Zinc oxide nanoparticles were prepared using the sol-gel method. Zinc is one of the most important elements in living organisms and similarly zinc derived compounds have attracted much attention because of their applications in various fields like agricultural, medicinal, industrial, etc. These nanoparticles have piezoelectric, semiconducting, photocatalytic activities, and very high surface area. Also, they possess the unique property of being biodegradable and biocompatible. To synthesize the pure ZnO nanoparticles, zinc nitrate hexahydrate [Zn(NO3)2.6H20] is used as the precursor. Sol-gel can be done either in an aqueous or non-aqueous medium. But in this work, the ZnO nanoparticles are prepared in the aqueous medium (i.e in water) at room temperature. The prepared zinc oxide nanoparticles are characterized using X-ray diffraction to determine their crystallinity and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is used to study the morphology of the sample.
The present industrial environment needs proper maintenance for effective functioning of the system underlining the need for an optimal maintenance planning. Maintenance planning is a complex and an inherently stochastic process. This paper presents maintenance planning problem for a process industry. The problem is formulated to determine which of the possible actions viz. maintenance or replacement is to be carried out for the subsystems during the planning period. Maintenance is carried out by analyzing improvement in the parameters (viz. MTBF & MTTR) during the planning period. The objective is to minimize the present value of total costs that are incurred by the decision taken during the planning period. The problem is effectively solved by hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) technique.
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