Sharif Digital Repository

The hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to methanol represents a promising route for the efficient use of an anthropogenic greenhouse gas, in which catalysts play a key role in carbon dioxide conversion and methanol selectivity. In this study, firstly, CuO-ZnO-Al2O3, CuO-ZnO-ZrO2, CuO-ZnO-ZrO2-Al2O3, CuO-ZnO-Al2O3-CeO2 and CuO-ZnO-ZrO2-CeO2 catalysts were made using co-precipitation method, then these catalysts were characterized by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, specific surface area and pore size distribution, X-ray diffraction, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy, temperature programmed reduction. Finally, in order to compare the performance of the catalysts... 

Thermodynamic modeling is a useful method for predicting of asphaltene precipitation due to various reasons, such as CO2 injection, mixing of different oils in oil storage and pressure changes. However, the application of solid model and thermodynamic micellization model, for prediction of asphaltene precipitation under gas injection condition, hasnot been improved. In this work, two computer codes which are based on two different asphaltene precipitation thermodynamic models, 1-Thermodynamic Micellization Model and 2- Solid Model, have been developed, and, used for predicting of asphaltene precipitation data reported in the literature as well as the experimental data obtained from high... 

Relative permeability is an important factor that controls the two phase fluid flow in porous media. The use of carbon dioxide in enhanced oil recovery methods is common. But the question is, how does the carbon dioxide affect the relative permeability curves? In this thesis, the CO2-oil relative permeability is measured in CO2 flooding process with unsteady state method. For this purpose, the core flooding apparatus is used and the results are compared with N2-oil relative permeability in N2 flooding. The results of comparison show that oil relative permeability in CO2 flooding is higher than N2 flooding. Reduction of Interfacial tension and oil viscosity, solubility of CO2 in oil and oil... 

Low frequency (LF) O2 plasma was used to modify the surface of polysulfone (PSF) gas separation membranes. The effect of treatment time and plasma power input on the membranes was also investigated. Pure CO2 and CH4 gas permeation measurements were performed before and after plasma treatment. The results showed the increase of permeability of the treated membranes due to surface ablation and surface polarization. However, the CO2/CH4 permselectivity of the treated membranes varied from 7.7 to 45.3 depending on the treatment conditions. Attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy determined the introduction of oxygen containing polar groups on the surface... 

CO2 separation from air was investigated in this work. An immobilized liquid membrane (ILM) which contains triethylene glycol (TEG) and diethanolamine (DEA) was used for this purpose. In this kind of membranes a liquid, which improves permeability of gas species through the membrane, fills the pores of a polymeric membrane as support. Because of low vapor pressure of solution, liquid loss was negligible. Transport of CO2 was facilitated due to reversible chemical reaction between CO2 and amine solution. A polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane was chosen to have chemical resistance against the solution and prevent destruction of polymer by solution. A flat sheet and hydrophilic PVDF was... 

In this research, initially the Triethylene glycol and Diglycol amine liquid membrane which is supported by PVDF, was prepared in order to separate the Carbone dioxide from CO2-Air mixture. A polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane was chosen to have chemical resistance to solution. The effect of Pressure, Concentration of TEG and DGA solution and the percentage of carbon dioxide in feed; in rate and permeability of CO2, N2 and O2 and also selectivity of CO2/ N2 , CO2/ O2 and N2/ O2 was investigated. Transport of CO2 was facilitated due to reversible chemical reaction between CO2 and amine solution. The experiments were done in 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8bar and different concentration of solution.... 

Interfacial Tension (IFT) behavior of crude oil/CO2 system is recognized as the main factor affecting the efficiency of CO2 flooding during enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. Adding paraffin group hydrocarbon to asphaltenic crude oils as an asphaltene precipitant component is aimed to mimic asphaltene precipitation process during crude oil production and transportation. Asphaltene precipitation would critically effects the IFT behavior of crude oil/CO2 systems. In the first part of this study, the equilibrium densities of oil samples which contain different heptane ratio were measured at different pressures and the temperature of 323 K. Then, the equilibrium IFT between CO2 and the crude... 

Nowadays, the reduction of crude oil quality and the growth of environmental restrictions are the main challenges in oil refineries worldwide. The high demand of lighter refinery products and the shrinking market of the heavy products, highlighted the role of heavy residues conversion technologies.Gasification technology consumes these heavy refinery residues and produces clean syngas. By this way and the integration of gasification with power generation cycles, more value added products such as electrical energy, steam and hydrogen can be provided. For this aim to be achieved, three different scenarios are developed and investigated in this project. The first scenario includes the... 

In this research, the effect of feed flow concentration on the separation of gas mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen was investigated by using supported liquid membrane in the presence of nano particles. In order to achieve this purpose, supported liquid membranes were prepared by impregnating a porous hydrophilic PVDF support with TEG, cyclohexanol, TEG/Fe3O4 nano particles and cyclohexanol/ Fe3O4 nano particles. Permeability and selectivity of mixed gases CO2 and O2 were examined at five different CO2 concentrations in feed flow, constant feed flow rate and constant total pressure difference.
In all tests, the permeance of carbon dioxide through cyclohexanol and TEG membranes was... 

One of the most important environmental problem across the world is global warming due to increase in greenhouse gas concentration in atmosphere. The main objective of this thesis is to try to find some ways that lead to stop or decrease, increasing trend in greenhouse gas emission, espicialy CO2. The investigation of the sources of emission of CO2 and proposed methods to decrease the rate of the emission, reveals that sepration of CO¬2 from combustion products and its storage is the only promising solution of this problem. The common feature of all propsed methods for elimination of CO¬¬2 from combustion gas, is the presence of a separation step. The addition of this separation step to... 

Energy consumption and pollutions especially carbon dioxide emissions are two of the main challenges in the cement industry. 5-7 percent of world’s carbon dioxide emissions is due to cement production while 900 kg of carbon dioxide is emitted for the production of a tone of cement. The main source of carbon dioxide emissions in a cement plant is the combustion of fuel to provide heating demands and also converting the ore into clinker. Therefore, any improvement in energy efficiency in a cement plant could reduce carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the combustion. Important ways of energy recovery in a cement plant are using the energy recovered from the exhaust gas in the preheater... 

The iron and steel industry has faced several challenges during the recent years. There has always been an aspiration towards higher economic profitability for the system. During the mid 1970s and 1980s the energy crises caused a dramatic rise in energy costs, which led to an increased awareness in energy conservation. In recent years, climate change issues have become more important for the industry. The operating practices for an industrial system are often affected by external restrictions concerning the economical, energy and environmental efficiency of the system. There are a large number of ways to increase the system efficiency, e.g. installation of new process equipment, and practice... 

In recent years, carbon dioxide is used for enhanced oil recovery of heavy oil. Steam Huff and Puff is one of the enhanced oil recovery methods used for heavy oil. In this study liquid CO2 was used as an injecting fluid instead of steam. In this paper a series of experiments were performed to demonstrate the effect of carbon dioxide injection pressure on huff and puff process. The experimental data are used in lab scale model simulated with commercial simulator Eclipse 300 to investigate the effect of soaking time, injection pore volume and rate of injection on the heavy oil recovery. Result of experiments showed that huff and puff process under miscible pressure condition gives the most... 

In this research, separation of carbon dioxide from a mixture of CO_2-N_2 with the aid of liquid membrane containing immobilized solution of diethanolamine-triethylene, known as facilitated liquid membrane, (DEA-TEG) in porous and hydrophilic poly vinylidene fluoride (PVDF) substrate was experimentally and theoretically carried out. The effects of DEA concentration, CO_2 partial pressure, and thickness of membrane on permeability coefficient, facilitation factor, permeation rate and selectivity of liquid membranewere investigated and importance of mass transfer resistance in gas phase on permeability or liquid membrane performance was also shown. Reversible reaction of complex formation... 

In this project, a viscous instability phenomenon in CO2 injection process has been investigated. The viscosity of CO2 is much less than the reservoir fluid and the resultant mobility ratio results in the instability of sweeping front. The instability may occur in a typical permeable thief zone. This is due to severe change in gas saturation and/or relative permeability of the gas, hence reducing the sweeping efficiency. This process severely affects areal recovery and results in the inefficacy or failure of gas injection process. Here we tried to simulate the phenomena by higher order finite element methods and the results are in agreement with the geometry of thief zone. Indeed, lower... 

Thermodynamic properties of supercritical carbon dioxide change near the critical point. High cycle efficiency is realized by having the main compressor to operate near the critical point of CO_2 to benefit from reduced compression work. In addition the high efficiency, compactness, nontoxicity, cheap working fluid and possibility of using dry cooling instead of wet cooling, s-CO_2 has many application such as nuclear, fossil fuel, renewable sources like solar thermal and waste heat. With regards to sCO_2 thermodynamic properties, suitable equation of state with high accuracy has been determined, and then is used in the design modeling. Recompression Brayton cycle with steady state flow is... 

In this research, direct synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) from CO2 hydrogenation in three phase slurry reactor was investigated. Bifunctional catalysts composed of Cu- ZnO-Al2O3-ZrO2 as hydrogenation component and zeolite Na-Mordenite as dehydration component, with different Al2O3 and ZrO2 contents were synthesized by coprecipitating sedimentation and influences of Al2O3 and ZrO2 on CO2 conversion and DME selectivity were evaluated. Results show, both Al2O3 and ZrO2 enhanced conversion, but Al2O3 markedly increase selectivity of DME. However, when the total contents of Al2O3 and ZrO2 was increased up to 16 wt% , CO2 conversion and DME selectivity remarkably decreased. BET and XRD analyzes... 

Emission of CO2 and its diffusion into atmosphere is associated with negative effects on the environmental such as Green House Gases effect. Various techniques of CO2 Capture in energy conversion and processing plant are investigated. A method of CO2 Capture could be based on utilization of solar energy for producing methanol. Basic design of such a system and feasibility analysis of developing that system has been considered on the subject of the present research work. Basic design and commercial feasibility of the system producing methanol through capturing CO2 from exhaust gases of a power plant and hydrogen produced by using solar energy have done such an integrated system. The main... 

Although CO2 is an environmentally benign solvent, many organic solutes are only sparingly soluble in CO2. We use Monte Carlo simulations in the context of statistical perturbation theory, Widom’s particle insertion and expanded ensemble techniques in order to investigate the molecular properties involved in enhancing the solubility of materials in CO2. Our Monte Carlo simulation of diluted methane and its fluorinated forms showed that substitution of H atom with F atom, results in more favorable solvation, but with further increase of F atom (after CH2F2) due to small size of solute it is impossible for all CO2 molecules in the first solvation shell (FSS) to have a good orientation against... 

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...