Sharif Digital Repository

Desulfurization by molten caustic leaching (MCL) at 400–500 °C has been investigated in order to reduce the sulfur content of petroleum coke. Effective parameters on desulfurization of petroleum coke, other than temperature, include alkali to feed (petroleum coke) mass ratio, time and mesh size in the ranges of 0.5–1.5, 1–3 h and 200–600 µm, respectively. In this work, petroleum coke desulfurization conditions using solid KOH have been studied. Maximum petroleum coke desulfurization by MCL method has been obtained by Taguchi L9 design using alkali to feed mass ratio of 1, temperature of 600 °C, time of 2 h and mesh size of 200 µm. The changes in the main groups on the coke surface have been... 

Magnetite nanoparticles with a size distribution of 15-21 nm were synthesized and decorated onto surface of graphene oxide by ultrasound assisted precipitation. Size and size distribution of the obtained M-GO hybrid were appreciably finer than the hybrids prepared by stirring method. M-GO is a superparamagnetic material with saturation magnetization of 31 emu g-1. The Langevin equation was successfully applied for estimation of size of Fe3O4 nanoparticles in M-GO hybrid, with maximum error of 17.5%. The study put forward a formation mechanism for M-GO, based on instrumental analyses. Adsorption isotherms of Sr2+ and Co2+ ions, which were fitted by Langmuir monolayer... 

A Co-Mo/graphene oxide (GO) catalyst has been synthesized for the first time for application in a defined hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process to produce sulfur free naphtha. An intelligent model based upon the neural network technique has then been developed to estimate the total sulfur output of this process. Process operating variables include temperature, pressure, LHSV and H2/feed volume ratio. The three-layer, feed-forward neural network developed consists of five neurons in a hidden layer, trained with Levenberg–Marquardt, back-propagation gradient algorithm. The predicted amount of residual total sulfur is in very good agreement with the corresponding experimental values revealing a... 

Graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets were hybridized with Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) to form magnetic GO (MGO) and were further labeled by [68Ga]GaCl3 as a potential drug delivery system. Paper chromatography, Fourier transform infra red (FTIR) spectroscopy, low-angle X-ray diffraction (XRD), CHN and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were utilized to characterize the trinary composite ([68Ga]@MGO). Biological evaluations of the prepared nanocomposite were performed in normal Sprague Dawley rats and it was found to be a possible host for theranostic radiopharmaceuticals. The results showed that the grafting of Fe3O4 NPs on nanocomposite reduced the unwanted liver and spleen uptakes and increased the... 

The current study demonstrates homogenous decorating of zinc oxide quantum dots (QDs) onto graphene oxide (GO) surface via simple chemical method. The AFM image exhibited that the prepared graphene was 0.8 nm thick and hence practically monolayer. Average size of the ZnO QDs was estimated by transmission electron microscopy around 3 nm. Instrumental and chemical analyses demonstrated formation of a strong bond between ZnO QDs and GO, through C-O-Zn and C-Zn bridges. The UV-visible spectra displayed that the introduction of graphene sheets to ZnO QDs resulted in higher absorption intensity of UV as well as widening of adsorption window toward visible light for ZnO-Graphene due to chemical... 

A single step supercritical method was introduced for synthesis of “magnetite - reduced graphene oxide (M-rGO)” composite in supercritical methanol. Modified surface, smaller size, lesser cytotoxicity, and homogenous dispersion of Fe3O4 nanoparticles on the graphene surface were advantages of this new M-rGO composite in comparison to the materials synthesized by conventional wet chemical method (M-GO). Nanocomposites were injected in tissue equivalent phantoms of agarose gel in 10 mg/g dosage, and were irradiated by a 1600 mW laser beam at wavelength of 800–810 nm. The M-rGO and M-GO were found to be the most and the least efficient samples for increasing the temperature of the phantom. As... 

In this work, a novel approach to model the dynamic behavior of the flash separation process (as a main building block of non-reacting stage-wise operations) based on Mamdani Fuzzy Inference Systems is proposed. This model surmounts the need to solve various types of mathematical equations governing the system and does not require thermodynamic properties which are either not available or computationally demanding. Hence it can be easily used in dynamic simulation of multi-phase flow in distributed systems. In the proposed approach the overall model is broken into several simple sub-models based on intuitive analysis of an expert. Moreover, a new fuzzy concept, named “Linguistic Composition... 

Graphene oxide-polyvinyl chloride composite was prepared using tetrahydrofuran solvent-assisted dispersion of characterized nano flakes of graphene oxide in polymer matrix. Electrical percolation threshold of GO/PVC nanocomposite was determined via a finite element simulation method with a 2D model and compared with experimental results. A conductive cell with two silver coated walls was designed and fabricated for exploring dosimetric properties of the composite. Some characteristics of the new nanocomposite such as linearity of dose response, repeatability, sensitivity and angular dependence are investigated. According to 2D proposed method, obtained data associated to electrical... 

Biosurfactant production through a fermentation process involving the biodegradation of soybean oil refining wastes was studied. Pseudomonas aeruginosa MR01 was able to produce extracellular biosurfactant when it was cultured in three soybean oil refinement wastes; acid oil, deodorizer distillate and soapstock, at different carbon to nitrogen ratios. Subsequent fermentation kinetics in the three types of waste culture were also investigated and compared with kinetic behavior in soybean oil medium. Biodegradation of wastes, biosurfactant production, biomass growth, nitrate consumption and the number of colony forming units were detected in four proposed media, at specified time intervals.... 

In the present work, graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) were incorporated at low-density polyethylene (LDPE)/ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymer blend using solution casting method. Monolayer GO with 1-nm thickness and good transparency was synthesized using the well-known Hummers's method. Fourier transform infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data exhibited efficient reduction of GO with almost high C/O ratio of RGO. Scanning electron microscopy showed the well distribution of GO and RGO within LDPE/EVA polymer matrix. The integrating effects of GO and RGO on mechanical and gas permeability of prepared films were examined. Young's modulus of nanocomposites are... 

The current study presents a supercritical synthesis of magnetite-reduced graphene oxide (M-RGO) in methanol media, in which Fe3O4 nanoparticles are simultaneously formed, surface modified and decorated on the surface of the reduced graphene oxide. Simulations using density functional theory, which were performed using the M06-2x/cc-pVDZ level of theory, indicate that upon adsorption of a Fe3O4 cluster on the graphene, the overall charge on the graphene surface becomes about -0.0236e, indicating charge transfer from the Fe3O4 cluster to the graphene surface. Instrumental and chemical analyses exhibited the formation of strong bonds between Fe3O4 and graphene, through C-O-Fe and C-Fe bridges.... 

In many cases, multiple-fault diagnosis of plant-wide systems based on steady-state data is impossible. To solve this problem, a new diagnosis strategy based on neural networks has been proposed. In the suggested framework, the neural network is used as the diagnoser trained by a hybrid set of steady and dynamic characteristic data of the system. The dynamic characteristic data include overshoot and undershoot values of measured variables and their corresponding occurrence times. To evaluate its performance, the proposed scheme was used in the diagnosis of the concurrent faults of the Tennessee Eastman (TE) process. Various combinations of concurrent faults were considered in this... 

In this paper, the fuzzy system has been used for fault detection and diagnosis of a yeast fermentation bioreactor based on measurements corrupted by noise. In one case, parameters of membership functions are selected in a conventional manner. In another case, using certainty factors between normal and faulty conditions the optimal values of these parameters have been obtained through the genetic algorithm. These two cases are compared based on their performances in fault diagnosis of a yeast fermentation bioreactor for three different conditions. The simulation results indicate that the fuzzy-genetic system is superior in multiple fault detection for the conditions where the minimum and...