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The oxidation of ferrous iron in solution using Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans has industrial applications in the regeneration of ferric iron as an oxidant agent for the removal of hydrogen sulfide from waste gases, desulphurization of coal, leaching of non-ferrous metallic sulfides and treatment of acid mine drainage. The aim of this attempt was to increase the biooxidation rate of ferrous sulfate by using immobilized cells. Rate of ferrous iron oxidation was determined in a packed-bed reactor configuration with low density polyethylene (LDPE) particles as support material in order to find the most practical system for scale-up. The present work studies the influence of basic parameters on... 

In the binary alloy with composition AxB1-x of two atoms with ionic energy scales ±Δ, an apparent Anderson insulator (AI) is obtained as a result of randomness in the position of atoms. Using our recently developed technique that combines the local self-energy from strong-coupling perturbation theory with the transfer matrix method, we are able to address the problem of adding a Hubbard U to the binary-alloy problem for millions of lattice sites on the honeycomb lattice. By adding the Hubbard interaction U, the resulting AI phase will become metallic, which in our formulation can be manifestly attributed to the screening of disorder by Hubbard U. Upon further increase in U, again the AI... 

A mesophilic iron oxidizing bacterium, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, has been isolated (33 °C) from a typical chalcopyrite copper concentrate of the Sarcheshmeh copper mine in the region of Kerman located in the south of Iran. In addition, a thermophilic iron oxidizing bacterium, Sulfobacillus, has been isolated (60 °C) from the Kooshk lead and zinc mine near the city of Yazd in central Iran. Effects of some variable parameters such as solids concentration, temperature and pH on the bioleaching of chalcopyrite obtained from Sarcheshmeh copper mine were investigated. Bioleaching experiments were carried out in two batch airlift bioreactors with a recycling stream. The results indicate that... 

A new bi-supported Ziegler–Natta catalyst was prepared successfully by supporting TiCl4 on the carbon black (CB) and magnesium dichloride. Then, this catalyst was used to prepare ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) nanocomposites via in situ polymerization. The effects of difference molar ratios of triisobutylaluminum as activator to TiCl4, polymerization temperature, pressure of monomer and polymerization time on productivity of the catalyst were studied. The maximum activity was obtained at [Al]/[Ti] = 121:1. Increasing monomer pressure raised catalyst activity. Increasing temperature to 60 °C increased the polymerization yield; however, the higher temperature decreased the... 

A mesophilic iron oxidizing bacterium, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, has been isolated (33°C) from a typical chalcopyrite copper concentrate of the Sarcheshmeh Copper Mine in the region of Kerman located in the south of Iran. In addition, a thermophilic iron oxidizing bacterium, Sulfobacillus spp., has been isolated (60°C) from the Kooshk Lead and Zinc Mine near the city of Yazd in the mid-west region of Iran. The variation of pH, ferrous and ferric concentration and cell growth on the time and effects of some factors, such as temperature and initial ferrous concentration, on the bioleaching of chalcopyrite concentrate obtained from Sarcheshmeh Copper Mine, were investigated. Bioleaching... 

Biological oxidation of ferrous sulfate by Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans has proved to be a significant step in the bioleaching of sulfide minerals and the treatment of acid mine drainage. The same bioreaction also has beneficial applications in the desulphurization of coal and removal of hydrogen sulfide from gaseous effluents. In this research, the effects of some process variables such as pH, temperature, elemental sulfur, amount of initial ferrous and magnesium ions on oxidation of ferrous sulfate by a native A. ferrooxidans, which was isolated from a chalcopyrite concentrate, were investigated. All experiments carried out in shake flasks at 33 °C that was obtained as optimum... 

In this study, effects of solid concentration, temperature, and initial Fe2+ concentration on bioleaching of sulfide mineral (chalcopyrite) obtained from Sarcheshmeh Copper Mine in the region of Kerman located in the south of Iran were investigated. A mesophilic iron oxidizing bacterium, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans has been isolated from a typical chalcopyrite copper concentrate of the mentioned mine. Bioleaching experiments were carried out in two batch air-lift bioreactors with recycling stream. One reactor contained 2 liters of medium and 10% (v/v) inoculum while in the other reactor, control bioleaching tests were carried out with sterilized concentrate without inoculum by the... 

We develop the real space quantum renormalization group (QRG) approach for majorana fermions. As an example we focus on the Kitaev chain to investigate the topological quantum phase transition (TQPT) in the one-dimensional spinless p-wave superconductor. Studying the behaviour of local compressibility and ground-state fidelity, show that the TQPT is signalled by the maximum of local compressibility at the quantum critical point tuned by the chemical potential. Moreover, a sudden drop of the ground-state fidelity and the divergence of fidelity susceptibility at the topological quantum critical point are used as proper indicators for the TQPT, which signals the appearance of Majorana fermions.... 

Based on the force-deflection equation for a beam subjected to lateral point loads, a C2 continuous piecewise bicubic mathematical representation was proposed to model complicated geometrical surfaces, e.g. the articular surfaces of human joints. The method was then extended so that it could be used for mathematical modelling of incomplete nets of data points, as well as smoothing of noisy and/or filtering of erroneous data points. Mathematical techniques were also developed to calculate the required unknown parameters explicitly, with no need to solve the system of equations simultaneously. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated on a number of surface modelling problems,... 

We study an S = 1/2 Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice with first and second neighbor antiferromagnetic exchange (J1-J2 model), employing exact diagonalization in both the Sz = 0 basis and nearest neighbor singlet valence bond (NNVB) basis. We find that for 0.2 < J2/J1 < 0.3, the NNVB basis gives a proper description of the ground state in comparison with the exact results. By analyzing the dimer-dimer as well as the plaquette-plaquette correlations and also defining appropriate structure factors, we investigate possible symmetry breaking states as the candidates for the ground state in the frustrated region. We provide a body of evidence in favor of plaquette valence bond ordering... 

Formation of localized magnetic states in a metallic host is a classic problem of condensed matter physics formalized by P. W. Anderson within the so called single impurity Anderson model (SIAM). The general picture in a host of a simple one-band metal is that a large Hubbard U in the impurity orbital is pre-requisite for the formation of localized magnetic states. In recent years three dimensional (3D) Dirac solids have emerged the hallmark of which is strong spin- orbit interaction. In this work we show that such a strong spin-orbit interaction allows to form localized magnetic states even with small values of Hubbard U. This opens up the fascinating possibility of forming magnetic states... 

We classify all possible boundary conditions (BCs) for a Weyl material into two classes: (i) BC that mixes the spin projection but does not change the chirality attribute, and (ii) BC that mixes the chiralities. All BCs are parametrized with angular variables that can be regarded as mixing angles between spins or chiralities. Using the Green's function method, we show that these two BCs faithfully reproduce the Fermi arcs. The parameters are ultimately fixed by the orientation of Fermi arcs. We build on our classification and show that in the presence of a background magnetic field, only the second-type BC gives rise to nontrivial Landau orbitals. © 2018 American Physical Society  

Motivated by the recently discovered time-reversal symmetry-breaking superconductivity in the epitaxial Bi/Ni bilayer system with transition temperature Tc≈4.2K and the observation of a zero-bias anomaly in a background of gap-filling states in tunneling measurements, we show that gap-filling states can appear in the fully gapped dxy±idx2-y2 superconducting states. We consider a model of helical electron states with d-wave pairing. In particular, we show that both magnetic and nonmagnetic impurities can create states within the superconducting gap. Alternatively, we show that the coupling of the electron spins to the in-plane Zeeman field provided by nickel can also create gap-filling states... 

We construct the most generic Hamiltonian of the 8Pmmn structure of a borophene sheet in the presence of spin orbit, as well as background electric and magnetic fields. In addition to spin and valley Hall effects, this structure offers a framework to conveniently manipulate the resulting "tilt" of the Dirac equation by applying appropriate electric fields. Therefore, the tilt can be made space as well as time dependent. The border separating the low-field region with undertilted Dirac fermions from the high-field region with over-tilted Dirac fermions will correspond to a black-hole horizon. In this way, space-time-dependent electric fields can be used to design the metric of the resulting... 

In this work, we study interacting electrons on a square lattice in the presence of strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction. The spin-orbit term forces the time-reversal electron states to be paired in even Cooper channels. For concreteness, we only consider the repulsive onsite Hubbard and nearest-neighbor Coulomb interactions, the so-called extended Hubbard model. To examine the superconducting instability, we obtain the effective interaction between electrons within the random phase approximation and treat the pairing instabilities driven by charge and spin fluctuations and their combined effects. We mapped out the phase diagram of the model in terms of interactions and electron fillings and... 

The topological index of a system determines its edge physics. However, in situations such as strong disorder where due to level repulsion the spectral gap closes, the topological indices are not well-defined. In this paper, we show that the localization length of zero modes determined by the transfer matrix method reveals much more information than the topological index. The localization length can provide not only information about the topological index of the Hamiltonian itself, but it can also provide information about the topological indices of the 'relative' Hamiltonians. As a case study, we study a generalized XY model (2XY model) further augmented by a generalized... 

This paper deals with mathematical modeling and simulation of methanol carbonylation reactor in acetic acid production plant that consisted of a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR), a flash drum, a Joule-Thomson valve, and a condenser. The model was based on material and energy balances that considered liquid-gas mass transfer, thermodynamics, and reactor hydrodynamics. The most important aspect of the model was the selection of an appropriate correlation for prediction of mass transfer coefficient. Several correlations were examined and comparison of the model results with plant data indicated that the correlation reported by Lemoine was most appropriate. The simulation results were... 

Traditionally, solid-liquid mixing has always been regarded as an empirical technology with many aspects of mixing, dispersing and contacting were related to power draw. One important application of solid-liquid mixing is the preparation of brine from sodium formate. This material has been widely used as a drilling and completion fluid in challenging environments such as the Barents Sea. In this paper, large-eddy simulations of a turbulent flow in a solid-liquid baffled cylindrical mixing vessel with large number of solid particles are performed to obtain insight into the fundamental aspects of a mixing tank. The impeller-induced flow at the blade tip radius is modeled by using the... 

Spin lattice relaxation rate is investigated for 3D tilted cone Weyl semimetals (TCWSMs). The nuclear spin relaxation rate is presented as a function of temperature and tilt parameter. We find that the relaxation rate behaves as (1-ζ2)-α with α ≈ 9 where 0 ζ < 1 is the tilt parameter. We demonstrate that such a strong enhancement for ζ ≲ 1 that gives rise to very fast relaxation rates, is contributed by a new hyperfine interactions arising from the tilt itself. This can be attributed to the combination of anisotropy of the Fermi surface and an additional part related to the structure of the spacetime: extracting an effective density of states (DOS) ρ from the Korringa relation, we show that... 

As a low-energy effective theory on non-symmorphic lattices, we consider a generic triple point fermion Hamiltonian, which is parameterized by an angular parameter λ. We find strong λ dependence in both Drude and interband optical absorption of these systems. The deviation of the T2 coefficient of the Drude weight from Dirac/Weyl fermions can be used as a quick way to optically distinguish the triple point degeneracies from the Dirac/Weyl degeneracies. At the particular λ = π/6 point, we find that the 'helicity' reversal optical transition matrix element is identically zero. Nevertheless, deviating from this point, the helicity reversal emerges as an absorption channel. © 2021 IOP Publishing...