Sharif Digital Repository

The best method for stabilizing sludge is anaerobic digestion, In addition to reducing the amount of volatile solids; it produces biogas, which can be considered as a sustainable energy source for wastewater treatment plants. However, the most important factor limiting the process of digestion is the sludge hydrolysis, the best way to increase the speed of hydrolysis is to pre-treatment the sludge before entering the digester; One of the most effective pretreatment methods is pre-treatment by ozone gas, This gas, which is highly unstable, quickly reacts with the wall of the bacterial cell and oxidizes it due to its high oxidizing properties And accelerates the process of sludge hydrolysis.... 

Potential of plasmonic waveguide structures to confine light in sub-wavelength scales attracted many attentions in recent years. Among these structures planar metal-insulator-metal waveguide and plasmonic slot waveguide are more promising. That is because of their easy fabrication process along with their various reported applications. However, there are some obstacles in the path of developing plasmonic integrated circuits, among whichhigh propagation loss can be named as the most important. To solve this issue, photonic waveguides can be used as the lossless interconnections between small footprint plasmonic components on optical chips. Therefore, application of plasmonic slot waveguide... 

In this study, through explaining a micromechanical model of progressive damage, failure in a composite conical structure under mechanical and thermal loads with 36 layers of carbon/phenolic material have been studied. To this end, first, mechanical behaviors of composite layers in micro and macro scale and their properties via fiber and matrix characterizations are discussed. In the following, selection of a proper RVE along with different types of boundary conditions on RVE are discussed. Then stress reinforcement coefficients in order to convert the mechanical and thermal stresses from macro to micro scale for carbon / phenolic material are extracted through defining appropriate RVE for... 

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) which are commonly understood as the combination of membrane filtration and biological treatment using activated sludge have several advantages, but membrane fouling reduces the membrane efficiency, permeability and lifetime. An alternative is replacing a moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) with the activated sludge system which may reduce the effect of membrane fouling. The sludge produced in MBBRs has poor settling characteristics, therefore, their efficiency is limited by the sedimentation tank performance and they require a larger settling surface. The combination of moving bed biofilm reactors and membrane bioreactors can compensate for the drawbacks of both of... 

In this text to find the answer of the question “ what is it to be physical” in a definition form or a scheme of the term physical, firstly we sought for a possible consensus among recent physicists and philosophers. But from their answers not only we did not find any clear consensus but also most of them confess that the term is ambiguous and unclear. In a general aspect, we can categorize the answers to two theoretical and realistic perspective. The theoretical perspective, beside circularity and Hempel’s triviality, seems not to present any criteria for being physical. In realistic perspective, it seems that there is no ontologic constraint for being physical, that is from “being... 

Rotor contact with a stationary element of a rotating machine and the subsequent rubbing at the contact area is a serious malfunction that may lead to the machine’s catastrophic failure. In the past decades, many studies have been done on the rubbing phenomena, its different regimes and its various consequences on the machine performance and safety. However, most of them have used a simple model to investigate the rubbing interaction between the rotor and the stator. This simple model consists of the Jeffcott rotor, as a model for the real rotors, and a rigid annular block surrounding the rotor, as a model for the real stators. The objective of this thesis is to build an algorithm to... 

Complex networks serve as generic models for many social, technological and biological systems that have been shown to share a number of common structural properties such as power-law degree distribution and small-worldness. These networks determine interactions and influence the spread of diseases, behaviours and ideas. Epidemics and failures like new behaviours ideas and innovations can spread throughout a network and prevent it from doing its functionalities. In this work, we investigate error and attack tolerance of epidemic spreading in complex networks. The main content of this thesis is arranged in three sections as follows: Firstly, the effect of random and systematic failures is... 

This thesis addresses the problem of dynamic security assessment in power sys-tems with an emphasis on its application in restructured power systems and issues arising in its applications. The new electric utility environment has an immedi-ate consequence of emphasis on reliability and secure operation of power systems. This requires faster and more precise methods to assess the dynamic aspect of se-curity. On the other hand, this issue is becoming challenging when the determined dispatch might not be accommodated due to violation of the limits.This thesis addresses the problem of dynamic security assessment in power sys-tems with an emphasis on its application in restructured power systems... 

Are the returns of the mineral companies in Tehran Stock Exchange affected by the changes in the commodity price at the Iran Mercantile Exchange? By implementing a Multi-Factor Model we will calculate the firms’ value elasticity to the commodity price changes. We try to explain the estimated elasticities on the basis of the firm’s fundamental variables using a discounted cash flow valuation model. An unbalanced panel data estimation is employed for this purpose. Afterwards, we will suggest a novel model on the ground of the assumption that the commodity prices and firm values follow the Geometric Brownian Motion. The result of the model is that the elasticity can be explained by commodity... 

The application of membranes for separate of particles in mainly microbial flacs , are fast growing in biological treatment systems. Membrane bioreactors are now considered as one of the major new processes in wastewater treatment. However , membranes are expensive and costly. This study is carried out to test an innovative , locally made filters for separation of flocs in an MBBR reactor. This innovative filter is replacing a traditional settling tank. This type of filters is made very cheaply and has important advantages in installing and operation. Experiments were carried out in a laboratory scale MBBR unit. A filter unit consisting of 3 innovative filter tubes were placed and the... 

Recommender systems are in the center of network science and are becoming increasingly important in individual business for providing efficient personalized services and products to users. The focus of previous research in the field of recommendation systems were on improving the accuracy of the system through designing more accurate recommendation lists. Recently, the community has been paying attention to diversity and novelty of recommendation list as key characteristics of modern recommender systems. In many cases, novelty and precision do not go in the same direction and the accuracy-novelty dilemma is one of the challenging problems in recommender systems, which needs efforts in... 

With the over-increasing growth of the information provided for the web users, from content providing systems and web stores to social networks, the exictence of recommender systems is strongly needed. Recommender systems personalize web for the users and help them with finding relevent information in the huge era of World Wide Web. Collaborative filtering methods are known as the most successful and vastly used recommendation systems. Although they generally outperform content-based algorithms, in cold-start situation and especially in the presence of the new items, they fail to predict ratings for the new items or make good recommendations. This problem is not negligible in the systems... 

Eutrophication and algae growth is one of the consequences of high concentration of nutrients in surface water bodies; therefore, both phosphorus and nitrogen existing in wastewater or at least one of them should be decreased to a standard amount before entering water to rivers. This can prevent eutrophication and detriment to the ecosystem of rivers. An investigation on both biological and chemical phosphorus and carbon removal in low loading rate influent ( below 100) has been carried out in this research. Investigated topics includes aerobic COD removal in IFAS reactor, comparison of biological nutrient removal to the combination of chemical and biological method, effect of the order of... 

Natural gas power plant installed in power system as rapid start unit. In the recent decades, with increasing in the number of gas generating units in the world, consideration of natural gas transmission network in optimal solution of security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) become a non-negligible problem. The gas transmission grid constraints integrated into the scheduling of thermal units in the proposed model for minimizes power system operating cost. In a power plant transmission of natural gas to power plant is very important because congestion in natural gas pipeline increases. This model could consider natural gas storage tank in gas transmission network as decision variable....