Along with industrialization and rapid urbanization, environmental remediation is globally a perpetual concept to deliver a sustainable environment. Various organic and inorganic wastes from industries and domestic homes are released into water systems. These wastes carry contaminants with detrimental effects on the environment. Consequently, there is an urgent need for an appropriate wastewater treatment technology for the effective decontamination of our water systems. One promising approach is employing nanoparticles of metal oxides as photocatalysts for the degradation of these water pollutants. Transition metal oxides and their composites exhibit excellent photocatalytic activities and along show favorable characteristics like non-toxicity and stability that also make them useful in a wide range of applications. This study discusses some characteristics of metal oxides and briefly outlined their various applications. It focuses on the metal oxides TiO2, ZnO, WO3, CuO, and Cu2O, which are the most common and recognized to be cost-effective, stable, efficient, and most of all, environmentally friendly for a sustainable approach for environmental remediation. Meanwhile, this study highlights the photocatalytic activities of these metal oxides, recent developments, challenges, and modifications made on these metal oxides to overcome their limitations and maximize their performance in the photodegradation of pollutants.

Pneumatic actuation systems are commonly used to drive the positioning stage due to several merits. However, one of the critical demerits of the pneumatic systems is the problem of the compressibility, which results in the flow disturbance. Another problem of the positioning stage can be addressed to the vibration which occurs due to the active condition of the base plate. This paper concerns the mentioned two issues in a pneumatic positioning stage. In order to suppress the flow disturbance and to reduce the horizontal vibration of the stage due to the reaction force, a combined control scheme is proposed. This scheme is composed of the fusion of flow disturbance observer (FDOB) and base plate jerk feedback (BPJFB) scheme. An enhanced experimental methodology is provided to successfully implement the fusion of the mentioned feedback controllers. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this paper a pneumatic positioning stage which is mounted on the base plate and supported by the coil-type spring isolators is considered. The stage is moved by the driving force during positioning and the reaction force causes vibration of the base plate with its natural frequency, which degrades the performance of the positioning. To reduce the effect of the reaction force and improve the positioning time, the base plate jerk feedback is proposed. An external force is used to realize the principle of the base plate jerk feedback based on the theoretical background. The experimental results confirm that the working principle of the base plate jerk feedback obeys the theoretical concepts. The feedback is then employed for the real positioning. Based on the experimental results including repeatability, the effect of the reaction force was considerably reduced and the settling time of the response was improved, after employing the base plate jerk feedback with approximate optimal gain.

Within the framework of this study, the inductive analysis of voltage stability indices’ theoretical formulation, functionality, and overall performances are introduced. The prominence is given to investigate and compare the original indices from three main dimensions (formulation, assessment, and application) standpoints, which have been frequently used and recently attracted. The generalizability of an exhaustive investigation on comparison of voltage stability indices seems problematic due to the multiplicity of the indices, and more importantly, their variety in theoretical foundation and performances. This study purports the first-ever framework for voltage stability indices classification for power system analysis. The test results found that indices in the same category are coherent to their theoretical foundation. The paper highlights the fact that each category of the indices is functional for a particular application irrespective of the drawback ranking, and negated the application of the Jacobian matrix-based indices for online application. Finally, the research efforts put forward a novel classification of voltage stability indices within the main three aspects of formulation, assessment, and behavior analysis in a synergistic manner as an exhaustive reference for students, researchers, scholars, and practitioners related to voltage stability analysis. The simulation tools used were MATLAB® and PowerWorld®.

In this study, a positioning stage is considered, which is actuated by four pneumatic cylinders and vertically supported by four coil-type spring isolators. Previously, we realized the base plate jerk feedback (BPJFB) to be analogues to a Master-Slave system which can synchronize the motion of the stage as a Slave to the motion of the base plate as a Master. However, in the case of real positioning, the stage had slightly self oscillation with higher frequency due to the higher gains set to the outer feedback loop controller besides its oscillation due to the natural vibration of the base plate. The self oscillation of stage was misunderstood to be the natural vibration of base plate due to the reaction force. However, according to the experimental results, the BPJFB scheme was able to control both of the mentioned vibrations. Suppression of the self vibration of stage is an interesting phenomenon, which should be experimentally investigated. Therefore, the current study focuses on the suppression of the self vibration of stage by using the BPJFB scheme. The experimental results show that besides operating as a Master-Slave synchronizing system, the PBJFB scheme is able to increase the damping ratio and stiffness of stage against its self vibration. This newly recognized phenomenon contributes to further increase the proportional gain of the outer feedback loop controller. As a result, the positioning speed and stability can be improved.