Sharif Digital Repository

In this project, modification of reverse osmosis membrane was investigated in order to reduce the biofouling in treatment of brackish water. Furthermore, the technique which is used to attain the favorable results is graft polymerization to modify the membrane’s surface with grafting acrylic acid as hydrophilic monomer onto polyamide exploited as last layer in reverse osmosis membrane. This technique is a free radical grafting, andfree radicals which are needed for grafting are provided by the redox system potassium persulfate-sodium metabisulfite which was used as initiator. To figure out the best concentration of acrylic acid, initiator and process time in order to achieve a new membrane... 

A kind of novel nanofiltration membrane process is proposed to solvent recovery from dewaxed lube oil stream in an energy-saving way. Most of the nanofiltration membrane materials are polymeric and cannot survive harsh conditions, for example, MEK contained solvents. Hence, high solubility of most of the polymeric materials in the solvent, especially in the MEK, is a challenge to researchers. To prepare a polymeric membrane that can solve the problem integrally skinned polyaniline (PAni) membrane was cast on a woven polyester backing material, and then crosslinked in two different ways, chemically and thermally, to make the membrane resistant in MEK (methyl ethyl ketene) and toluene for long... 

Permanent Downhole Gauge (PDG) has been employed since 1990s to acquire more information and better access to well and control production. PDG provides huge amount of pressure transient data during well test operation and production. However, such data are encountering with various noise and outliers. The noise and outliers can cause misleading and misinterpretation results. Therefore, denoising and outlier removal are two imperative steps before pressure transient analysis. The conventional denoising methods are mostly based on wavelet thresholding methods that preserve mean of data and have good performance when noise distribution is Gaussian distribution. However, noise distribution... 

Air pollution caused by industrialization is the problem which adversely affects human life. Among air pollutants suspended particles, especially particles smaller than 10 microns (PM10), for their high concentration in air in large cities are the major index as air pollutant. Due to their small size, PM10 can penetrate into the aspiration organs causing harmful effects. The objective of this work is to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model for prediction of short-term concentration of PM10 in the city of Tehran. Complex mechanism of reactions, numerous types of pollutant materials produced from transportation and industrial activities, variety of sources, difficulties in data... 

In this project dynamic effect of changes in gas turbine load on power plant, reforming and Co2 capture section is investigate. The reason for study of effects change of gas turbine load is that gas turbine determines the performance of the other parts in combined cycle including gas cycle and change of gas turbine load can alter the load and the performance of other parts in the power plant and in other process such as production of synthesis gas and carbon dioxide separation unit. One Autothermal reactor and eight sewgs reactor are utilized to produce gas turbine fuel which is mainly consist of Hydrogen. this part of thesis is to be implemented in the gPROMS from process system enterprise... 

Considering the drastical increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide, reduction of these gases seems necessary to combat global warming. Fossil fuel power plants are one of the main sources of CO2 emission. In this paper, CO2 capture from a natural gas fired steam cycle power plant using oxy-fuel combustion technology is studied. The Integrated Environmental Control Model (IECM) developed by Carnegie Mellon University was used to evaluate the effect of this capture technology on the plant efficiency and economic parameters of the system. Since the oxygen production plant, CO2 capture and transport are cost and energy intensive, the cost of electricity generated... 

The aim of this research is to model the separation and transport of multi-component gas mixture through a nanoporous membrane by using pore network models (PNM).
The first part of this project represents the membrane simulating by means of the PNM. A three-dimensional network is used to represent the membrane’s pore space and it consists of two parts; pore and throat. The pores are the main parts of the network and their diameter is characterized according to the pore size distribution of the membrane. Every throat connects two pores and the number of throats which is connected to each pore is named "coordination number". Using a variety size of pores and throats leads to production of... 

The purpose of this research is to model transport and separation of single and gas mixtures through pore network modeling in dense membranes. In the first part of the project, the mass transfer and governing mechanisms of transport are investigated. In the second part of the project, simulation of membrane pore network in 3D of Cartesian coordinate is done. In the third part of the project permeability of single gas and ideal selectivity of binary gases for an actual membrane by desired mechanism are calculated. Then the results of pore network modeling were compare with the results from molecular dynamic simulation for single gas in polyurethane membrane with reasonable agreement. In this... 

In the present work a comprehensive mathematical model has been developed for CFD simulation of transport phenomena in the hollow fiber membrane contactors. The system which has been studied was a gas sweetening including methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide in the gas phase and MEA aqueous solution as the solvent. Effects of temperature distribution on the contactor efficiency predicted taking into account the heat of solution, the heat of reaction, and the viscous dissipation. Major focus of the present study was on dynamic behavior of the contactor considering the entrance regions of momentum, energy, and mass transfers. CFD methods have been developed to solve the nonlinear... 

Olefin/ paraffin separation is one of the most important processes in the petrochemical industries.In the last decades, adsorption and membrane processes are a new technology considered significantly for this purpose. In order to synthesizeof zeolite powder (pure silica zeolite STT and CHA), raw materials were made by two methods and their HNMR spectrum was recorded and thenzeolite powder was synthesized. X ray diffraction(XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images were taken,showing the same results as the refference structure.To consider synthesized zeolite powdersand olefin/ paraffin interactions, surface adsorption ofthose gases was accomplished on two zeolite powders. After... 

In this study nano zeolite was hydrothermally synthesized in order to remove ethyl and methyl mercaptans from propane and butane stream. Fifteen experimental runs were conducted using D-Optimal method experimental design to synthesize NaY, NaX and NaA zeolites. The products were characterized by measuring the morphology, particle and crystal size, surface area, adsorption isotherm, pore size, and pore volume of the products by XRD, FE-SEM, TEM and BET analyses. The pore size for NaA type zeolites is about 4 Angstrom whereas the molecular size for ethyl mercaptan and methyl mercaptan is between 4 and 5 Angtrom, Therefore, NaA zeolite is inappropriate for removing ethyl and methyl mercaptans... 

The aim of this project is to achieve a semi permeable high flux membrane with a reasonable salt rejection for the treatment of low osmotic pressure water. A thin film composite membrane consists of three polymeric layers was studied in this project. These layers were polyester support, polysulfone sub layer and polyamine selective layer. The polyester support provides the mechanical resistance against the operating pressure. The polysulfone sub layer provides the suitable area for polyamide synthesize, and the polyamide layer is the selective active layer of membrane.
The resistance to water penetration in sub layer was reduced first and then, the pores in the polyamide layer refined by... 

Flexible thermoelectric (TE) fabrics were prepared by dip coating of a mixture solution of water base colloidal geraphen nano sheet(GNS) and carbon nano tube(CNT) and polyaniline (PANI) on polyester fabric. The phase composition and morphology of the TE fabrics were investigated by FTIR-ATR diffraction and feld emission scanning electron microscopy. The TE properties of the PANI/GNS or CNT coated fabrics with different GNS and CNT loadings were measured in the temperature range from 303 to 338 K. As the content of GNS increased from 0.5 to 10 wt% and CNT increased from 0.5 to 20 wt%, the electrical conductivity of the PANI/GNS or CNT coated polyester fabrics increased, while the Seebeck... 

A Novel synthesis method to assemble of nano crystalline SAPO-34 molecular sieves crystalline is successfully developed at a supercritical condition. The environmental and operating conditions are investigated through a Taguchi L-9 orthogonal array and optimum synthesis conditions in order to reach highest crystallinity and smallest crystalline. The products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), thermal method of analysis (e.g. TG-DTA), and infra red spectroscopy (FT-IR) techniques. In comparison to conventional hydrothermal methods, using a supercritical hydrothermal approach leads to the higher purity, reduced particle size, and change of... 

The gas separation properties of polycarbonate (PC) membranes were investigated in this study. These membranes were prepared via dry and dry-wet phase inversion technique. Pure O2, N2, and CO2 gases were permeated through prepared membranes. The effects of membrane preparation conditions, including solvent type, non-solvent type, non-solvent/solvent volumetric ratio, polymer weight fraction, and drying temperature on the gas separation properties of dry PC membranes were investigated using Taguchi experimental design. Taguchi analysis show that polymer weight fraction offers the most important effect on the separation characteristics of the dry PC membranes. To get the highest... 

Electrolyte separator is the major component of lithium-ion batteries which the battery safety directly depends on it. In this work, a membrane separator based on the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVdF) was prepared via non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) method with water and ethanol as non-solvent and a mixture of dimethylformamide (DMF) and acetone as solvents. The effect of various acetone/DMF ratios and type of non-solvent on the structural, mechanical and electrochemical properties of separator was studied. The separator was characterized by FE-SEM, tensile strength, electrochemical AC-impedance spectroscopy, thermal stability and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV). Additionally, the... 

Zeolite membranes are of interest due to their special properties; thermal and mechanical resistances and non-plasticization property in gas separations. Therefore, separation of H2S from natural gas by these membranes is the main goal of this thesis which is not investigated in the world. After some theoretical investigations including diffusion mechanisms of gases in the zeolites and adsorption mechanism of H2S on the zeolites, pure silica CHA-type (Si-CHA) zeolite was selected. After successful synthesis of Si-CHA zeolite, adsorption isotherms of H2S, CO2, and CH4 on the Si-CHA zeolite were measured over pressure range of 0-190 kPa and temperatures of 25 °C, 50 °C, and 75 °C. Acid gases... 

The major obstacle in using natural gas as a clean and abundant fuel in transportation industries is the low density of energy obtained from its combustion. Adsorbed Natural Gas (ANG) is a useful method to increase the energy density and store the natural gas. The lower cost and higher safety have made it different from the other storage technologies. In addition, ANG can be useful to solve the lack of gas in the peak of consumption. Among all adsorbents, Activated Carbon (AC) has shown the highest adsorption capacity of natural gas. In the present project, walnut shell has been used as the precursor in the chemical synthesise of AC. The main effective factors in chemical activation, such as... 

Due production and use of large amount of chemical and emissions of pollutants in air, detection and control of these compounds are necessary. One of the common methods to detect these pollutants in the ambient is using metal oxide semiconductor sensors. However, these types of sensors suffer from low selectivity toward a certain compound in the mixture of different gas components. In this study, the object was to investigate the effect of different amount of CNTs on performance of tin oxide to improve their selectivity for detection of 50 ppm of hydrogen sulfide at low temperature. To perform the study, nanoparticles of pure tin oxide and SnO2 base hybrids containing 0.25wt%, 0.5wt%, 2.5wt%... 

This study has concentrated on preparation of mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) in order to improve the separation performance of the neat poly(amide-12-b-ethylene oxide)(Pebax1074) membrane. Pebax1074 and zeolite SAPO-34 were used to fabricate MMM for the first time. Micro-size SAPO-34 was added to polymer matrix up to 35wt% based on polymer weight; even though at this high loading percentage the prepared membranes were not stable enough to be tested for characterization and gas permeation. The obtained results showed more than 30% increment in CO2 permeability, along with slight growth and reduction in N2 and CH4 permeabilities, respectively for 30wt% zeolite content membranes. Permeability...