Sharif Digital Repository

Application of the colloidal gas aphrons (CGAs) in minimizing formation damage by plugging pore mechanism is now wildly accepted due to numerous successful field experience. One of the pivotal factors which affects the pore blockage ability of micro-bubbles is their stability. This experimental study tries to investigate the possible synergistic effect of nanoparticles on improving the stability and other properties of non-aqueous CGA drilling fluids, in both bulk and porous media. In particular, two types of hydrophobic nanoparticles including silicon dioxide nanopowder coated with 2 wt% Silane and nanoclay, in presence of a treated version of bentonite (Bentone 34) as a stabilizer and... 

Microbial desalination cell (MDC) is a new bio-electrochemical technique which converts chemical energy into electrical energy, and at the same time desalinates water and treats wastewater. In this study, MDC performance and water biofouling conditions were tested as an efficient pretreatment desalination process of reverse osmosis (RO). The experiments were designed in a three-chamber reactor to compare the performance of batch and continuous fed modes, using bio-cathode and synthetic wastewater in four different hydraulic retention times and 17 and 35 g/L NaCl concentrations. According to the results, maximum salt removal of about 52.3% was obtained in the continuously fed MDC at 35 g/L... 

High molecular mass of naphthalene make it non-biodegradable and the biological methods for treated the pollutant are much time consuming. In this paper, two methods of ozonation and aeration are used to remove naphthalene. Because of the industrial wastewater has a great range of pH, in this study different concentrations of soluble naphthalene are placed in variable pH conditions, different contact times and changes in amount of aeration and ozonation. ANOVA results indicated a significant difference between two methods. The average removal of naphthalene by use of ozonation is 55 % and 37 % for aeration. As results, the best conditions that naphthalene are removed is in acidic environment... 

This paper presents a formulation for in-plane modal characteristics of non-uniform thickness annular elliptic and circular plates for all classical boundary conditions. The investigations are performed for elastic and isotropic annular elliptic plates on the basis of two- dimensional linear plane stress theory of elasticity. Two-dimensional boundary characteristic orthogonal polynomials (BCOP) are used in the Rayleigh-Ritz method to obtain the natural frequencies and associated mode shapes. The proposed method, not only can find solution for those simple cases of annular circular plates available in literature as a simplified case study, but also it finds some natural frequencies which can... 

Optimized methods for simultaneous removal of nitrate, nitrite and ammonium are important features of nutrient removal. Nitrogen removal efficiency in an intermittently aerated sequencing batch reactor (IA-SBR) with multiple filling events was studied. No external carbon source was added and three filling events were considered. Oxidationreduction potential (ORP) and pH curve at solids retention time (SRT) of 20 d were analyzed. Effects of three organic loading rates (OLR), 0.67, 1.0 and 1.5 kgCOD/m3d, and three nitrogen loading rates (NLR), 0.054, 0.1 and 0.15 kgN/m3d, on nitrogen removal were studied. Nitrate Apex in pH curve and Nitrate Knee in ORP profile indicated that the end of... 

This study evaluates the effectiveness of adsorption process by Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) compared with a novel formulation of coagulation - flocculation process for dye removal from textile wastewater. In this regard, acidic, reactive, disperse and direct red dye are used to prepare the synthetic dye. Dominant wave length for each dye is determined by spectrophotometeric method. Using GAC as adsorbent, equilibrium time and adsorption isotherm of each dye are determined with aid of spectrophotometric method. The results show that GAC can not remove dispersed red dye. Acidic red, direct red and reactive red of 5 mg/L concentration are removed by GAC up to %90, %88 and %43 in 30, 60 and... 

There is a need to find cheaper and simpler techniques for rural water filtration system in developing countries. Using a filter made of blocks for the water treatment enables one to make vertical filters. It is expected that the amount of land utilized would decrease by more than 70 % if vertical filters were used. The operation and washing would be simpler than using horizontal sand filters as filters made of blocks would be used instead. The feasibility study focused on finding adequate materials, compositions and methods of making a block with enough resistance to water pressure, sufficient porosity for water transformation, and using inexpensive, readily available materials. A pilot... 

In this paper, distributions of stress and strain components of rotating disks with non-uniform thickness and material properties subjected to thermo-elasto-plastic loading are obtained by semi-exact method of Liao's homotopy analysis method (HAM) and finite element method (FEM). The materials are assumed to be elastic-linear strain hardening and isotropic. The analysis of rotating disk is based on Von Mises' yield criterion. A two dimensional plane stress analysis is used. The distribution of temperature is assumed to have power forms with the hotter point located at the outer surface of the disk. A mathematical technique of transformation has been proposed to solve the homotopy equations... 

Methyl Tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE) is an oxygenated organic compound extensively substituted for lead in gasoline worldwide. MTBE can affect human and environment. In this research, biodegradation capability of MTBE by identified indigenous Bacillus cereus strain RJ1 was studied. Obtained results showed that biological removal of MTBE with 200 mg/L samples in 28°C is 27.5% while in 37°C within 120 days reaches to 34%. In addition, biodegradation of Bacillus cereus RJ1 in 500 mg/L and 1,000 mg/L is 28% and 23.9% in 28°C, respectively. Therefore, this bacterium could clean up MTBE from the environment  

Nerve repositioning surgery is one of the treatments chosen for the patients with edentulous posterior atrophic mandible. Like any other treatments, this therapy has its advantages and disadvantages, indications and contraindications. The most important complication of this procedure is neurosensory disturbance. This problem may occur at different stages of the treatment. One common time when nerve damage happens is when the nerve is located outside the canal and drilling and insertion of the implant are performed. Accordingly, this report describes a simple and feasible method to retract and protect nerves outside the canal during the treatment of nerve transposition. This will reduce the... 

Nerve repositioning surgery is one of the treatments chosen for the patients with edentulous posterior atrophic mandible. Like any other treatments, this therapy has its advantages and disadvantages, indications and contraindications. The most important complication of this procedure is neurosensory disturbance. This problem may occur at different stages of the treatment. One common time when nerve damage happens is when the nerve is located outside the canal and drilling and insertion of the implant are performed. Accordingly, this report describes a simple and feasible method to retract and protect nerves outside the canal during the treatment of nerve transposition. This will reduce the... 

In this paper, distributions of stress and strain components of rotating disks with non-uniform thickness and material properties subjected to thermo-elastic loading under different boundary conditions are obtained by semi-exact methods of Liao's homotopy analysis method (HAM), Adomian's decomposition method and He's variational iteration method (VIM). The materials are assumed to be perfectly elastic and isotropic. A two dimensional plane stress analysis is used. The distribution of temperature over the disk radius is assumed to have power forms with the higher temperature at the outer surface. The results of the three methods are compared with those obtained by Runge-Kutta's numerical... 

Interactions between P-selectin, expressed on activated endothelium, and its counterpart P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL-1), expressed on leukocytes, play a pivotal role in adhesive events that recruit circulating leukocytes toward inflamed or injured tissues. Atomistic understanding of the association and dissociation of these bonds under blood flow is necessary to define the underlying mechanism. In this study, steered molecular dynamics (SMD) simulations were applied to investigate the conformational changes of P-LE/SGP-3 construct (an effective binding unit of the P-selectin/PSGL-1 complex) under stretching with constant velocity. In the present simulations, a self-built force... 

Passenger cars (PCs) not only are a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Iran but also pose severe energy security challenges due to their dependence on gasoline. This study aimed to understand the future trends of the gasoline demand and GHG emissions from PCs in Iran and assess the effectiveness of mitigation policies. The data were collected from multiple sources and used to develop the survival rate function of PCs. The study used back-calculation to compensate for the short period of stock data availability. The use intensity of PCs was estimated based on the gasoline consumption statistics. Econometric models were developed to project the future PC stock and use... 

Passenger cars (PCs) are a major contributor to urban air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy security challenges in megacities in developing countries because of their high growth potential. Since the PC fleet changes through time, the projection of air pollutant emissions from PCs is essential for effective emission reduction policymaking. However, the extensive amount of data and proper models are required for this purpose that are not available in many developing countries. Hence, this study develops multiple econometric and emission models and integrate them into a framework to simulate the future stock and activity of PCs and projects PCs’ air pollutants and CO2 emissions... 

Proper operation of an engine requires accurate measurement or estimation of the engine's air charge provided to the control unit which reduces both the engine's fuel consumption and the emissions. The volumetric efficiency of the engine is a key variable in computations using the engine control unit to estimate the air charge using the speed-density equation. This paper presents a new approach for real-time estimation of the volumetric efficiency using the sliding-mode methodology. An adaptive sliding-mode observer is proposed which relies on measurements from the engine's conventional sensors. The observer is shown to estimate asymptotically the volumetric efficiency of the engine for... 

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation lensing is a promising tool to study the physics of early universe. In this work we probe the imprints of deviations from isotropy and scale invariance of primordial curvature perturbation power spectrum on CMB lensing potential and convergence. Specifically, we consider a scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry in primordial power spectrum. We show that the CMB lensing potential and convergence and also the cross-correlation of the CMB lensing and late time galaxy convergence can probe the amplitude and the scale dependence of the dipole modulation. As another example, we consider a primordial power spectrum with local feature. We show that... 

Droplet microfluidics is a platform of microfluidics in which two immiscible fluids are used to generate droplets for various biomedical applications. This platform introduces several advantages in applications such as cell lysis, cell culture, co-culture, and cell encapsulation. The most important issues regarding droplet generation devices are the fabrication complexity and maintenance of these devices. In this study, a simple and easy-to-fabricate microdroplet generator is designed and fabricated to resolve these issues. Furthermore, since this device is easy to fabricate and use, it can play a key role in the fabrication of medical devices for controlling infectious diseases in poor and... 

Theoretical and numerical analyses of rotating disks with non-uniform thickness and material properties subjected to thermo-mechanical loadings have been carried out by variable material properties (VMP), Runge-Kutta's (RK) and finite element (FE) methods. The material is assumed to be elastic-linear hardening. A power form function is used to describe the temperature gradient with the higher temperature at outer surface. Von-Mises theory has been used as failure criterion. The effects of geometry, material and thermal loading parameters as well as boundary conditions on radial, hoop and equivalent stress distributions which have not been studied in much detail in previous works have been... 

Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3D CRT) are two treatment modalities in prostate cancer, which provide acceptable dose distribution in tumor region with sparing the surrounding normal tissues. IMRT is based on inverse planning optimization; in which, intensity of beams is modified by using multileaf collimators and also compensators with optimum shapes in step and shoot (SAS) and compensator-based method, respectively. In the recent study, some important parameters were compared in two IMRT and 3D CRT methods. Prescribed dose was 80 Gy for both IMRT procedures and 70 Gy for 3D CRT. Treatment plans of 15 prostate cancer...