Sharif Digital Repository

The effects of temperature, seed mass and agitation rate on agglomeration kinetics of aluminum hydroxide in Bayer process have been studied in a batch system. Collected raw data were analyzed and the kinetics data of agglomeration were derived through simulation of the process using a pre-developed software. The results showed that agglomeration kinetics constant (agglomeration kernel) increases with increase in temperature and agitation rate. Moreover a maximum value of agglomeration rate versus added seed mass was observed. Furthermore the magnitude of calculated activation energy of agglomeration was close to that of growth  

For the first time, in the current work, a dynamic stability analysis of a tilted curved pipe in a supersonic airflow under thermal loading is presented. The heat-transfer continuum problem is used for simulating the thermal environment conditions. The tilted pipe is reinforced by carbon nanotube agglomerations (CNTAs). For simulating the displacement fields of the current structure, Quasi-2D refined high order shear deformation theory is studied. The verification segment is divided into two parts. In the first and second sections, the credibility of the results of this study are confirmed by the results extracted using COMSOL multiphysics software and published articles in the literature,... 

Carbon corrosion is a major degradation mechanism in cathode catalyst layers (CCL) of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Carbon corrosion (coupled with ionomer dissolution/degradation) induces severe changes in the CCL structure. In the present study, the inter-relation between the particle size of a packed sphere medium and the pore size distribution (PSD) is established. This relation is then used to predict the agglomerate size of the mix of Pt/C and ionomer in the catalyst ink, using experimentally measured PSD of the CCL. During cell degradation, the size of these agglomerates decreases; since, carbon corrosion causes carbon particles to decrease in size. Furthermore, as... 

In this article, a new method for solving multidimensional population balance (PB) equations for agglomeration is presented. First, discretized 2-dimensional PB (DPB) is derived and by applying probability approach, this method is extended to n-dimensional PB. The discretization of size intervals is in the form of v(j) = 2j-i v(i) and the volume based PB is used. Because of conservative nature of volume, all internal coordinates are converted to some independent volumes. A simple and clear procedure for solving multidimensional PB is proposed using probability concept. In addition, various types of birth and death mechanisms involved in PB are analyzed separately. Moreover, results of... 

Powerful universal steganalyzers were proposed in the literature during the past few years. In addition some studies have been conducted on improvements of current steganalysis results using information fusion techniques, merging available feature vectors, etc. This paper presents two independent ideas, which can be used together, to obtain higher accuracy in detecting stego images. First, we propose the use of boosted fusion methods to aggregate outputs of multiple steganalyzers. Second, we investigate how passing high frequencies through filtering can enhance the results of steganalysis techniques. In this work, it is shown that, through different tests over the state-of-the-art... 

Due to the important role of surface-related properties of NPs in their biological behavior, simple and fast methods that could precisely demonstrate accurate information about NPs' surface, structure and morphology are highly desirable. In this study a set of surface morphological nano-descriptors (size, shape, surface area, agglomeration state, curvature, corner count and aspect ratio) have been defined and extracted from Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) images of nanoparticles (NPs) by Digital Image Processing methods. The extracted data represent a thorough description of the surface and morphologies of NPs lying beyond their TEM images and can supply the data required for a... 

In this study, the effect of agglomeration and non-uniform dispersion of silica particles on the mechanical and microstructural properties of cement paste incorporating silica fume and nanosilica (NS) with various specific surface areas (SSA) is experimentally investigated. The SSA and replacement percent of silica particles were considered as test variables and four series of mixes were made including one set of mixes for silica fume with a SSA of 20 m2/g and three sets of mixes for three different types of NS with SSA equal to 90, 200 and 380 m2/g. In each series of mix designs three different cement replacement percents of 1.5%, 3% and 5% were applied. The results indicate that as the SSA... 

Despite the numerous experimental studies concerning asphaltene, the extent of reversibility of asphaltene aggregation at reservoir conditions remains still an elusive and controversial issue in the available literature. In this work, a series of depressurization and repressurization experiments were performed on three different live oils for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the reversibility of asphaltene aggregation under typical pressure and temperature conditions of oil fields. The obtained results reveal that the kinetics and the extent of reversibility of asphaltene aggregation at elevated pressure and temperature are majorly controlled by the characteristics of the reservoir... 

There is a growing interest in developing high-performance sensors monitoring fungicides, due to their broadly usage and their adverse effects on humans and wildlife. In the present study, a colorimetric probe has been proposed for detection of prothioconazole based on aggregation of unmodified silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). Under optimized condition, linear relationships between the concentration of prothioconazole and the absorbance ratio of A500/A395 were found over the range of 0.01 μg·mL− 1 to 0.4 μg·mL− 1 with quantification limit as low as 1.7 ng·mL− 1. Furthermore, AgNPs color change from yellow to pink-orange in presence of prothioconazole, indicates highly sensitive naked-eye... 

The densification response of aluminum powder reinforced with 5 vol.% nanometric alumina particles (35 nm) during uniaxial compaction in a rigid die was studied. The composite powder was prepared by blending and mechanical milling procedures. To determine the effect of the reinforcement nanoparticles on the compressibility of aluminum powder, monolithic Al powder, i.e. without the addition of alumina, was also examined. It was shown that at the early stage of compaction when the rearrangement of particles is the dominant mechanism of the densification, disintegration of the nanoparticle clusters and agglomerates under the applied load contributes in the densification of the composite powder... 

The effect of high-energy ball milling on the textural evolution of alumina nanopowders (compaction response, sinter-ability, grain growth and the degree of agglomeration) during post sintering process is studied. The applied pressure required for the breakage of the agglomerates (P y) during milling was estimated and the key elements of compressibility (i.e. critical pressure (P cr) and compressibility (b)) were calculated. Based on the results, the fracture point of the agglomerates decreased from 150 to 75 MPa with prolonged milling time from 3 to 60 min. Furthermore, the powders were formed by different shaping methods such as cold isostatic press (CIP) and uniaxial press (UP) to better... 

In this study, we have investigated the bioleaching potential of a native strain of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans isolated from zinc and lead sulfide mines under varied ambient conditions of growth and substrate consumption. The effects of intermittent irrigation, type of agglomeration, feed formulation in terms of acid, enriched salt solution, initial number of microorganism, and their interactions on the bioleaching of low-grade zinc sulfide ores (containing 5.78% zinc) on growth and biooxidation efficiency of the bacteria have been evaluated. Bioleaching capacities of the isolate were optimized by the utilization the Taguchi method (e-qualitic-4) for design of experiments. As a result,... 

Dynamic analysis of a concrete pipes armed with Silica (SiO2) nanoparticles subjected to earthquake load is presented. The structure is modeled with first order shear deformation theory (FSDT) of cylindrical shells. Mori-Tanaka approach is applied for obtaining the equivalent material properties of the structure considering agglomeration effects. Based on energy method and Hamilton's principle, the motion equations are derived. Utilizing the harmonic differential quadrature method (HDQM) and Newmark method, the dynamic displacement of the structure is calculated for the Kobe earthquake. The effects of different parameters such as geometrical parameters of pipe, boundary conditions, SiO2... 

Particle size distribution (PSD) is an important factor that determines how asphaltene instability can damage porous media during natural depletion and enhanced oil recovery processes. In this work, aggregate size distribution under natural depletion and miscible nitrogen injection processes are determined via image analysis techniques and the results are modelled by population balance equation. Unimodal distribution curves in natural depletion show the dominance of particle-particle aggregation mechanism and the clustering is detected only around crude oil bubble point pressure. It is also observed that miscible nitrogen injection considerably increases the number and size of asphaltene... 

In this article, solving the population balance equation (PBE) and controlling the final particle size for crystallization problems have been addressed. For solving the general form of multidimensional PBE, a numerical method called conservation element and solution element (CE/SE) has been used. By applying this method to one- and two-dimensional crystallization problems, it has been shown that this technique can handle all types of source terms in the PBE. Model accuracy has been checked with experimental data reported in the literature and also with the analytical solution of PB-type equations. Control of final particle size was formulated in an optimization framework. To obtain a desired... 

The feasibility of fabricating relatively monodispersed polymeric nanoparticles by the electrospray method in a modified electrospray set-up is demonstrated in this study. The polymer solution is electrosprayed in the single cone-jet regime through a nozzle. After solvent evaporation, during which particles pave from the nozzle to collector, the fabricated nanoparticles can be collected in deionized water, which plays the role of surfactant for particles, not allowing them to aggregate. The results of scanning electron microscope and dynamic light scattering analysis clearly confirm the fabrication of monodispersed spherical polymeric nanoparticles with diameter range from 80 to 120nm with... 

Bioactivity of Escherichia coli bacteria (as a simple model for microorganisms) and interaction of them with the environment were controlled by their capturing within aggregated graphene nanosheets. The oxygen-containing functional groups of chemically exfoliated single-layer graphene oxide nanosheets were reduced by melatonin as a biocompatible antioxidant. While each one of the graphene (oxide) suspension and melatonin solution did not separately show any considerable inactivation effects on the bacteria, aggregation of the sheets in the melatonin-bacterial suspension resulted in trapping the bacteria within the aggregated sheets, i.e., a kind of inactivation. The bacteria trapped within... 

In this study, modification of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) ultrafiltration membranes with zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticle addition was taken into consideration. The ZnO at five different weights was added to the polymeric solution, and the membranes were fabricated by the phase inversion method using water as a nonsolvent and PEG 6 kDa as a pore former additive. The results showed that the pure water flux of the modified membranes increased up to 3 wt% ZnO addition, which was the optimized amount of the nanoparticle addition in this study. Also, at 3 wt% ZnO addition, flux recovery ratio reached from 69% to above 90%, indicated that the nanocomposite membranes were less susceptible to be fouled....