Sharif Digital Repository

An analytical expression for the fugacity coefficient of supercritical fluids has been derived from the equation of state. Here, the equation of state known as the linear isotherm regularity, LIR, is used to obtain this expression. We have inverted the LIR equation of state to obtain an appropriate expression for fugacity calculation. The inverted LIR (ILIR) works well at high pressures; but at high temperatures, Tr = T/Tc ≥2, ILIR is valid for the entire pressure range. ILIR is valid over a wide temperature range. Unlike LIR, ILIR is also valid at temperatures above twice the Boyle temperature. Like LIR, the inverted equation is a general equation of state which is valid for all types of... 

In the present work, the thermodynamic of dense fluids, both compressed liquids and dense supercritical fluids, has been modeled, solely, based on the contribution of attraction of effective pair potential. The intermolecular interaction is modeled by the hard-core Yukawa potential (HCY) as an effective pair potential (EPP) with temperature dependent hard-core diameter. Using this EPP in the exact thermodynamic relations, an equation of state (EoS) for the compressibility factor of dense fluid has been derived. This EoS shows that (Z - ZCS) as function of ρ1/3 must be linear for each isotherm of fluid where ZCS is the compressibility factor of the reference fluid (Carnahan-Starling (CS) EoS)... 

The feasibility of a mesophilic anaerobic treatment of an alcohol distillery wastewater (beet molasses stillage) was studied in a 1300 I Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor for a period of 180 days. The system was seeded with 600 L of mesophilic anaerobic sludge harvested from the bottom of a dairy anaerobic lagoon. Nutrients were added to acidified effluent and after adjusting the pH in an equalization tank, the system was fed with a diluted effluent containing COD in the range of 1000-11000 mg/L at 30°C. Initially, the system had an OLR of 1 kg COD m-3 d-1 and upflow velocity was maintained at 0.6 m/h (HRT= 6 h) throughout the study. A gradual increase in OLR, through increased... 

Poly(vinyl alcohol)-polyethylene glycol, PVA-PEG, blended membrane were prepared using supercritical fluid assisted phase-inversion method, in which scCO2 was used as the anti-solvent. Poly(vinyl alcohol) was utilized as the main polymer, polyethylene glycol as the additive, and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as the solvent of these polymers. Taguchi method was used to investigate the effect of some operating parameters on the morphology of the membranes. The L16 orthogonal array was selected under the following conditions: pressure (100, 135, 165 and 200 bar), temperature (40, 45, 50 and 55°C) and PEG weight percent (0, 0.33, 0.66, and 1%). Total polymer concentration of solutions in all... 

In this research, mathematical modelling of an anaerobic hybrid bioreactor for effluent treatment of a Poly-Ethylene Terephthalate (PET) unit in a petrochemical complex was performed. The developed model included a combination of a biofilm model for describing the substrate kinetics; a fluidized bed model for determination of species profiles along the reactor length and a bioreactor model for particle distribution inside the reactor. The reactions performed in the bioreactor included; i) the polymers hydrolysis; ii) fermentation of the resulting monomers; iii) the volatile fatty acids fermentation to Acetate and Hydrogen and iv) the Methane formation as the final product. The reactor was... 

A molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is employed to study the phase transition process in argon induced by shock wave transmission. Deriving the relation between the shock and piston velocities, the theoretical equation of state for argon is presented. Also, argon equation of state is obtained by measuring the quantities directly from simulations to be able to detect the phase transitions. The phase transition is also detected by using argon phase diagram and free energy calculations. A comparison shows good agreement between the theoretical and MD results for the phase transitions. Based on these simulations, it is concluded that under a shock wave transmission with suitable energy, the... 

One of the key factors in drug's efficacy is the value of their bioavailability that increases by the reduction of particle size through improvement of dissolution rate. In this study, raloxifene particle size was reduced by Rapid Expansion of Supercritical Solution (RESS). The effect of extraction temperature (40-80 °C), extraction pressure (10-18 MPa) and spray distance (5-10 cm) were investigated on size and particle size distribution of the nanoparticles. Particles were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Analysis (FTIR), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS). The average size of... 

Penicillin G is an active pharmaceutical ingredient of great importance in health sectors. Meanwhile, because of its huge quantity production and resistance to biodegradability, this antibiotic is ubiquitously presented in aquatic environment. In this study, the degradation of effluent wastewater from Penicillin G production plant by Photo- Fenton process and Ultrasound process (Sonolysis) was investigated, the effects of different process variables in both methods were evaluated and at last the degradation of Pen-G by these two processes in the optimum conditions was compared. Pen-G concentration and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) were selected as the environmental parameters to follow the... 

Recently, microalgae has received a high attention for application in bioelectrochemical systems due to its potential to be used for oxygen generation and biodiesel production. In this study performance of algal biocathode in a microbial desalination cell (MDC) was evaluated against air cathode and biocathode microbial fuel cell (MFC). Effluent of a dairy wastewater treatment plant with COD of 1000 mg l-1 was utilized as substrate in the anode and the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris was inoculated in the cathode using a synthetic culture media. Experiments were conducted using two different saline water concentrations including 15 g l-1 (MDC-1) and 35 g l-1 (MDC-2) in a desalination cell and... 

Abstract: Photocatalysis using semiconductors has emerged as a promising wastewater treatment process to overcome the major challenges faced by conventional technologies. The advantages of ZnO nanomaterials over other semiconductors, and their structure-dependent properties, make them important building blocks in nanotechnology as multifunctional materials. Moreover, it has been confirmed that ZnO nanomaterials can exhibit high performance in photodegradation of organic dyes for treatment of industrial effluent. The wurtzite structure of ZnO contains polar and nonpolar planes; the low surface energy and thermodynamic stability of the nonpolar planes enable formation of one-dimensional (1D)... 

Colloidal quantum dot solar cells have recently attracted significant attention due to their low-processing cost and surging photovoltaic performance. In this paper, a novel, reproducible, and simple solution-based process based on supercritical fluid toluene is presented for in situ growth and deposition PbS nanocrystals with oleic-acid passivation. A lead precursor containing sulfur was mixed with oleic acid in toluene and processed in a supercritical fluid condition at different temperatures of 140, 270 and 330 °C for 20 min. The quantum dots were deposited on a fluorine-doped tin oxide glass substrate inside the supercritical reactor. Transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction,... 

In this study, a three-factor, three-level Box-Behnken design with response surface methodology were used to maximize the TOC removal and minimize the H2O2 residual in the effluent of the combined UV-C/H2O2-VUV system for the treatment of an actual slaughterhouse wastewater (SWW) collected from one of the meat processing plants in Ontario, Canada. The irradiation time and the initial concentrations of total organic carbon (TOCo) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2o) were the three predictors, as independent variables, studied in the design of experiments. The multiple response approach was used to obtain desirability response surfaces at the optimum factor settings. Subsequently, the optimum... 

Crude oil desalter effluent from a Tehran oil refinery was treated by a hybrid UF/RO membrane separation process. Ultrafiltration (UF) was used primarily to remove the emulsified oil droplets followed by the removal of total dissolved solids (TDS) via reverse osmosis (RO). The UF membrane was a hydrophilic flat sheet polysulfone ultrafiltration membrane with MWCO of 100 kDa while the RO membrane was a spiral-wound thin-film composite polyamide. Effect of operating conditions such as transmembrane pressure and crossflow velocity were studied in UF pretreatment. The experimental results showed that the UF membrane removed more than 75% of the oil and can be considered as an effective... 

This paper introduces a new hybrid electro membrane bioreactor (HEMBR) for reverse osmosis (RO) pretreatment and advanced treatment of effluent by simultaneously integrating electrical coagulation (EC) with a membrane bioreactor (MBR) and its performance was compared with conventional MBR. Experimental results and their statistical analysis showed removal efficiency for suspended solids (SS) of almost 100% for both reactors. HEMBR removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD) improved by 4% and membrane fouling was alleviated according to transmembrane pressure (TMP). The average silt density index (SDI) of HEMBR permeate samples was slightly better indicating less RO membrane fouling. Moreover,... 

Extraction of the essential oil from a medicinal plant called Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss was performed by green technology of supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) extraction. A Taguchi orthogonal array design with an OA16 (45) matrix was used to evaluate the effects of five extraction variables: pressure of 150-310bar, temperature of 40-60°C, average particle size of 250-1000μm, CO2 flow rate of 2-10ml/s and dynamic extraction time of 30-100min. The optimal conditions to obtain the maximum extraction yield were at 240bar, 60°C, 500μm, 10ml/s and 100min. The extraction yield under the above conditions was 2.72% (w/w) which is more than two times the maximum extraction yield that has been... 

By simultaneously applying pinch technology and the exergoeconomic method to a complex process system, beneficial and energy-efficient measures are identified. The "three-link-model" exergoeconomic methodology optimizes the design and operability of a system. In this work, contrary to traditional exergoeconomic methods, a reversed method is used. The approach proposed for the optimization of such a complex system is to iteratively optimize subsystems. Since the reversed exergoeconomic method is used, assumptions considered by Tsatsaronis (based on four assumptions for calculating the cost-optimal exergetic efficiency and relative cost difference) are not applicable and new assumptions are to...