Sharif Digital Repository

Increasing energy demands for pollution-free and renewable energy technologies have stimulated intense research on the development of inexpensive, highly efficient, and stable non-noble metal electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). In this study, a superior OER performance was achieved using a tri-metallic (Zn, Co, Ni) high-performance electrocatalyst. We successfully fabricated a peony-flower-like hierarchical ZnCo2O4 through an additive-free hydrothermal reaction followed by heat treatment. Then NiCo-LDH (layered double hydroxides) nano-flakes was electrodeposited on the ZnCo2O4/GCE surface to prepare NiCo-LDH/ZnCo2O4/GCE which was used as electrode for OER. The structure and... 

Macroporous styrene-divinylbenzene copolymers with different degree of crosslinking were prepared by suspension polymerization in presence of different binary mixtures of toluene and heptane, as diluent. Specific surface area, bulk and apparent densities, and pore volume of the resulting beads were determined experimentally. Applying the least square method to the experimental data, correlations for prediction of these properties were obtained. Effects of divinylbenzene concentration, diluent to comonomer volume ratio, and composition of the diluent mixture were considered in developing the aforementioned correlations. The influence of the reaction recipe on porous structure of the samples... 

The objective of this study was to experimentally investigate the performance of water-alternating gas (WAG) injection in one of Iran's oil reservoirs that encountered a severe pressure drop in recent years. Because one of the most appropriate studies to evaluate the reservoir occurs generally on rock cores taken from the reservoir, core samples drilled out of the reservoir's rock matrix were used for alternating injection of water and gas. In the experiments, the fluid system consisted of reservoir dead oil, live oil, Co 2, and synthetic brine; the porous media were a number of carbonate cores chosen from the oilfield from which the oil samples had been taken. All coreflood experiments were... 

Most of the heavy oil reservoirs contain discontinuous shale which affects fluid flow through porous media as well as recovery efficiency during enhanced oil recovery processes. However, the role of shale geometrical characteristics (including orientation, length, discontinuity, and spacing of the shale) on oil recovery remains a topic of debate in the literature, especially during miscible injection of heavy oils and five-spot systems. Here, a series of hydrocarbon solvent injection tests have been performed on various five-spot glass micromodels containing barriers which are initially saturated with heavy oil under fixed flow rate conditions. Oil recoveries as a function of pore volumes of... 

Many heavy oil reservoirs contain discontinuous shales which act as barriers or baffles to flow. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding about how the shale geometrical characteristics affect the reservoir performance, especially during polymer flooding of heavy oils. In this study, a series of polymer injection processes have been performed on five-spot glass micromodels with different shale geometrical characteristics that are initially saturated with the heavy oil. The available geological characteristics from one of the Iranian oilfields were considered for the construction of the flow patterns by using a controlled-laser technology. Oil recoveries as a function of pore... 

The use of polymer flooding as one of enhanced oil recovery methods has recently increased. The occurrence of high shear rates in reservoir and near well bore through perforation nozzles during polymer flooding cause shear degradation of polymers and therefore polymer viscosity has decreased. Rheological behavior of polymer solution in different conditions of oil reservoir is one of the key factors to develop use of polymer solutions. A few researches are available regarding improving rheological behavior of polymeric solution. In this study, to investigate the effect of nanoparticles on rheological behavior of polymer solutions two samples were prepared: polyacrylamide solution in water and... 

Asphaltene deposition is an issue that has received much attention since it has been shown to be the cause of major production problems. It leads to permeability reduction under the processes of natural depletion as well as hydrocarbon gas/CO2 injection. Though a great deal of researches have focused on studying permeability impairment in reservoir rocks, little is known about the asphaltene deposition mechanisms that control the permeability reduction for Iranian reservoirs. In this work, an experimental effort is made to investigate the permeability impairment of core samples of Iranian oil reservoirs. The experiments are performed on both sandstone and carbonate rock types at reservoir... 

The immiscible process appears to be one of the first feasible methods for the extraction of oil reserves. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of how fracture geometrical characteristics control the efficiency of oil recovery in this type of enhanced oil recovery technique. In this article, a series of experiments were conducted whereby the distilled water displaced n-decane in strongly oil wet glass micro-models having different fracture geometries. Breakthrough time, as a function of injected pore volume of distilled water, was measured using image analysis of the provided pictures. It has been observed that when the fractures' length is increased, the breakthrough time... 

Two-dimensional mesoporous carbon nitride and its highly efficient nanorod framework were prepared via hard-templating method. The obtained materials were fully characterized. The results showed that the samples structural ordering and morphology were similar to those of the parent silica templates; they had large pore volumes as well as high surface area structures. Carbon nitride carbocatalysts were used for H2S selective oxidation. The catalytic tests were carried out at 190, 210 and 230 °C in a fixed bed reactor. The obtained selectivity values for mesoporous carbon nitride rod and mesoporous carbon nitride toward elemental sulfur at 190 °C were 88.8% and 83%, respectively. Both samples... 

Cobalt-based catalysts were prepared on different alumina supports, and their behaviour for different Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) conditions assessed. Although Co/γ-Al2O3 is a well-known FTS catalyst, its durability ought to be improved to make the industrial process economically feasible. Here calcination repetitions effects on the catalyst lifetime were examined utilising reactor tests and characterisation techniques including XRD, TPR, ICP and N2 porosimetry. Results revealed that fewer calcination repetitions improved catalyst activity and selectivity. Based upon the XRD results, these findings appeared to be due to the improved size of cobalt crystals on the pore surfaces. These... 

In this study, spinel CuCo2O4 (CCO) with a hierarchical hollow sphere morphology was encapsulated in V2O5-decorated ultra-wrinkled graphitic carbon-nitride (VO-UCN) for the first time via a facile glycerol-assisted solvothermal method in the interest of developing a novel high-efficiency double Z-type nano-photocatalyst (denoted as VO-UCN@CCO). The remarkable physicochemical features of the as-prepared nano-photocatalysts were verified using diverse characterization techniques including TGA, XRD, FT-IR, FE-SEM, TEM, BET, UV–vis DRS, PL, EIS, and transient photocurrent techniques. Herein, VO-UCN@CCO nanocomposite was employed for the photodisintegration of levofloxacin (LVOF) antibiotic under... 

Copper-succinate-layered hydroxide (CSLH), a new nanohybrid material, was synthesized as an inorganic-organic nanohybrid, in which organic moiety was intercalated between the layers of a single cation layered material, copper hydroxide nitrate. Microporous scaffold carbon material was obtained by thermal decomposition of the nanohybrid at 500°C under argon atmosphere followed by acid washing process. Furthermore, the heat-treated product of the nanohybrid at 600°C was ultrafine mesoporous metallic copper particles. The results of this study confirmed the great potential of CSLH to produce the carbon material with large surface area (580m2/g) and high pore volume copper powder (2.04cm3/g)  

The solvent-based process appears to be an increasingly feasible technology for the extraction of heavy oil reserves. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of how fracture geometrical characteristics control the oil recovery efficiency in this type of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique. In this work, a series of experiments were performed whereby the pure and mixed hydrocarbon solvents (HCS) displaced heavy oil in fractured five-spot glass micro-models. Successive images of the solvent injection process were recorded. The oil recovery factor, as a function of injected pore volume of solvents, was measured using image analysis of the provided pictures. It has been observed... 

The main purposes of this study were to scrutinize experimentally effects of polymer and rock types on the oil recovery using water and polymer flooding processes. Four dynamic flooding experiments were carried out at simulated reservoir condition of temperature and pressure. According to the obtained results, the ultimate oil recovery by water flooding in highly fractured reservoirs was less than reservoirs with the microfractures. The results of polymer flooding showed that in addition the polymer molecular weight, the sulfonation of polymers also affects the oil recovery  

Herein, MIL-101(Fe), CoFe2O4, novel binary (MIL-101(Fe)/CoFe2O4, MIL-101(Fe)/GO and CoFe2O4/GO), and ternary (MIL-101(Fe)/CoFe2O4/(3%)GO and MIL-101(Fe)/CoFe2O4/(7%)GO) magnetic composites based upon the MIL-101(Fe) were synthesized. The XRD, FESEM, TEM, EDX, BET-BJH, FTIR, VSM, DRS, PL, EIS and other electrochemical analyses were applied to characterize samples. The MIL/CoFe2O4/(3%)GO demonstrated the best performance compared to other samples for visible light photocatalytic and photo-Fenton-like degradation of Direct Red 23 (DtR-23), Reactive Red 198 (ReR-198) dyes as well as Tetracycline Hydrochloride (TC-H) antibiotic. Degradation of dyes using the ternary composite after 70 min of... 

The present work is comprised of two main parts. In part 1 the Co-Ni/γ-Al2O3 catalyst was prepared using a sol-gel procedure. Then the effect of calcination variables including the calcination temperature and time on the catalytic performance for production of light olefins was investigated and optimized. The obtained results have shown that the catalyst which was calcined at 550 °C for 6 h has revealed the better catalytic performance for production of light olefins. In part 2 the effect of process conditions including the reaction temperature, H2/CO feed ratio and total reaction pressure on the catalytic performance (CO conversion%, (C2-C4) selectivity% and C5+ selectivity%) was... 

The rate constants of the oxidation of CO on a number of pure and La 2O3 doped NiO/Al2O3 solid catalysts were correlated with the mole percent of dopant, calcinations temperature, surface area, pore volume and pore mouth diameter by an artificial neural network simulator. The cross validation method had to be used due to the scarcity of the data. A three-layer network with 3 nodes in the hidden layer was found to simulate the system well. © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest. All rights reserved  

Carbonaceous materials (CMs) have been applied extensively for enhancing the catalytic performance of environmental catalysts, however, the self-catalytic mechanism of CMs for groundwater remediation is rarely investigated. Herein, we unveiled the catalytic ability of various CMs via Fe(III) reduction through polyvinyl alcohol-coated calcium peroxide nanoparticles (PVA@nCP) for trichloroethylene (TCE) removal. Among selected CMs (graphite (G), biochar (BC) and activated carbon (AC)), BC and AC showed enhancement of TCE removal of 89% and 98% via both adsorption and catalytic degradation. BET and SEM analyses showed a higher adsorption capacity of AC (27.8%) than others. The generation of... 

Carbonaceous materials (CMs) have been applied extensively for enhancing the catalytic performance of environmental catalysts, however, the self-catalytic mechanism of CMs for groundwater remediation is rarely investigated. Herein, we unveiled the catalytic ability of various CMs via Fe(III) reduction through polyvinyl alcohol-coated calcium peroxide nanoparticles (PVA@nCP) for trichloroethylene (TCE) removal. Among selected CMs (graphite (G), biochar (BC) and activated carbon (AC)), BC and AC showed enhancement of TCE removal of 89% and 98% via both adsorption and catalytic degradation. BET and SEM analyses showed a higher adsorption capacity of AC (27.8%) than others. The generation of... 

In this work, aligned and compact Ag nanorods capped by sol-gel mesoporous TiO2 layer were grown on Ti/Si(100) in order to be applied in antibacterial applications. The Ag nanorods with a high effective surface were grown by applying an electric field perpendicular to the surface of the Ag/Ti/Si thin film while it was being heat-treated at 700 °C in an Ar + H2 ambient. The grown silver nanorods had widths and lengths of 20-50 and 250-500 nm with an abundance in {100} facet, respectively. The TiO2 cap layer also had the specific surface area, the total pore volume and the pore diameter of 474 m2/g, 0.49 cm3/g and 8.0 nm, respectively. Antibacterial activities of the TiO2-capped Ag nanorods...