Sharif Digital Repository

In this project, cellulose acetate butyrate (CAB) nanofibrous membranes in order to separate the contaminants of an industrial wastewater were prepared. Electrospinning process that is an effective method to fabricate nanofibers was used to prepare the membranes. Since various parameters affect this process and fibers morphology, optimization of these parameters is necessary for preparation of improved membranes. So the effect of parameters of solvent system, polymer concentration, applied voltage, distance between the tip of needle and collector, and rotational speed of collector on morphology and diameter of the nanofibers was investigated. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and image... 

Electrocoagulation is one of the new methods for water and wastewater treatment that is carried out by electrical current. This method is easily applicable to a variety of wastewater. it is highly efficient in organic matter removal and other toxic are and dangerous pollutants.
This study dealt with diesel and COD removal by Electrocoagulation method. Energy consumption, electricity consumption, and the amount of sludge produced by this method was evaluated. Experiments were conducted in a 2 L reactor, consisting aluminum and iron electrodes.The distance between anode and cathode was 5 cm. To evaluate the efficiency of electrocoagulation method, parameters including: pH, time,... 

Nowadays with the extension of industry and factories as well as different kinds of plants, a wide range of pollution and circumference hazardous has been entered to the people`s life. Industrial wastewater has been always a threat for health of our environment and efforts for reducing its dangerous effects are still under studies. Dairy wastewater is one of the main branches of food industrial pollutions and it has been studied in this specific project. The goal was to reduce the Chemical Oxygen Demands (COD) of dairy wastewater with oxidation of Titanium Dioxide Nanophotocatalyst oxidation under UV irradiation. Among the various methods for synthesizing of this Nanophotocatalyst, the... 

A microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a bioreactor that utilizes chemical energy in the chemical bonds of organic compounds to electrical energy production through catalytic reactions of microorganisms under anaerobic conditions. In this study, the performance of a dual chamber, mediator-less anode, graphite electrodes MFC employing mixed consortia as anodic inoculums and using a combination of formalin and glucose as substrate was investigated. Different MFCs with different concentration of formalin and fixed concentration of glucose was operated to elucidate the difference in power generation and removal of formalin as an industrial pollutant under similar operating conditions [ambient pressure;... 

Importance: Age related cataract is the major cause of blindness worldwide.in recent years several studies has been done with the aim of understanding the cataract process, but no attempts has been done for simulation and study of the vitreous aging and its effect on cataract.
Objective: To investigation and determination of effective mechanism for increasing oxygen in vitreous humor and simulation the oxygen tension changes with vitreous degeneration with age or vitrectomy.Methods: Effects of changes in chemical composition of vitreous humor with age or vitrectomy on oxygen solubility is studied by thermodynamic relations. The posterior segment of the eye is modeled using transport... 

In the present study , operation of a laboratory scale sequencing batch reactor (SBR) was evaluated to treatment of synthetic wastewaters containing ethylene glycol. Studies carried out with a plexiglass bioreactor whith effective volume of 18 lit.Aeration was supplied via two air diffusers that set at the bottom of the reactor. Synthestic wastewater containing ethylene glycol and molasses as carbon source and other nutrient such as diammonium hydrogen phosphate as phosphor source and urea as nitrogen source for biological activities was composed at the laboratory. To optimization of this reactor three parameters – aeration time, chemical oxygen demand and sudden change in arganic loading... 

In this research the performance of the Moving Bed Biofilm Rector (MBBR) in different amounts of dissolved oxygen (DO) was investigated. Reactor with a useful volume of 15 liters was used in this study. In order to obtain optimum oxygen concentration, stayed at 6, 10 and 15 hours, and at different levels of dissolved oxygen in the range 0.5 -6 mg/lit, the amount of organic material was removed respectively. Also, in two different aeration intensity of 3.5 and 5.5 liters per minute at different values of e% (percentage of filling of media) the mass transfer coefficient values were obtained. When the aeration intensity increases from 3.5 to 5.5 liters per minute, and the percentage of 40%... 

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) which are commonly understood as the combination of membrane filtration and biological treatment using activated sludge have several advantages, but membrane fouling reduces the membrane efficiency, permeability and lifetime. An alternative is replacing a moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) with the activated sludge system which may reduce the effect of membrane fouling. The sludge produced in MBBRs has poor settling characteristics, therefore, their efficiency is limited by the sedimentation tank performance and they require a larger settling surface. The combination of moving bed biofilm reactors and membrane bioreactors can compensate for the drawbacks of both of... 

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... 

The study on the propane dehydrogenation process has been receiving significant attention due to the growing demand for propylene. The aim of this research is to develop an appropriate kinetic mechanism for dehydrogenation of propane over an industrial Pt–Sn/γ-Al2O3 catalyst in the presence of a very small amount of water. The reaction is carried out over the temperature range of 575 – 620 º C at atmospheric pressure. The results showed that a small amount of water and methanol can improve the performance of catalyst and also, increase the selectivity to COx. Addition the 0.5, 0.45, 0.3 water and 0.1, 0.05, 0.02 methanol are the optimum amount of these oxygenated compounds in order at... 

Oil refineries, petrochemical factories and oil platforms produce a large amount of oily wastewater every day. If these wastewaters are released in environment, it can damage soil and water seriously. Although, Biological treatment of oily wastewaters is a well-established method for remediation of these wastes, efficiency of conventional systems such as Activated Sludge, aren’t very high. Also these systems have many problems such as instability during hydraulics shocks and bulking phenomena. the hybrid bioreactor system are designed to increase the efficiency of treatment by allowing greater organic loads, increasing microbial concentration by using attached and suspended bacteria, and... 

Hydrogen is emerging as a clean and ideal fuel. However, its dependency on freshwater resources will be a threat to a sustainable environment. Considering the abundance of seawater and the scarcity of freshwater resources, direct electrolysis of seawater to produce hydrogen fuel can be a promising and potential alternative to pure water electrolysis technologies. Seawater contains electrochemically active ions with the nature of competition with the oxidation reaction of water, thus affecting the catalytic activity and, subsequently, the selectivity. From the thermodynamic and kinetic aspect in the electrolysis of seawater, the unfavorable reaction related to the formation of chlorine... 

Synthesis, characterization and photoelectrocatalytic performance evaluation of worm-like BiVO4 porous films have been conducted in this research. An in situ combustion approach was employed to prepare BiVO4 nanolayers on glass and ITO/glass by using drop casting, spin coating, dip coating and pulsed spray pyrolysis deposition techniques. The precursor solution of vanadium and bismuth include ~0.0233g ammonium metavanadate (NH4VO3) and ~0.0970g bismuth (III) nitrate pentahydrate (Bi(NO3)3.5H2O) in 2.5 mL ethylene glycol. Different deposition parameters were investigated for each of the aforementioned deposition techniques to obtain a uniformly-deposited BiVO4 nanolayer with high adhesion to... 

hydrogen considered as one of clean energy carriers and is the most promising alternative to fossil fuels. The production of hydrogen from photoelectrochemical water splitting using titanium dioxide nanotubes arrays (TNA) as a photoanode has been of interest to many researchers in recent years. In this study, TNAs were fabricated with two-step anodic oxidation method at a constant applied voltage of 60 V DC. The fabrication process was performed for duration time of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 hours. Photoelectrochemical analysis for the fabricated samples shows that TNA prepared for 3 hours anodic oxidation time exhibited the highest current density of 1 mA.cm-2 at 0.5 V bias voltage (Optimized... 

Due to imminent shortage of fossil fuels, environmental issues that occur from their intensive use, population growth and industrialization of societies moving towards renewable energy sources is inevitable. Sun is the most clean and abundant source of energy but it is needed to be accompanied with an energy storage system as it is intermittent and cannot supply our required energies on demand. Water splitting electrochemical cells are promising solutions to cope with this problem by producing hydrogen as a clean fuel. The overpotential imposed by anode is the bottleneck of the water splitting reaction. The anodes with sufficient efficiency that are used today are made from precious and... 

TiO2 is known as a photocatalyst in near UV-Visible light region with better efficiency compared to other semiconductor photocatalysts. Many attempts have been done to increase the efficiency of this photocatalyst. also, application of 2D carbon nanostructures namely graphene for increasing the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 has shown positive results.
In this research, we first synthesized Graphene Oxide (GO) suspension by exfolation of graphite oxide suspension. then we fabricated TiO2 thin films on glass substrates by so-called sol-gel method. finally we fabricate Graphene Oxide/TiO2 nanowalls composite films as a photocatalyst in visible light. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy... 

Energy and the environment issues are among the most important concerns of the present age. Global demand for energy is growing rapidly and energy demand is projected to double in the coming years. However, today most of the energy consumption comes from fossil fuels, which have limited and unstable reserves and are among the sources of environmental pollution. Hence, the production and conversion of clean energy from renewable sources is considered as an intelligent solution to significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels and protect the environment. Fuel cells, metal-air batteries, and water electrolysis are among the simplest, most efficient, and most reliable technologies among... 

Electrochemical water splitting which consists of two half-reactions, namely; the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), is an important process in electrochemical energy storage and sustainable production of energy. Therefore, the development of cost-effective and efficient electrocatalysts for water splitting has attracted a lot of interest. In this work, a new nanocomposite was prepared from cobalt diselenide and cerium (IV) oxide derived from calcination of a cerium-based metal-organic framework (Ce-MOF), via hydrothermal and electrodeposition methods. The structure and morphology of synthesized materials were investigated by XRD, FE-SEM, EDX, and BET... 

Lead-acid batteries have been used for over 150 years as a reliable means of storing electrical energy. These batteries have a variety of applications due to their high safety, reliable performance, and relatively easy manufacturing process, including in car starters, car lighting and combustion, electric vehicles (especially electric bicycles), and the resulting electrical energy storage. From renewable sources or pulsed power supplies in hybrid electric vehicles. Despite increasing advances in the performance and design of these batteries, there are still problems in this area. One of the most important of these is the electrolysis of water as a side reaction, which leads to the production... 

Today, fossil fuels cause countless environmental pollutants, so replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources is very important. Water splitting using light and a semiconductor is one of the new methods of producing oxygen and hydrogen, which due to its simplicity and cheapness, has attracted a lot of attention today. In this study, ZnMn2O4 photocatalyst nanoparticles were first loaded on a graphitic carbon nitride support in different ratios of ZnMn2O4 and carbon support by hydrothermal method. Then the photocatalysts were evaluated for evolution of oxygen and hydrogen photocatalysts through water splitting under visible light. In ZnMn2O4 / g-C3N4 (80:20) nanocomposite, the highest...