Sharif Digital Repository

Many highly populated cities are still struggling to reach clean air targets, while the zero greenhouse gas emission objectives may accelerate the path toward healthy air for all. Still, there is a fine line between intensive electrification's impact on greenhouse gas emissions and criteria air contaminants depending on the source of the electricity. In this study, the previous version of the emission inventory for Tehran was evaluated and re-calculated in a detailed bottom-up approach to provide the most updated data on the contribution of stationary sources derived by power plants vs. mobile sources. The objectives were to update the emission inventory for improved policymaking, study the... 

Droplet-based microfluidic systems have been employed to manipulate discrete fluid volumes with immiscible phases. Creating the fluid droplets at microscale has led to a paradigm shift in mixing, sorting, encapsulation, sensing, and designing high throughput devices for biomedical applications. Droplet microfluidics has opened many opportunities in microparticle synthesis, molecular detection, diagnostics, drug delivery, and cell biology. In the present review, we first introduce standard methods for droplet generation (i.e. passive and active methods) and discuss the latest examples of emulsification and particle synthesis approaches enabled by microfluidic platforms. Then, the applications... 

The authors would like to inform you that some authors (Gülcin Abbaszade, Jürgen Schnelle-Kreis, Jean-Luc Jaffrezo, André Prévôt, Mohammad Astaneh) were missed from the authorship which has been corrected above. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd  

Fine particulate matter cause profound adverse health effects in Iran. Road traffic is one of the main sources of particulate matter (PM) in urban areas, and has a large contribution in PM2.5 and organic carbon concentration, in Tehran, Iran. The composition of fine PM vehicle emission is poorly known, so this paper aims to determine the mixed fleet source profile by using the analysed data from the two internal stations and the emission factor for PM light-duty vehicles emission. Tunnels are ideal media for extraction vehicle source profile and emission factor, due to vehicles are the only source of pollutant in the urban tunnels. In this study, PM samples were collected simultaneously in... 

A single‐cylinder marine diesel engine was modified to be operated in reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) combustion mode. The engine fueling system was upgraded to a common rail fuel injection system. Natural gas (NG) was used as port fuel injection, and a die-sel/sunflower methyl ester biodiesel mixture was used for direct fuel injection. The fraction of bio-diesel in the direct fuel injection was changed from 0% (B0; 0% biodiesel and 100% diesel) to 5% (B5) and 20% (B20) while keeping the total energy input into the engine constant. The objective was to understand the impacts of the increased biodiesel fraction on the combustion characteristics and stability, emissions, and... 

This study investigates the secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation potential of carburetor motorcycles exhaust. This type of two-wheeler is a popular means of transport in many Asian cities. A volatility-based numerical model was employed to predict SOA formation from a fleet of motorcycles in Tehran, capital of Iran. The fleet was a combination of four-stroke, gasoline-powered motorcycles with different engine displacement volumes. Total hydrocarbon (THC) emission factors of all motorcycles were previously measured in a chassis dynamometer laboratory according to cold start Euro-3 emissions certification test procedures. Due to incomplete combustion and lack of control on exhaust... 

Predicting the way diseases spread in different societies has been thus far documented as one of the most important tools for control strategies and policy-making during a pandemic. This study is to propose a network autoregressive (NAR) model to forecast the number of total currently infected cases with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Iran until the end of December 2021 in view of the disease interactions within the neighboring countries in the region. For this purpose, the COVID-19 data were initially collected for seven regional nations, including Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Thenceforth, a network was established over these countries, and the... 

Over 200 million motorcycles in use worldwide account for a substantial portion of global mobile source total hydrocarbons (THC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions. In Tehran, capital of Iran, ultrarich inefficient combustion in gasoline-fueled motorcycles results in significantly high CO and THC emissions. Motorcycle catalysts can reduce CO and C3H6(as a representative hydrocarbon) emission factors by 60-80%. In the present work, CO and propylene oxidation over a commercial Pt-Pd-based wiremesh catalyst is studied in a flow reactor setup under simulated conditions relevant to 125 cc four-stroke gasoline carburetor motorcycles. Steady-state individual and co-oxidation tests for CO and... 

A probabilistic method is proposed in this study to predict the spreading profile of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United State (US) via time-variant reliability analysis. To this end, an extended susceptible-exposed-infected-vaccinated-recovered (SEIVR) epidemic model is first established deterministically, considering the quarantine and vaccination effects, and then applied to the available COVID-19 data from US. Afterwards, the prediction results are described as a time-series of the number of people infected, recovered, and dead. Upon introducing the extended SEIVR model into a limit-state function and defining the model parameters including transmission, recovery, and... 

Electrification of energy systems, including an increased percentage of electric vehicles on the road, is one of the primary paths to achieve zero carbon emissions. However, a reduced share of fossil fuel in transportation and industry requires a significant shift in power generation energy sources. Power generation from renewable sources is still limited and will be for the foreseeable future. Developing countries and oil-producing nations in the middle east may shift to electric vehicles, but electricity energy sources will not be easily moved to renewables., A detailed and comprehensive emission inventory was developed in a bottom-up method for a typical populated city in Iran,... 

Urban transportation is one of the leading causes of air pollution in big cities. In-use emissions of vehicles are higher than the emission control certification levels. The current study uses a roadside remote sensing emission monitoring campaign to investigate (a) fraction of high emitters in the light-duty vehicle (LDV) fleet and their contributions to the total emissions, (b) emission inspection (I/M) programs' effectiveness, and (c) alternate fuel (natural gas) encouragement policy. LDVs consist of passenger or freight transport vehicles with four wheels equivalent to classes M1 and N1 of European union vehicle classifications. The motivation is to assess the current emission inspection... 

Oral administration is a pillar of the pharmaceutical industry and yet it remains challenging to administer hydrophilic therapeutics by the oral route. Smart and controlled oral drug delivery could bypass the physiological barriers that limit the oral delivery of these therapeutics. Micro- and nanoscale technologies, with an unprecedented ability to create, control, and measure micro- or nanoenvironments, have found tremendous applications in biology and medicine. In particular, significant advances have been made in using these technologies for oral drug delivery. In this review, we briefly describe biological barriers to oral drug delivery and micro and nanoscale fabrication technologies.... 

Cell survival during the early stages of transplantation and before new blood vessels formation is a major challenge in translational applications of 3D bioprinted tissues. Supplementing oxygen (O2) to transplanted cells via an O2 generating source such as calcium peroxide (CPO) is an attractive approach to ensure cell viability. Calcium peroxide also produces calcium hydroxide that reduces the viscosity of bioinks, which is a limiting factor for bioprinting. Therefore, adapting this solution into 3D bioprinting is of significant importance. In this study, a gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) bioink that is optimized in terms of pH and viscosity is developed. The improved rheological properties... 

With over 8 million inhabitants and 4 million motor vehicles on the streets, Tehran is one of the most crowded and polluted cities in the Middle East. Frequent exceedances of national daily PM2.5 limit have been reported in this city during the last decade, yet, the chemical composition and sources of fine particles are poorly determined. In the present study, 24-hour PM2.5 samples were collected at two urban sites during two separate campaigns, a one-year period from 2014 to 2015 and another three-month period at the beginning of 2017. Concentrations of organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC), inorganic ions, trace metals and specific organic molecular markers were measured by chemical... 

Low temperature combustion potentially can improve engine efficiency coupled with the benefits of low nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emissions, and vice versa high unburned hydrocarbon and carbon oxide emissions through in-cylinder fuel reactions. In this survey, the experiments were carried out using a modified one-cylinder reactivity controlled compression ignition engine, dual-fueled diesel/compressed natural gas and biodiesel/CNG, to investigate the effects of direct injection strategies on the engine combustion efficiency and emission characteristics. Different ratios of biodiesel blends at different premixed ratios were applied to the dual-fuel engine. The results showed that... 

This study uses a 5-lobe symmetric model to investigate total, lobar and generational particle deposition fractions in the lungs during successive cycles. It was found that for the particle size between 0.05 and 2 μm and the tidal volumes greater than 1000 ml, the effect of successive cycles helped predict more deposition fraction per cycle up to about 16% than that of a single cycle. The mentioned range of tidal volumes corresponds to light or heavy physical activities. Therefore, it can be understood that people, when physically active, exposed to particulate matter within the mentioned size range are at higher health risk as compared to both the resting state and the same state... 

Tehran, the capital of Iran, is one of the most polluted cities in the Middle East. However, there is no clear evidence of the effects of Tehran green spaces on reducing air pollution because there are still challenges to application of vegetation for improving air quality. The current study investigates the effects of a large volume of green space with 275 ha area in the vicinity of major highways on nearby air quality. Similar environments are often seen in many cities around the world. A computational fluid dynamics model containing aerodynamics and deposition effects of vegetation was used to simulate pollutant dispersion for eight wind directions and three different foliage densities.... 

Coupled weather forecasting and chemical transport models are useful tools to evaluate air pollution episodes in big cities for the purpose of forecasting and air pollution abatement measures' evaluation. However, large set of accurate data of various sources and modeling calibrations are needed for such complex modeling system to be reliable. The problem becomes more obvious when the model is operated over a domain in which there is a general lack of accurate input data such as emission inventory data. The current study investigates the possibility of model tuning for more accurate prediction of air pollutant concentrations in the city of Tehran in an air pollution episode as a case study.... 

An assessment of trends in main air pollutant concentrations (including CO, SO2, NO2, O3, PM2.5, and Asbestos) is conducted for the years 2005–2016 for the city of Tehran, Iran. The focus has been on the contribution of anthropogenic emissions to the observed trend, particularly the role of related mitigation plans implemented in the period of interest. A significant decreasing trend (about 50%) was observed in CO and SO2 concentrations during the considered time interval, which was explained by improvement plans in fuel quality and vehicle emission standards. While a substantial elevation (more than 50%) in NO2 levels was detected over the study period, variant trends were observed during... 

Each year, considerable levels of dust particles coming from arid regions of the earth contribute to the atmosphere. Because dust has serious environmental and human health effects, predictions of dust concentrations and their contribution to PM surface concentrations are essential for atmospheric research and the implementation of air quality programs and rules. This study aims to assess dust contributions to PM2.5 in Tehran in order to provide guidance for air quality management systems as well as validate the updated Dust Regional Atmospheric Model version 2 (BSC-DREAM8b) and the NMMB/BSC-Dust model using chemical speciation of ground-based measurements of PM2.5. Accurate and reliable...