No abstract

For the first time, response of personal exposimeters (PEMs) is studied under diffuse field exposure in indoor environments. To this aim, both numerical simulations, using finite-difference timedomain method, and calibration measurements were performed in the range of 880-5875 MHz covering 10 frequency bands in Belgium. Two PEMs were mounted on the body of a human male subject and calibrated on-body in an anechoic chamber (non-diffuse) and a reverberation chamber (RC) (diffuse fields). This was motivated by the fact that electromagnetic waves in indoor environments have both specular and diffuse components. Both calibrations show that PEMs underestimate actual incident electromagnetic fields. This can be compensated by using an on-body response. Moreover, it is shown that these responses are different in anechoic chamber and RC. Therefore, it is advised to use an on-body calibration in an RC in future indoor PEM measurements where diffuse fields are present. Using the response averaged over two PEMs reduced measurement uncertainty compared to single PEMs. Following the calibration, measurements in a realistic indoor environment were done for wireless fidelity (WiFi-5G) band. Measured power density values are maximally 8.9 mW/m 2 and 165.8 mW/m 2 on average. These satisfy reference levels issued by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection in 1998. Power density values obtained by applying on-body calibration in RC are higher than values obtained from no body calibration (only PEMs) and on-body calibration in anechoic room, by factors of 7.55 and 2.21, respectively. Bioelectromagnetics. 2016;9999:XX-XX.

The degradation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) was investigated in the aqueous solution of coated ZnO onto magnetite nanoparticale based on an advanced photocatalytic oxidation process. The photocatalysts were synthesized by coating of ZnO onto magnetite using precipitation method. The sample was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and vibration sample magnetometer (VSM). Besides, specific surface area was also determined by BET method. The four effective factors including pH of the reaction mixture, Fe3O4/ZnO magnetic nanoparticles concentration, initial MTBE concentration and molar ratio of [H2O2]/ [MTBE] were optimized using response surface modeling (RSM). Using the four-factor-three-level Box–Behnken design, 29 runs were designed considering the effective ranges of the influential factors. The optimized values for the operational parameters under the respective constraints were obtained at PH of 7.2, Fe3O4/ZnO concentration of 1.78 g/L, initial MTBE concentration of 89.14 mg/L and [H2O2]/ [MTBE] molar ratio of 2.33. Moreover, kinetics of MTBE degradation was determined under optimum condition. The study about core/shell magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) recycling were also carried out and after about four times, the percentage of the photocatalytic degradation was about 70%.

A multi-band Body-Worn Distributed exposure Meter (BWDM) calibrated for simultaneous measurement of the incident power density in 11 telecommunication frequency bands, is proposed. The BDWM consists of 22 textile antennas integrated in a garment and is calibrated on six human subjects in an anechoic chamber to assess its measurement uncertainty in terms of 68% confidence interval of the on-body antenna aperture. It is shown that by using multiple antennas in each frequency band, the uncertainty of the BWDM is 22 dB improved with respect to single nodes on the front and back of the torso and variations are decreased to maximum 8.8 dB. Moreover, deploying single antennas for different body morphologies results in a variation up to 9.3 dB, which is reduced to 3.6 dB using multiple antennas for six subjects with various body mass index values. The designed BWDM, has an improved uncertainty of up to 9.6 dB in comparison to commercially available personal exposure meters calibrated on body. As an application, an average incident power density in the range of 26.7–90.8 μW·m−2 is measured in Ghent, Belgium. The measurements show that commercial personal exposure meters underestimate the actual exposure by a factor of up to 20.6.