Sharif Digital Repository

Depletion of fossil fuels and their price increase, world is going to face critical energy challenges in the near future. Thereforefinding proper replacements for fossil fuels is inevitable. On the other hand, releasing of huge amount of wastewater into environment imposes serious nvironmental threats. Microalgae can be a potential alternative for biological wastewater treatment as well as fuel production. Microalgae grown in wastewater can eliminate remaining nitrogen and phosphorous. The gorwn biomass can be used for biofuel production afterward. Microalgae can also decrease the amount of greenhouse gas through the consumption of CO2 as energy sources. In this study, nutrient removal from... 

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, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and CNT coated by titanium dioxide (TiO2) were used as adsorbents for desulfurization. Photocatalytic oxidation by titanium dioxide Degussa P-25 nanoparticles (as photocatalyst) immobilized on a porous and low-density support called “perlite” and CNT/TiO2 was perused. TiO2-coatings were prepared by liquid phase deposition method.This is a wet process for the formation of metal oxide thin films on substrates. The coating of nanotubes with TiO2 was confirmed by IR and EDAX and morphological properties were observed by SEM analysis.The physical properties of adsorbents were determine using BET.Dibenzothiophene (DBT)dissolved in acetonitrile was used as... 

In present research in-situ groundwater remediation by permeable reactive barriers is considered and the main goal is to find the optimal dimension of reactive walls and also to find the most efficient reactive media. Here, computer simulation is done via MODFLOW. Different barrier lengths, widths, depths and distances between trenches have been considered and contaminant removal percentage calculated in all situations. Based on the research achievements increasing the barrier length has led to reduction of contaminant removal percentage because flow gradient and flow density decrease by length increase. As the results show, contaminant removal percentage increases by width increase because... 

In the first part of this work, citric acid monomer was selected to produce dendrimer through the divergent method using logical conditions (for controlling its functional groups) on the base of poly (ethylene glycol) as the core. Triblock copolymers (ABA-type) of citric acid and poly (ethylene glycol) (PCA-PEG-PCA) as biocompatible compounds were synthesized in four different molecular weights and applied as nanocarriers. The structure definition of the molecules and nanoparticles were carried out using different spectroscopy methods. Diameter of the synthesized copolymers was investigated using dynamic light scattering (DLS) experiments and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and it was... 

Textile industry wastewaters are one of the important sources of environmental contamination because they produce large quantities of highly colored effluents. In recent years, use of advanced oxidation processes by producing highly active and reactive components such as hydroxyl radicals has been proposed. In this study, two oxygenated photocatalytic systems including UV/ZnO and UV/TiO2 were examined for degradation of C.I. reactive orange 16 dye as a typical organic pollutant in textile effluents. A thin gap annular photoreactor was designed and applied for the experiments. The photoreactor provided large surface area exposed to UV light, where in the solution layer renewal on the UV... 

One of the main environmental problems in the world particularly in Iran is the entrance of oil pollutions from petroleum waste and its related industries into the soil. There are various methods to eliminate petroleum pollutions from the environment such as physical, chemical, thermal and biological methods. In biological remediation, the environmental pollutions are eliminated by means of plants and microorganisms. Over the last two decades, ioremediation have been studied widely by experts of various fields. One of the most advantages of bioremediation comparing with the other methods is its low cost and the ability to perform at the site (in situ).In this project, we extracted two kinds... 

One of the subjects that have been title for many research proposals in recent years is application of Nano Zero Valent Iron (NZVI) particles in contaminant removal from groundwater sources. Despite many studies being done, field application of this particles in a practical scale is not widespread yet which is due to many challenges like rapid settlement of particles or their unclear behavior through field application. The main purpose of this thesis in the first place is to find a practical and productive method for stabilization of particles and enhancement of their transport properties. To reach this goal, application of a natural polymer like starch has been studied as a solution. To... 

The bio-oxidation of ferrous iron is a potential industrial process in the regeneration of ferric iron and the removal of H2S in combustible gases. Bio-oxidation of ferrous iron may be an alternative method of producing ferric sulfate, which is a reagent used for removal of H2S from biogas, tail gas and pulp and paper industry. For practical use of this process, this study evaluated the optimal pH and initial ferric concentration. pH control looks like a key factor as it acts both on growth rate and on solubility of materials in the system. Some process variables such as pH and amount of initial ferrous ions on oxidation by A. ferrooxidans and the effects of such process variables dilution... 

Nowadays bioethanol is one of the main factors in the fuel market. It is currently produced from sugars and starchy materials, but lignocelluloses can be expected to be major feedstocks for ethanol production in the future. Agricultural residues such as wheat straw are being considered a potential lignocellulose raw material for fuel-ethanol production as an alternative to starch or sugar-containing feedstock. In order to produce bioethanol, it is necessary to decompose the wheat straw into soluble sugars. But lignocellulosic materias needs pretreatment before hydrolysis and fermentation. The main goal of pretreatment is to increase the enzyme accessibility improving digestibility of... 

In this research performance of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) in continuous flow mode was studied. Different anodic chambers were tested and it was found that granular activated carbons (GACs) produced the highest power density (1228 mW/m3) in comparison with multiple anodes (731 mW/m3), single anode (294 mW/m3) and polymeric packings (40 mW/m3). It was also shown that in a plug-anodic chamber (PAC) the power output is reduced by reducing agitation of anodic volume. Adding more GACs to anodic chamber results in power increase, however by increasing occupied volume from 80% to 100% the power increase was negligible in result of cathodic reactions limitations. Feed flowrate was increased from... 

The effects of adding nanoparticles in partitioning of α-amylase in polymer/salt aqueous two phase system (ATPS) was studied in this research. First the binodal curves of magnesium sulfate salt with PEGs 2000,3000,4000,6000 and 10000 at 23 ° C has been plotted and the suitable system which was PEG 6000/ magnesium sulfate has been selected for studying the partitioning of enzyme. Thereupon the partition coefficient of α-amylase was measured and then effect of adding silica and graphene oxide nanoparticles was investigated. It was observed that nanoparticles caused a dramatic increase in partition coefficient and yield recovery (of top phase). For further investigation the partitioning of... 

Dependence on fossil fuels as the main energy sources has led to serious energy crisis and environmental problems, i.e. fossil fuel depletion and pollutant emission. Compared with fossil fuel, biomass is a clean energy with zero CO2 emission, because CO2 is fixed by photosynthesis during biomass growth and released again during utilization. Due to its low energy density, direct use of biomass is not convenient. Thus, it is necessary to convert biomass to fuel gas, such as hydrogen, which can be used cleanly and highly efficiently. One of the promising hydrogen production approaches is conversion from biomass, which is abundant, clean and renewable. Alternative thermo-chemical and biological... 

Enzymes, the nanometric biocatalysts that play a key role in biochemical reactions of living cells and bio-organisms, offer various applications including biosensing, bioremediation and chemical synthesis. A simple bio-conjugation procedure to surround a single horseradish peroxidase (HRP) enzyme molecule with dendritic polyester macromolecules (Polyester-32-hydroxyl-1-carboxyl bis-MPA Dendron, Generation 5) was proposed in this project. The characterization of resultant nanoparticles entitled HRP dendrozyme, was performed by TEM, DLS, GPC and FTIR spectroscopy. The results showed that HRP nanoparticles were spherical in shape and have an average size of 14 nm in diameter. Furthermore,... 

Aerobic oxidation plays important role in industrial processes and pollutant remediation. The catalysts accelerating oxidation reaction rate are included thermal (typical) catalysts such as Pt or Au on oxide supports and photocatalysts such as TiO2 or ZnO. Although well-studied Au/TiO2 system have been under deep
investigations but Au/ZnO system have less investigated because Au/ZnO has low activity relative to Au/ZnO. Gold nanoparticles supported on ZnO nanostructures were prepared through a simple chemical-thermal method and characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, BET and photo luminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Effect of
annealing temperature on catalytic activity of these Au/ZnO... 

A Microbial fuel cell is a Bioreactor in which chemical bands are broken and their energy convert to electricity by bio-catalysts such as microorganisms and enzymes.In this project, construction, substrate investigation and optimization of operational parameters were done. Microbial fuel cell as a waste water treatment method was considered in this project. As a result, different substrate were used in anode chamber of constructed microbial fuel cell. The most important ones were waste water containing ethylene glycol and crude oil.Consequently, lack of information about cathode operational parameters was led to optimum condition selection for pH, buffer concentration and ionic strength as... 

Increasing use of polymeric materials, especially in the packaging industry, besides the problems that exist in recycling these materials, has become a serious concern for the environment. The synthetic polymers are used widely in packaging industry so they have a considerable role in waste production in packaging industry. One way to solve this problem is adding a natural polymer to the synthetic polymer, as a result it becomes friendly environmentally. Starch is one of these natural polymers which is cheap and has the ability to complete degradation in the environment.using row starch in the polymeric compounds causes a severe drop in compound’s properties. For this reason, row starch must... 

Many chemicals exist in the petroleum wastewater, whose disposal into the environment can result in environmental pollutions and serious damages to the ecosystem.Since conventional treatment processes are not sufficient to achieve the water quality requirements, advanced treatment processes are required. In this study, Hybrid Membrane Bioreactor (HMBR), Rotating biological contactor with packing (RBCp) coupled with an external membrane, is used for synthetic petroleum wastewater treatment. Biodegradability of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and that of total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) were evaluated and compared for different hydraulic retention times (HRTs) and petroleum pollution... 

The dairy industry wastewater has high biological oxygen demand(BOD) and high chemical oxygen demand(COD). In this study, membrane bioreactor(MBR) was used for the treatment dairy industry wastewater. Since two diffuser,submerged membrane modul and intermittent suction method were adpted to system. In this study, the response surface method and experimental design were applied as an alternative to conventional methods for the optimization of the treatment. A central composite design, with 5 replicates at the center point were used to build a model for predicting and optimizing the treatment. Mathematical model equations were derived by computer simulation programming with Design Expert... 

In recent years, because of the increase in population and more accessibility of health facilities for people, an increase has occurred in water resources consumption. Recycling water has become so much valuable as the freshwater of the world is limited. Besides the advantages of treated water has for people, discharging the untreated wastewater to the rivers could cause many problems for human health. Many kinds of pollutions, such as textile effluent, are not easy to be treated by traditional methods because of their resistance to them. As these types of wastewater have severe negative effects on living things (both humans and animals), new treatment technologies should be considered. The...