Pal Toth

Automated analysis of heterogeneous carbon nanostructures by high-resolution electron microscopy and on-line image processing.

High-resolution electron microscopy is an efficient tool for characterizing heterogeneous nanostructures; however, currently the analysis is a laborious and time-consuming manual process. In order to be able to accurately and robustly quantify heterostructures, one must obtain a statistically high number of micrographs showing images of the appropriate sub-structures. The second step of analysis is usually the application of digital image processing techniques in order to extract meaningful structural descriptors from the acquired images. In this paper it will be shown that by applying on-line image processing and basic machine vision algorithms, it is possible to fully automate the image acquisition step; therefore, the number of acquired images in a given time can be increased drastically without the need for additional human labor. The proposed automation technique works by computing fields of structural descriptors in situ and thus outputs sets of the desired structural descriptors in real-time. The merits of the method are demonstrated by using combustion-generated black carbon samples.

Structure of carbon black continuously produced from biomass pyrolysis oil

Renewable-based carbon black was produced using pyrolysis oil derived from pine and spruce stem wood as feedstock in a continuous, high-temperature spray process. The particle size, micro- and nanostructure of the carbon black particles were investigated using High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy. The effect of process parameters on the structural properties of the product was studied. Conditions that yielded products structurally similar to commercial carbon black were identified. The results indicate that biomass pyrolysis oil can be used as a feedstock to produce renewable-based carbon black in a continuous process that is flexible and scalable. The structural properties of the products depended on process temperature and were consistent with those of commercial carbon black.

Investigation of natural gas theft by magnetic remanence mapping

Natural gas theft causes major losses in the energy industry in Hungary. Among the non-technical losses occurring in natural gas networks, fraudulent residential consumption is one of the main factors. Up to 2014, gas meters that are most widely used in residential monitoring are manufactured with ferromagnetic moving components, which makes it possible to alter or disrupt the operation of the meters non-intrusively by placing permanent magnets on the casing of the meters. Magnetic remanence mapping was used to investigate a sample of 80 recalled residential meters and detect potentially fraudulent activity. 10% of the meters were found suspect by magnetic remanence measurement, of which 50% were confirmed to be potentially hijacked by further mechanical investigation. The details of the technique are described in this paper, along with experimental results and the discussion of the analysis of the real-world samples.