planning and operation, a module for monitoring the values of the variables and a three dimensional model of the robot. To manipulate the robot, an interface with a joystick was developed, enhancing the versatility of the platform. The applications communicate with the real robot using the National Instruments data acquisition card NI USB-6211, and for the remote connection they have a client-server architecture using TCP/IP sockets.

With the goal of detecting changes or trends in registered data of daily rainfall in the basins of rivers Dagua and Cali, located in the south-west of Colombia, in the Valle del Cauca, nine climate extremes indices were calculated using the RClimDex software. For this, precipitation trends were analyzed in 18 rain gauges located in the study area with historical series ranging between 21 and 56 years. Homogeneity tests were made to data to ensure consistency in the information. The results show changes in rainfall, dominated by the increasing trends for almost all indices; however most of the trends do not show high statistical significance. Also, a significant increase in the average annual total rainfall of 15.2 mm (Dagua river basin) and 9.1 mm (Cali river basin) in the stations located below 1500 msnm was obtained. Moreover, in the stations located at higher elevations, decreases were observed. There is a homogeneous spatial distribution for the most of the indices and similar patterns were found located in defined areas of the study zone, which may affect the runoff production in watersheds in the coming years.

This article presents the design, construction and testing of an automatic product sorting system in belt conveyor with machine vision that integrates Free and Open Source Software technology and Allen Bradley commercial equipment. Requirements are defined to determine features such as: mechanics of manufacturing station, an app of product sorting with machine vision and for automation system. For the app of machine vision a library is used for optical digital image processing Open CV, for the mechanical design of the manufacturing station is used the CAD tool Solid Edge and for the design and implementation of automation ISA standards are used along with an automation engineering project methodology integrating a PLC, an inverter, a Panel View and a DeviceNet Network. Performance tests are shown by classifying bottles and PVC pieces in four established types, the behavior of the integrated system is checked so as the efficiency of the same. The processing time on machine vision is 0.290 s on average for a piece of PVC, a capacity of 206 accessories per minute, for bottles was obtained a processing time of 0.267 s, a capacity of 224 bottles per minute. A maximum mechanical performance is obtained with 32 products per minute (1920 products/hour) with the conveyor to 22 cm/s and 40 cm of distance between products obtaining an average error of 0.8%.