Sharif Digital Repository

In this project, performance of anaerobic digestion of organic waste in liquid phase has been investigated in an experimental process. Thus, the objective of this study was to optimize the organic loading rates, temperature and mixing of anaerobic digestion to the treatment of municipal solid wastes. To achieve this, the pilot scale experiment was conducted in 70l, fully mixed reactor. The start-up process was established over a period of 2 months. Starting the digestion in two stages was done with two different feed stocks, in which the feed stock of the first stage was star and in the second stage vegetables were considered as the organic waste. Experiment was investigated in mesophilic... 

Organic dye couldn’t be treated by conventional method (biological method) due to their durable structure. In recent years, graphene based adsorbent has become more popular; this is because of high specific surface area and presence of numerous functional group on its surface. Due to the widespread application of organic dye in different industry especially in textile industry, stability and toxicity nature of them, finding an appropriate and cost effective method in treatment of this pollutant is very important. In this study, preparing and characterization of 3-D gel magnetic graphene oxide/kappa carrageenan was conducted and its ability of dye adsorption was tested. For this purpose, at... 

Biological treatment is an essential part of wastewater treatment. One of the major problems of the biological treatment systems is a solid separation. Filamentous bulking is a type of solid separation problem that settled sludge volume and the turbidity of the effluent will be increase in bulking condition. The presence of excessive Filamentous bacteria causes filamentous bulking. In this thesis, filamentous bulking were studied to understand this phenomena better and tried to control that with the different methods. This research was conducted in laboratory scale Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR), conventional activated sludge and conventional activated sludge with anaerobic selector with... 

The oilfields' wastewater, the water that is produced beside oil and is called ''Produced Water'', includes a large variety of pollutants. Heavy metals such as Lead, Manganese, Zinc and Barium and their compounds are some of the produced water's pollutants and because of their high stability they accumulate in life cycle. So a suitable and proper treatment is necessary. A combination of effectual and important parameters such as good adsorption, magnetic properties and low prices made Iron nanoparticles have a bright future in management of environmental pollutions. In this study Maghemite and Magnetite nanoparticles are used to remove heavy metals and effect of others factors such as pH,... 

Removal of petroleum hydrocarbons from water is one of the environmental challenges. In this study the functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) was used to remove kerosene oil as contaminants from water. Effective factors on adsorption of oil on MNPs were investigated. Magnetic nanoparticles were synthesized on activated carbon derived from almond shell and after a coating by silica, it Was functionalized by NH2 and COOH functional groups. After preparation of kerosene oil/water stable emulsions by emulsifier, the adsorption capacity of AC@Fe3O4@SiO2-NH2-COOH was evaluated. The adsorbent was characterized by various physicochemical techniques such as transmission electron microscopy,... 

This research examines the produced water conditions in Iran and different ways of dealing with it; it looks forward to provide effective treatment system in order to confront the economic and environmental problems associated with the current operations and facilitate the exploitation of oil resources. Produced water in Iran have poor quality and high salinity, so the number of disposal options or use of it is very limited and non-industrial uses become non-economic and uncertain option. Seventy percent of Iranian oil reservoirs in onshore areas and reduced salinity concentration is a big challenge in produced water management. The first step in this project is finding an efficient and... 

The enzymatic transesterification of castor oil with methanol in a solvent free media is carried out using lipase catalyst. The influence of several operation conditions on the production of biodiesel was analyzed i.e. the amount of enzyme, molar ratio of methanol to castor oil, reaction temperature and reaction time. It is observed that with increase in molar ratio, reaction time and enzyme amount, the amount of product (biodiesel) increased. When reaction temperature increased, the amount of biodiesel increased firstly and then decreased. The optimum conditions for the reaction were as follows: enzyme amount 300 mg, molar ratio of methanol to oil 9:1 and temperature 55°C. The maximum... 

Considering the limitations of fossil fuels in recent years, as well as increasing demand for biofuels, it is anticipated that future attention to biofuels will increase further. Among biofuels, due to some disadvantages of bioethanol and biodiesel fuel, there is a tendency to use biobutanol, which does not have the disadvantages of the mentioned fuels. The cost of chemical production of butanol also led researchers to use biotechnology production of butanol. According to studies, butanol production can be achieved by fermenting some sugars such as glucose, xylose, and ... by anaerobic microorganism, but the cost of using these sugars has resulted in the use of natural sources of these... 

Sarcheshme Copper refinery is using ion exchange columns to supply deionized water to the refinery. Every day, 240 cubic meters of waste water from ion exchange columns process are released in nature. The main purpose of this research is to use membrane distillation to purify this wastewater, which reduces the fresh water requirement and at the same time prevents environmental pollution. Membrane distillation technology is capable to purify the high salinity wastewater that other conventional membrane technologies are not able to purify. In this study, the PTFE membrane was used due to its high permeability and low surface energy with pore size of 0.22 μm and membrane thickness of 0.2 to... 

Water is used as a key material in different processes of chemical industries. Considering abundant demand of chemical industries for water, pollution that threats this valuable material and the fact that there is currently no proper substitute for water, an urgent necessity is felt for economic utilization of water in industrial processes and optimal use of water resources. A variety of methods have been developed for analysis of water consumption in industrial processes, amongst are Pinch methodology and Mathematical Programming approach. In this thesis a Petroleum Refinery has been preferred as a case study in which optimization of water consumption in the aforementioned petroleum... 

Because of production of large volumes of Produces Water during oil exploration, it is necessary to purify this water for reuse or discharging to environment. Thus, finding a suitable method for removing contaminations seems necessary. In the present study, removal of soluble and dispersed organic contaminants from produced water by Dissolved Air Precipitation/ Solvent Sublation has been studied. Combination of floatation by dissolved air and extraction with solvent has been used for removal of organic compounds in order to study simultaneous effect of both methods on removal efficiency. Samples used in the experiments were tested in two groups: the first group was synthesized samples of... 

Underground water is one of major resources of drinking water in Iran and thus, its quality (in terms of absence of pollutants) is a matter of great importance. The main goal of this research was to investigate the pollution concentration in underground water and soil in two regions: Dasht-e-naz in Sari and the fields near Sarkhoun gas refinery. The second goal was to determine the source and measure the distribution of the pollutants (in case of presence) and determine potential risks caused by them. The first step was to perform experimental tests in the two regions. In Sari's Dasht-e-naz region, a number of wells were chosen for sampling according to the direction of underground water... 

In this study the performance of the conventional activated sludge and the membrane bioreactor systems were investigated and their operations were compared. . A membrane bioreactor and a conventional activated sludge system which includes one aeration basin and one settling tank were designed and constructed. The feed was synthetic and the BOD:N:P ratio was 100:5:1. In order to starting the systems, the sludge supplied from the municipal wastewater treatment plant and inoculated. Then, the inoculated sludge was adapted to treat the starch wastewater with step by step increasing the feed COD. . The performance of two systems investigated in inlet COD=2500 mg/L and four hydraulic retention... 

In this thesis, an algorithm is developed based on Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (Analytical Hierarchy Process, TOPSIS) combination with Fuzzy logic, and then user-friendly software with a GUI was designed and introduced. By using this method, it becomes possible to compare processes based on their ratings and users desired importance, and finally determine the closest process to the user ideal choice  

This study focused on the investigation of bioleaching of heavy metals from incinerator ash using Thiobacillus thiooxidans. Eight factors were examined for their significance on bioleaching using a Placket-Burman factorial design. Four significant variables (pulp density, Initial pH, sulfur Concentration and inoculation amount) were selected for the optimization studies. The combined effect of these variables on metal bioleaching was studied using a central composite design. Second order polynomials were established to identify the relationship between the recovery percent of the metals and the four significant variables. The optimal values of the variables for maximum metals bioleaching... 

In this thesis was investigated the effect of solid retention time (SRT), Hydraulic retention time (HRT), activated carbon and suspended carrier on styrene and ethylbenzene biological removal and also on membrane fouling. In addition to the typical analysis (COD, MLSS, MLVSS, and SVI), the flocculation ability, sludge particle size distribution (PSD), FTIR analysis, excitation-emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence spectroscopy, soluble microbial product (SMP), extracellular polymeric substance (EPS), microscopic observations, microbial activities, microorganism population, and filamentous bacteria are considered to determine sludge characteristics. This study was done in five sections: in the...