Sharif Digital Repository

We report here a newly and facile synthesis of the phospholipids@gold nanoflowers (AuNFs) from intact cells as a new biomimetic organic-inorganic hybrid. The most appealing feature of this nanostructure is its dual-absorbing peak in near infrared (NIR) and visible region of spectra, which makes them a potential light-sensitive agent for reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced apoptosis. Here, in contrast to previous studies, proposed nanostructures are synthesized in a one-pot reaction using phospholipids present in living cell membranes (as a donor cell) with detectable micro process of AuNF formation. The properties of the resulting AuNFs were evaluated through transmission electron... 

A naked-eye (equipment-free), label-free (cost-effective), and RNA extraction-free (to speed up) method for SARS-CoV-2 (as a case study of RNA viruses) detection is developed. Here, the DNA is being used as a template for in situ formation of anisotropic gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) without any chemical modification or DNA labeling. In this study, synthesized AuNPs for the direct detection of N-gene (nucleocapsid phosphoprotein) of SARS-CoV-2 are exploited. To this aim, antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) with an extra poly guanine tail (G12) were designed. Thus, in the presence of its viral target RNA gene and ASOs@AuNPs-RNA hybridization, there was a red shift in its localized surface plasmon... 

The process kinetics of a lab-scale upflow aerobic immobilized biomass (UAIB) reactor using simulated sugar-manufacturing wastewater as feed was investigated. The experimental unit consisted of a 22 l reactor filled with high porosity pumice stone. The UAIB reactor was tested under different organic loads and different hydraulic retention times (HRT) and the substrate loading removal rate was compared with prediction of Stover-Kincannon model, second-order model and the first order substrate removal model. After obtaining steady-state conditions, organic loading rate was increased from 750 to 4500 g COD/m3 day to resemble wastewater from sugar production lines, and hydraulic retention time... 

The treatment facility of Albourz Industrial City was established in 1999 at the southeast of Albourz Mountain with an area of 200,000 square meters. Currently, 40,000 cubic meters of industrial wastes are treated daily utilizing biological method of activated sludge up to the second phase without chlorination in this treatment facility. Then, the discharged wastes are directed toward the lower agricultural lands. The environmental status of the region was investigated by testing the impact of wastewater and agricultural products in four tries. In two tries, the levels of COD and BOD were higher than the environmental standards, but there was no trace of heavy metal contamination in any of... 

In this paper, the degradation of C5H4O2 "Furfural" in aqueous solution by photooxidation technology using UV, UV/H2O2, UV/H2O2/O2, UV/H2O2/Fe2+, UV/O2/Fe2+, O3, UV/O3 process and also oxidation by sodium hypochlorite was investigated in a lab-scale batch photo-reactor. To evaluate the performance of different processes, the efficiency of furfural degradation was studied by measuring the total organic carbon (TOC) throughout the experimentation. Results show that compare to other reactions studied in this research, the UV/H2O2 is a simple and effective process for furfural degradation and presence of Fe2+ ions (UV/H2O2/Fe2+) enhanced removal of furfural in solution. The influence of... 

Experiments were conducted to investigate the behaviour of moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) receiving a mixture of toxic (phenolic) wastewater. The study was carried out on laboratory scale using two MBBR reactors fed with synthetic wastewater. The wastewater was prepared by mixing a solution of molasses with a known amount of phenol and nutrients. Two MBBR units were operated simultaneously at different hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 24, 20, 16, 12 and 8 h while phenol concentration was in the range of 200, 400, 620 and 800 mg/l. Throughout the experiments the ratio of phenolic chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration to total COD was changed from a ratio of 0.2 to a ratio of 1. The... 

One of the miscellaneous units that are frequently used in water and wastewater systems is flush tank. Flush tank increases the self cleaning velocity in the conduit, and helps to clear the conduits from deposits and contaminations. While these units have been used for many years, there is not enough information about the hydraulic performance of these units in respect to the discharge, distance from the tank and the pipe hydraulics. In this paper the experimental results from observed hydrographs at different distances from the flush tank in a pipe has been presented. The variables include; volume of releasing water (or inlet hydrograph), upstream head, pipe diameter (3 cm), pipe length and... 

The hydraulic performances of drain pipes are very important in drainage projects and systems. Usually these pipes are used in a saturated soil to decrease the water table to a favorable level or, drain the excess water. However, drain pipes can be used in a water or wastewater tank for different purposes such as selective withdrawal. There are not much published documents on the performance of drain pipes in submerged situations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the performance of drain pipe in a submerged tank. For this, a horizontal pipe of 26.5 mm inner diameter, 5 meter long with 48 circular drain inlets of 10 mm diameter at equal distances along the pipe have been tested... 

Side weirs are frequently used in many water projects. Due to their position with respect to the flow direction, side weirs are categorized as plain, oblique and labyrinth. One of the advantages of an oblique side weir is the increase in the effective length of the weir for overflowing and, therefore, diverting more discharge with the same channel opening, weir height and flow properties (i.e., upstream discharge, upstream Froude number and so on). In this paper, an experimental set-up of a new design of an oblique side weir with asymmetric geometry has been studied. The hydraulic behavior of this kind of oblique side weir, with a constant opening length, different weir heights and... 

The biodegradability rates of two different kinds of polyethylene bonded with corn and potato starch are studied in this paper. While it is usual to use soil as the environment for biodegradation, an aerated sludge tank was used in this studywhich offers a richermicrobialmediumand increases the rate of biodegradation. The biodegradability is determined by two ways: first, comparing differences in the weight change of two samples, one placed inside distilled water and the other placed in aerated sludge tank. Second test for biodegradation is by examination of FTIR spectroscopy. Through FTIR spectroscopy, the biodegradability rate and reduction in some of the existing bonds in polymer before... 

High bed-shear stress resulting from secondary flows and velocity increase at a channel junction cause local erosion and deposition in natural rivers and earth-lined channels. Herein, the scour patterns at the junction of two loose bed channels were studied under clear-water conditions. The main dimensionless variables are the angle between the two approach flow branches, the discharge and width ratios of the tributary to the downstream channel branches, and the ratio of the mean downstream velocity to the threshold velocity. The results indicate that the position of the maximum scour depth temporally moves to the outer wall and upstream to the main channel, as affected by the dimensionless... 

The present study examines the biorecovery of heavy metals from a spent refinery catalyst obtained from one of the oil refineries in Iran using Aspergillus niger. Bioleaching experiments were carried out in batch cultures using A. niger in the one-step process to mobilize Co, Mo and Ni from hazardous spent catalysts. Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied for the design and analysis of experiments with the optimization of pH, temperature, inoculum percentage, pulp density and rotation speed during the bioleaching of the metals. Experiments were designed as per the central composite design (CCD) technique. Three cubic mathematical models were derived for prediction of the responses.... 

Accurate estimation of scour depth is needed for economic and safe determination of bridge pier foundation depth. Most design criteria are based on maximum scour depth due to the steady design discharge without flow time limit. In this paper, the results are presented of an experimental investigation on local scouring around a single bridge pier under steady and unsteady flow regimes. For unsteady flow, triangular shape hydrographs with repeatable peaks have been chosen. Results show that both sharp and flat increases to the peak of hydrographs have a negligible effect on scour depth for the same base time. An equation is obtained to compute the scour depth due to a specific triangular... 

In the present study, CS-CA nanoparticle was prepared for forming a new amide linkage, by grafting the amino groups of CS in the presence of carboxylic groups of CA that acts as cross-linking agent. The as-prepared CS-CA nanoparticle samples were characterized by use of dynamic light scattering (DLS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques, which showed that the cross-linking agent preserved during the chemical modifications. The adsorption capacity of the CS-CA nanoparticles for the removal of Cr (VI) in aqueous solution was studied. The adsorption equilibrium data... 

In this study a membrane biological reactor (MBR) was operated at 25±1 °C and pH = 7.5±0.5 to treat synthetic wastewater containing high phenol concentrations. Removal efficiencies of phenol and chemical oxygen demand (COD)were evaluated at four various hydraulic retention times (HRTs) of 24, 12, 8, and 4 hours. The removal rate of phenol (5.51 kg-Phenol kg-VSS-1 d-1), observed at HRT of 4 h,was the highest phenol degradation rate in the literature.According toCODtests, therewere no significant organic matter in the effluent, and phenol was degraded completely by mixed culture. Substrate inhibition was calculated from experimental growth parameters using the Haldane, Yano, and Edward... 

One of the sources of disturbance at intakes is the occurrence of free-surface vortices with an air core. The most common solution for avoiding air-entrainment is the use of anti-vortex devices and, especially, plates for large pipe or shaft intakes. If plates are used, then, the geometry and position of them should be studied experimentally. Since only general guidance for use of plates is available, a study for the more precise placement of plates is needed. Hence, a comprehensive set of experiments have been carried out using rectangular plates with different dimensions and at various positions with respect to the vertical outlet pipe intakes and two different pipe diameters (D = 75 and... 

The adsorption of nickel ions in an aqueous solution system was measured using zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) nanoadsorbent. ZIF-8 crystals were synthesized using the hydrothermal method. Nanoadsorbent was characterized by FTIR, XRD, SEM and N2 adsorption analysis. ZIF-8 crystals showed a high surface area of 1303 m2/g and particle size 100–150 nm. The Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms model were used to analyze the data. The sufficiently high R2 value of 0.996 resulted from the Langmuir isotherm model demonstrated the perfect performance of this model. The kinetic data were analyzed using the pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order models of types 1–4. Kinetic studies of the... 

In this research, the efficiency of the integrated fixed-film activated sludge-oxic settling anoxic (IFAS-OSA) system in biological nutrient removal was studied. The oxic-settling anoxic (OSA) process is known as a cost effective way to reduce the nutrients (nitrogen and Phosphorus). According to the results, the percentages of total nitrogen removal efficiency in the IFAS, IFAS-OSA2h and IFAS-OSA4h systems were 78.56 ± 2.46, 83.60 ± 0.92 and 85.03 ± 1.69, respectively, while the percentages of phosphorus removal efficiency in these systems were 32.69 ± 8.25, 36.35 ± 6.73 and 39.87 ± 3.61, respectively. The PCR-RFLP method showed that C. albicans had the greatest prevalence (n = 36, 90%).... 

Accurate modeling of runoff in watersheds requires calibration and uncertainty analysis of effective flow parameters and identifying of their statistical characteristics based on inter-parameter relationships and model inputs. In this research, the transport and diffusion of pollution (nutrients) in the river were simulated through the two-dimensional finite-volume method using the shallow water equations. To numerically solve these equations, the governing equations were converted into linear equations. Uncertainty and sensitivity of the prepared pollution model were analyzed to achieve better results in estimating pollution concentrations in rivers within a reliable range. In this study,...