As more persons are adjusting to home working in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in the use of technology. Trinidad and Tobago, like many other Small Island Developing States, began exploring strategies in the areas of recycling and reuse techniques to mitigate negative environmental impacts from the disposal of waste toners. The reuse of waste toners as a performance enhancer in bituminous materials has successfully been achieved in foreign jurisdictions; however, the lack of research on the utilization of the indigenous Trinidad Lake Asphalt (TLA) and Trinidad Petroleum Bitumen (TPB) has stymied the application of this strategy locally. The influence of four waste toners (A, B, C, and D) on the rheological properties of an unmodified TLA/TPB paving binder was measured using the dynamic shear rheology (DSR) testing technique. The addition of waste toners noted improvements in the rheological parameters of stiffness, elasticity, and viscosity, exhibiting superior temperature susceptibility. Of great interest was the observation at 90 °C, where the modified paving binders containing 5% Toner C and 20% Toner D were elastically superior to the world-renowned TLA. This study demonstrated the potential of utilizing waste toner as a bitumen modifier, providing an innovative, sustainable disposal option.
A fuzzy set is fully defined by its membership function (MF) and the design of the membership function is an integral part of the whole fuzzy system design. This work looked at using operating states in a chemical plant to identify the membership function parameters. There were three operating states discovered, namely, the not normal operating state (NNOS), the normal operating state (NOS) and the transition operating state (TOS). These states were used to design the MFs of the fuzzy variables with specific reference to setting the limits for the MF and describing the linguistic terms and shape of these terms for the MF. The work showed that dropping sharply and rising sharply could be associated with the not normal operating state and dropping gradually could be used for the normal operating states and so on.
The traditional method of grooving the steel pan is a manual forming technique, which involves the use of hammers and chisels or punches. This is a time-consuming and tedious process, which requires skill on the part of the sinker and depending on the individual, may take up to four (4) hours. The process lends itself to any method that may propose a reduction in time as well as minimise the tedium involved and human error that may be encountered. This paper presents the design and development of a device to aid in the grooving process thus allowing for more consistent instruments to be manufactured. Index Terms-Grooving process, pneumatic hammer, steel pan musical instrument, Trinidad & Tobago.
Many of the agricultural plots within Trinidad and Tobago remain in a state of dormancy due to a critical lack of infrastructure needed for their development. This has contributed to the increasing food import bill which was some TT$5.6 billion over the last couple of years. This overall crop irrigation project aims at assisting the farmers in setting up a proper infrastructure that will utilize natural resources. The lack of pipe water will be substituted by rainwater capture, storage and distribution via drip irrigation. The lack of power for water distribution by irrigation will be obtained by the use of solar power for the pumps. The project will be done in phases. This phase involved at creating a smart estimator to determine the water requirement and the planting land area for the 2-acre plot when the number of plants, type of plants, and the month in which the farmer chooses to start planting are chosen. It will estimate the water storage volume required for the various crops chosen based on the rainfall patterns, crop cycle and the crop water requirement. These output estimates will be based on the land area input, estimated water storage size, estimated tool shed size and produce storage area, and the type or types of crops chosen to farm by the farmer for the plot. The input parameters in the estimator can then be varied by the farmer, to help find an estimated or optimum balance of the number and type of crops, the planting land area, and the water captured and stored, based on the rainfall patterns and the unused land area. The outputs required can be similarly obtained through the use of existing models and software packages, but the tools are not ‘Farmer User Friendly and readily available’.
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