Sharif Digital Repository

The present study investigates the turbulence characteristic of density current experimentally. The 3D Acoustic-Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) was used to measure the instantaneous velocity and characteristics of the turbulent flow. The courses of experiment were conducted in a three-dimensional channel for different discharge flows, concentrations, and bed slopes. Results are expressed at various distances from the inlet, for all flow rates, slopes and concentrations as the distribution of turbulence energy, Reynolds stress and the turbulent intensity. It was concluded that the maximum turbulence intensity happens in both the interface and near the wall. Also it was observed that turbulence... 

In copper electrorefining process, some additives are added to the electrolyte to improve the morphology of cathode deposits as well as the quality of products. In the present investigation, the effects of thiourea, glue and chloride ions (as additives) on the passivation of industrial copper anodes under high current densities have been reported. Experiments were conducted at 65 °C; using a synthetic electrolyte containing 40 g/l Cu2+ and 160 g/l H2SO4. Results obtained from chronopotentiometry experiments showed that increasing the concentration of chloride ion leads to increase in passivation time. The results also indicated that from a certain level on, namely 2 ppm, the increase in... 

The liquid-phase dehydration of 1,4-butanediol to tetrahydrofuran was investigated over various materials including synthetic zeolites, namely, ZSM-5, Y, Mordenite, Ferrierite, and Beta as well as silica and alumina. The key characters investigated were the Si/Al ratio and cation exchange. The results showed that the ZSM-5 zeolite exchanged with NH4+ exhibited the highest activity in dehydration of 1,4-butanediol. In all tests, nearly 100% selectivity to tetrahydrofuran was observed. After finding the most active catalyst, the kinetics of dehydration of 1,4-butanediol to tetrahydrofuran was studied over this material. The influence of operating parameters such as temperature, pressure, and... 

The effects of several variables on zinc recovery in column bioleaching have been investigated. The ore contained sphalerite and pyrite as the main sulfide minerals and chalcopyrite and galena as minor minerals. Tests were carried out using a bench-scale column leach reactor which was inoculated with mesophilic (Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans) and thermophilic (Sulfobacillus) iron oxidizing bacteria; initially isolated from the Sarcheshmeh chalcopyrite concentrate (Kerman, Iran) and Kooshk sphalerite concentrate (Yazd, Iran), respectively. In the inoculated column, jarosite and elemental sulfur were formed. The leaching rate of sphalerite tended to increase with dissolved ferric ion... 

In this work, the Ion Pair Modified Ghotbi-Vera Mean Spherical Approximation (IP-MGV-MSA) model was proposed to correlate the mean ionic activity coefficients (MIAC) for a number of symmetric and asymmetric aqueous electrolyte solutions at 25 °C. The new model is based on the recently proposed MGV-MSA model by Mortazavi-Manesh et al. In the IP-MGV-MSA model, the effects arising from the ion pair formation in the electrolyte solution was taken into account. Also, in the proposed model, while the cation diameter as well as the relative permittivity of water was considered to be dependent on electrolyte concentration, the anion diameter was independent of electrolyte concentration. The results... 

Dyestuffs removal from industrial wastewater requires special advanced technologies, since dyes are usually difficult to remove by biological methods. In this study nanofiltration process was used for removal of different dyestuffs from solutions. The rate of dye removal by spiral wound nanofiltration membrane in film thin composite MWCO=90 Dalton, was evaluated for four classes of dyes acidic, disperse, reactive and direct in red and blue dyes medium. Dye absorbance was measured by spectrophotometric method (2120 Standard Method 1998). Effects of feed concentration, pressure and total dissolved solids concentration were also studied. Results showed that increasing dye concentration lead to... 

An oxide gold ore was subjected to chloride/hypochlorite leaching at room temperature. The effects of three factors, including Ca(OCl)2 vs. NaOCl, OCl- concentration, and HCl concentration on gold leaching performance were investigated. Due to formation of CaOCl+ complex in solution and hence less reactivity, calcium hypochlorite produces a sluggish gold leaching kinetics, taking twice the time (46 h) to achieve maximum gold recovery of 58% compared to sodium hypochlorite. 10 g/L of total initial hypochlorite species in solution produces reasonable gold recoveries. The amount of added HCl and hence the initial pH was found to have a major effect on gold leaching kinetics and maximum gold... 

In this study low-grade sphalerite has been treated by the bioleaching process using native cultures of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans and Sulfobacillus thermosulfido-oxidans in order to determine the ability of these bacteria to the leaching of zinc. The effects of bacterial strain, pH, temperature, pulp density, iron precipitation, and initial concentration of ferric iron on the zinc leaching were evaluated. The bioleaching experiments were carried out in shake flasks at pH 1.5, 180 rpm, 33 °C and 60 °C for mesophilic and thermophilic bacteria, respectively. Compared with the use of laboratory reference strains or control conditions, zinc recovery from the respective concentrate was... 

The folding rates of protein were shown to correlate with the degree of heterogeneity in the formation of native contacts. It was shown that both experimental rates and simulated free energy barriers for 2-state proteins depend on the degree of heterogeneity present in the folding process. Heterogeneity due to variance in the distribution of native loop lengths, and variance in the distribution of φ values, were observed to increase folding rates and reduce folding barriers. The observed effect due to φ variance was found to be the most statistically significant, because φ variance captures both heterogeneity arising from native topology and that arising from energetics  

We prepared single-phase polycrystalline Gd1-xPrx Ba2Cu3O7-δ samples with x = 0, 0.10, 0.15, and 0.20. The deoxygenation process of these samples was performed by an annealing method. Electrical resistivity measurements revealed depression of the transition temperature with the increase of x and δ. We calculated the hole concentration in the CuO2 plane for different values of x and δ. A linear dependence of transition temperature and hole concentration in the CuO2 plane was found as a function of 2δ + x. It is proposed that a combination of the localization and filling of holes should be considered as the effective mechanisms for the appearance of the Pr anomaly in HTSCs  

In this paper, we consider termination of probabilistic programs with real-valued variables. The questions concerned are: (a) qualitative ones that ask (i) whether the program terminates with probability 1 (almost-sure termination) and (ii) whether the expected termination time is finite (finite termination); (b) quantitative ones that ask (i) to approximate the expected termination time (expectation problem) and (ii) to compute a bound B such that the probability to terminate after B steps decreases exponentially (concentration problem). To solve these questions, we utilize the notion of ranking supermartingales which is a powerful approach for proving termination of probabilistic programs.... 

The objective of this study was to investigate the synergistic effect of TBP on the system D2EHPA/kerosense/M2+ with respect to the extraction of some transitional metals. Although the presence of M2EHPA as an impurity in D2EHPA shifts the extraction curves to lower pH, empirical results show that the extraction curves shift to the right due to the addition of TBP and the counterbalance effect of M2EHPA. The results indicate that the equivalent concentration of D2EHPA decreases as a function of concentration of TBP because of the formation of hydrogen bonds between TBP and D2EHPA. Based on this finding, the D2EHPA equivalent concentration was determined by using a modifying factor for TBP... 

Density currents are continuous currents which move down-slope due to the fact that their density is greater than that of ambient water. The density difference is caused by temperature differences, chemical elements, dissolved materials, or suspended sediment. Many researchers have studied the density current structures, their complexities and uncertainties. However, there is not a detailed 3-D turbulent density current data set perfectly. In this work, the structure of 3-dimensional salt solution density currents is investigated. A laboratory channel was used to study the flow resulting from the release of salt solution into freshwater over an inclined bed. The experiments were conducted... 

Mass transfer rates to the drops in liquid-liquid extraction equipment are often likely to be reduced by the presence of surface active contaminants. This reduction in mass transfer is said to be due to a reduction in terminal velocity, and to changes in pattern of internal circulation. A single-drop extraction apparatus was used to investigate the dependency of mass transfer coefficient on the amount of surfactant added in a system of n-butanol/succinic acid/water. Three types of surfactants, SDS, DTMAC and Triton X-100, were used to study their effects on the inhibition of mass transfer in liquid-liquid extraction. The effect of surfactants concentration on extraction percentage, overall... 

The governing equations of two-dimensional steady density currents are solved numerically using a finite volume method. The v2̄-f turbulence model, based on standard k - s model, is used for the turbulence closure. In this method, all Reynolds stress equations are replaced with both a transport equation for v2̄ and an elliptic relaxation equation for f, a parameter closely related to the pressure strain redistribution term. The Simple-C procedure is used for pressure-velocity coupling. In addition, Boussinesq's approximation is used to obtain the momentum equation. The computed height of the progressive density current is compared to the measured data in the literature, resulting in good... 

The effective properties of elastic solids are strongly linked to their interacting micro-constituent phases. For materials containing dilute distributions of single-phase inhomogeneities, the overall behavior can be estimated in a straightforward manner. But in the non-dilute case, due to the complex inter-particle and particle-matrix interactions the treatment is rather involved. When the particles are heterogeneous, not only become the mentioned interactions more complex, but must properly account for the intra-particle interactions as well. The present work addresses an analytical approach to determine the overall moduli of elastic solids containing random distributions of arbitrarily... 

An oxidative pressure acid leaching process was investigated for the extraction of Ni/Co/Cu/Zn metal values from base metal smelter slags. The process is applicable to smelting furnace dump slags, as well as to mid-stream converter slags. In addition to the economical advantages, extracting the base metal values from the dump slags produces an environmentally benign residue. To produce high level of extraction for the metal values, it is necessary to have the slag in crystalline structure. This, in turn, requires cooling the molten smelter slags sufficiently slowly during solidification. It was shown that if the same slags are quenched in water thereby producing an amorphous structure, the... 

Model-based pH control is a difficult problem due to its inherent nonlinearity and time-varying characteristics. This is specially the case when the pH regulation of streams consisting hundreds of constituents with varying concentrations is desired. The pH process can be modeled by using conservation laws and neutrality condition. An alternative to this mechanistic modeling is using nonlinear empirical modeling such as fuzzy modeling. This paper proposes a new approach of fuzzy modeling of titration curves, which can be used for control purposes. The Takagi-Sugeno model was used for the modeling of titration curve. Two control algorithms, which are designed based on the titration curve,... 

Gas separation properties of commercially available polyphenylene oxide (PPO) and Cardo-type polyimide (PI) hollow fiber membranes were investigated by CO2/CH4 and O2/N2 separation experiments. The pure gas permeation and the mixed gas separation experiments indicated that the two hollow fiber membranes were suitable candidates for O2/N2 and CO2/CH4 separations. Average O2/N2 permselectivities of 3.9 and 5.7 for PPO and PI hollow fibers, respectively, average CO2/CH4 permselectivities of 16.4 and 36.0 for PPO and PI hollow fibers, respectively, CO2 permeances of 210 and 110 GPU at 100 psig for PPO and PI hollow fibers, and O2 permeances of 40 GPU and 15 GPU for PPO and PI hollow fibers were... 

Stabilised titania sols were prepared using an additive free particulate sol-gel route, via electrostatic stabilisation mechanism, with various processing parameters. Peptisation temperature, 50°C and 70°C, and TiO2 concentration, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 molar, were chosen as processing parameters during sol preparation. Results from TiO2 particle size and zeta potential of sols revealed that the smallest titania hydrodynamic diameter (13 nm) and the highest zeta potential (47.7 mV) were obtained for the sol produced at the lower peptisation temperature of 50°C and lower TiO 2 concentration of 0.1 M. On the other hand, between the sols prepared at 70°C, smaller titania particles (20 nm) and higher...