Sharif Digital Repository

ABSTRACT: Pyrolysis, so-called devolatilization, is one of the first steps of all thermochemical processes occurring in an inert atmosphere. The authors discuss the main kinetic features of heavy oil pyrolysis, on the basis of the data derived m from a TGA analysis and by using a kinetic model. The samples were heated over a range of temperature from 400 K to 430°C at various heating rates between 10 and 80°C/min. Experimental results showed that the effect of time is considerable in the case of tar conversion, compared to char and gases  

Biodiesel is considered an alternative replacement for petroleum diesel, and enzymatic reaction is one method for biodiesel production. Understanding the kinetics of this reaction is important to achieve higher production rates. The kinetics of transesterification of castor oil using Novozym 435 was investigated in this study. The genetic algorithm was employed for estimation of kinetic parameters including Vmax, KmTG, and KmA in the Ping Pong kinetic model at different temperatures. In most enzymatic reactions that follow the Ping Pong mechanism, inhibition by alcohol has been taken into consideration. Here, we examined a competitive inhibition mechanism and found no inhibition effect at... 

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the natural convection behavior of nanofluids in an enclosure. The enclosure is a 3D capsule with curved boundaries filled with TiO2-water nanofluid. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, a multiple relaxation times lattice Boltzmann method (MRT-LBM) has been used. Two-component LBM has been conducted to consider the interaction forces between nanoparticles and the base fluid. Findings: Results show that the enhanced Nusselt number (Nu*) increases with the increase in volume fraction of nanoparticles (ϕ) and Ra number and decrease of nanoparticle size (λ). Additionally, the findings indicate that increasing volume fraction beyond a... 

In this paper, a two-component Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) has been utilized to simulate the natural convection of TiO2-water nanofluid in a curved geometry. The main purpose of this research is to study the effect of nanoparticle size and also boundary conditions on the thermal characteristics of the nanofluid. Furthermore, the effect of Rayleigh number (Ra) and volume fraction of nanoparticles (ϕ) on the average Nusselt number (Nuave) have been investigated. Two different thermal boundary conditions, namely adiabatic and constant temperature, have been considered in the current work for the curved boundaries. The Rayleigh number varies from 103 to 109. Four different sizes, namely 10,... 

Presence of fracture roughness and occurrence of nonlinear flow complicate fluid flow through rock fractures. This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative study on the effects of fracture wall surface roughness on flow behavior using direct flow simulation on artificial fractures. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of roughness on linear and nonlinear flow through rock fractures. Therefore, considering fracture roughness to propose models for the linear and nonlinear flow parameters seems to be necessary. In the current report, lattice Boltzmann method is used to numerically simulate fluid flow through different fracture realizations. Flow simulations are conducted over a... 

Branched hierarchical zinc oxide nanowires (BH-ZnO NWs) were fabricated successfully by a facile and rapid synthesis using two-step growth process. Initially, ZnO NWs have been prepared by anodizing zinc foil at room temperature and followed by annealing treatment. Then, the BH- ZnO NWs were grown on the ZnO NWs by a solution based method at very low temperature (31 oC). The BH- ZnO NWs with different aspect ratio were obtained by varying reaction time (0.5, 2, 5, 10 h). Photocatalytic activity of the samples was studied under both UV and visible light. The results indicated that the optimized BH-ZnO NWs (5 h) as a photocatalyst exhibited the highest photoactivity with about 3 times higher... 

Due to the widespread use of rarefied gas flow in micro-porous media in industrial and engineering problems, a pore-scale modeling of rarefied gas flow through two micro-porous media with fractal geometries is presented, using lattice Boltzmann method. For this purpose, square- and circular-based Sierpinski carpets with fractal geometries are selected due to their inherent behavior for real porous media. Diffusive reflection slip model is used and developed for these porous media through this study. With this respect, the planar Poiseuille flow is selected as a benchmark and validated with the literature. The effect of Knudsen number (Kn) on the permeability is investigated and compared in... 

In the present work, the spectral difference lattice Boltzmann method (SDLBM) is implemented on unstructured meshes for the solution methodology to be capable of accurately simulating the compressible flows over complex geometries. Both the inviscid and viscous compressible flows are computed by applying the unstructured SDLBM. The compressible form of the discrete Boltzmann–BGK equation with the Watari model is considered and the solution of the resulting system of equations is obtained by applying the spectral difference method on arbitrary quadrilateral meshes. The accuracy and robustness of the unstructured SDLBM for simulating the compressible flows are demonstrated by simulating four... 

Kinetics of dissolution of silver present in precious metal scraps in HNO3 was studied in temperature range of 26-85°C. Dissolution rate of silver was much faster than that of copper at all temperatures. Effects of particle size, stirring speed, acid concentration and temperature on the rate of dissolving of silver were evaluated. Dissolution rate decreases with particle size and increases with temperature. Dissolving was accelerated with acid concentrations less than 10 mol/L, Concentrations greater than 10 mol/L resulted in slowing down of the dissolution rate. Shrinking core model with internal diffusion equation t/τ = 1 - 3 (1-x)2/3 + 2 (1-x) could be used to explain the mechanism of the... 

In this study, in order to investigate the effect of the underlying pore-scale processes on continuum scale simulations of porous media dissolution, we improve the standard Lattice Boltzmann method using Quadtree grid refinement approach to simulate fluid flow and reactive transport through large domain sizes. Our results have shown considerable computational improvements up to 80% in simulation time together with increased numerical accuracy. The results and the added value of the new approach are discussed using comparison of our model with the conventional LBM. Moreover, we have applied a systematic analysis by increasing complexity levels and starting from fluid flow and continuing with... 

The dynamics of droplet detachment from a surface is a fundamental topic studied in coating engineering, fluid mechanics, and subsurface engineering applications. This topic has direct relevance to wettability alteration using the modified ionic composition of water in contact with oil droplet, low salinity waterflooding (LSWF). Previous experimental studies of LSWF have shown a very long timescale in wettability alteration which cannot be explained using bulk diffusion coefficient. In the present study, we address both the time scale of detachment, as well as the impact of buoyancy and interfacial forces (referred to as Bond number) on droplet detachment by proposing an advanced... 

Application of the DOE with the ANN in kinetic study of the ODHP was investigated.•The catalyst of vanadium/graphene synthesized through the hydrothermal technique.•The ANN and RSM's simulations were utilized to generate the extra data points.•Power law models and corresponding parameters determined to describe the reactions.•The optimization conducted in order to minimize the COx production. In the current investigation, an application of the design of experiments (DOE) along with the artificial neural networks (ANN) in a kinetic study of oxidative dehydrogenation of propane (ODHP) reaction over a synthesized vanadium-graphene catalyst at 400-500. °C presented aiming at minimizing the CO. x... 

In this research the application of design of experiment (DOE) coupled with the artificial neural networks (ANN) in kinetic study of oxidative dehydrogenation of propane (ODHP) over a vanadium-graphene catalyst at 400-500 °C and a method of data collection/fitting for the experiments were presented. The proposed reaction network composed of consecutive and simultaneous reactions with kinetics expressed by simple power law equations involving a total of 20 unknown parameters (10 reaction orders and 5 rate constants each expressed in terms of a pre-exponential factors and activation energies) determined through non-linear regression analysis. Because of the complex nature of the system, neural... 

Removal of zirconium from its dilute aqueous solution using Aspergillus niger as a dried and living biomass was investigated. Through that, the effect of some operational parameters on biosorption, including pH, temperature, contact time, initial concentration of zirconium and dose of biomass, were studied. Based on the results, it was concluded that the uptake of zirconium by both dried and living biomasses is pH dependent, and maximum uptake was observed in pH = 3.1 for both biomasses. The maximum uptake capacity of the living biomass was obtained at 30°C. However, the biosorption of zirconium by dried biomass was not affected by temperature. The maximum uptake capacity for living and... 

The effects of particle size on the solid flow pattern in gas-solid bubbling fluidized beds were investigated numerically using two-fluid model based on the kinetic theory of granular flow. In this regard, the set of governing equations was solved using finite volume method in two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. Glass bead particles with mean sizes of 880. μm, 500. μm, and 351. μm were fluidized by air flow at excess gas velocities of 0.2. m/s and 0.4. m/s. For particle diameters of 880 and 351. μm, the predicted characteristic times for solid dispersion were 0.14. s and 0.15. s, respectively, while characteristic times for solid diffusivity were 1.68. ms and 0.75. ms in the same... 

Fermentation systems are often highly nonlinear, with poorly understood dynamic behaviour of the reactor. In this work, mathematical modeling of the fermentation process based on aeration rate control was performed in a semi-batch airlift loop bioreactor. The bioconversion of glucose to gluconic acid by the Aspergillus niger strain was considered in an oxygen consuming system in the liquid phase. The proper kinetic model for the bioconversion of glucose to gluconic acid was investigated using experimental data from a 40 dm3reactor. Kinetic parameter estimation was used from the literature. The model was validated by experimental data and was compared with the Monod kinetic model. The... 

This work is concerned with the monitoring of ultrasound effects on inhibition, as well as the reversible kinetics modeling of asphaltene flocculation in toluene-n-alkane systems, which has been rarely reported in the literature. A crude oil sample was exposed to ultrasound waves, and then the colloidal structural evolutions of flocculated asphaltene particles induced by addition of n-alkane were studied, using a confocal microscopy. Observations confirmed that radiation of ultrasound can change the irreversibility of asphaltene flocculation in crude oil. To interpret the kinetics of asphaltene flock aggregation, the Smoluchowski model was used, and the time dependent size distribution of... 

Modeling process is very important and valuable to predict process outcome, especially bioprocesses which are intricate. Because of complex hydrocarbon compounds and oscillations happened in the medium of process, biodegradation of mazut has not already been investigated by mathematical models. In this study, an indigenous bacterium was isolated from oil contaminated soil to investigate biodegradation of mazut at different experimental conditions. Data resulted from mazut degradation, pH, and electrical potential in the medium were recorded. Some reported kinetic models and combinations were investigated to practically model the process. In addition, a new equation that can predict various... 

The aim of this study was to develop an appropriate kinetic model for propane dehydrogenation (PDH) over an industrial Pt-Sn/γ-Al 2O 3 catalyst in the presence of small amounts of oxygenated compounds. Experimental data were obtained from a previous study where catalytic PDH was carried out in a laboratory scale reactor at atmospheric pressure in the temperature range of 575-620 °C in the presence of small amounts of water or methanol. The kinetics of the main dehydrogenation reaction was described and the effects of water and methanol on coke deposition and catalyst sintering were considered in a catalyst deactivation model to explain the observed optimum level in the amount of added... 

A chemical kinetic model for i-butane and n-butane catalytic cracking over synthesized HZSM-5 zeolite, with SiO 2/Al 2O 3 = 484, and in a plug flow reactor under various operating conditions, has been developed. To estimate the kinetic parameters of catalytic cracking reactions of i-butane and n-butane, a lump kinetic model consisting of six reaction steps and five lumped components is proposed. This kinetic model is based on mechanistic aspects of catalytic cracking of paraffins into olefins. Furthermore, our model takes into account the effects of both protolytic and bimolecular mechanisms. The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm was used to estimate kinetic parameters. Results from statistical...