Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

The sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution and reduction on the surface of electrodes is a major problem for the widespread use of devices that are based on sustainable, renewable and clean technologies, such as fuel cells and metal–air batteries. Therefore, the development of efficient and cost–effective materials for the oxygen evolution (OER: Oxygen Evolution Reaction) and reduction reactions (ORR: Oxygen Reduction Reaction) is highly desirable. In recent years, Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and their derivatives, have drawn considerable attention as potential catalysts and electrocatalyst due to their high surface area and porous structure. In this study, cerium (IV) oxide was... 

The sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution and reduction on the surface of electrodes is a major problem for the widespread use of devices that are based on sustainable, renewable and clean technologies, such as fuel cells and metal–air batteries. Therefore, the development of efficient and cost–effective materials for the oxygen evolution (OER: Oxygen Evolution Reaction) and reduction reactions (ORR: Oxygen Reduction Reaction) is highly desirable. In recent years, Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and their derivatives, have drawn considerable attention as potential catalysts and electrocatalyst due to their high surface area and porous structure. In this study, cerium (IV) oxide was... 

Global warming and the excessive carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels have created many problems for the Earth’s climate. One way to deal with this problem is to convert the photoelectrochemical conversion of water molecules into hydrogen gas, which does not enter the environment due to te burning of pollution, but due to the poor syntheetics of water oxidation in the water fisssions process, this reaction determines the speed and needto be examined to improve the water fissions process.The study examined and reported the two – stage synthesis of Fe2O3@NiCo2O4 as an advanced photoelectrocatalyst for water oxidation in the pH environment of the game. Hematite semiconductor... 

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels are a potential issue for the global climate. One way to address this challenge is to electrochemically convert CO2 molecules into carbon-reduced species such as alcohols, hydrocarbons, formates and other valuable products, which is a difficult process due to the slow kinetics of CO2 reduction. Therefore, the use of proper electrocatalyst while preventing undesirable adverse reactions can play an important role in the electrochemical reduction of CO2. In this study, synthesis of bimetallic Bi2O3@CuS composite as an advanced electrocatalyst for CO2 reduction in neutral pH environments has been investigated and reported. Bismuth oxide has... 

Hydrogen gas was introduced as a fuel with high energy density and environmentally friendly, and the electrolysis of water is one of the widely used methods to produce this gas. In order to reduce the energy required for this process, the introduction of electrocatalysts with high activity and stable is on the agenda. In this research, the electrocatalytic performance of a composite of MgCo2O4 and Ni3S2 on a nickel foam substrate was investigated in order to produce oxygen in an alkaline environment. To prepare MgCo2O4 compound, hydrothermal method and Ni3S2 compound, electrochemical deposition method with the help of cyclic voltammetry technique was used. According to the results of XRD... 

The continual deterioration and insufficient strength of reinforced concrete (RC) structures has been a vital problem in the field of civil engineering such an extent that traditional methods of strengthening found to be inconvenient. Nowadays by increasing demands for retrofitting of structures, it necessitates the application of efficient, inexpensive and unobtrusive methods of strengthening. Common way on retrofitting was to use of steel plates externally bonded to RC members. Although this technique has proven to be reasonably effective, it has several distinct disadvantages such as susceptibility of the steel plates to corrode and the excessive weight of steel plates when used in... 

The release of toxic materials causes tragic accidents every year. There are various techniques in order to mitigate the release effect of these materials such as Application of air jets, steam curtains and water curtains. In this study first, previous works are reviewed in order to select the best technique for the mitigation of heavy toxic gas release. Then CFD modeling is used to simulate this technique.
A field situation in which chlorine gas was released upwind of water spray was simulated using the open-source software FDS (Fire Dynamic Simulator), a CFD model. Only mechanical effects of water sprays are considered; hence the effect of absorbtion is neglected. Finally tha... 

Gas detection systems are now recognized as an essential component of safety in process units.but their successful performance depends strongly on the number and location of the detectors.As for the limited resources available (detectors), the placement of gas detectors can be considered as an optimization problem with different objective functions. In this research, an attempt was made to provide models and methods that quantitatively and from a practical point of view to optimum locate the detectors. Initially, a risk-based method was presented that defines the necessary steps for the arrangement of fire gas detectors with the aim of covering the maximum risk of leakage scenarios (risk:... 

Domino accidents are one types of incidents that lead to irreparable damage to industrial units. Since the consequences of such incidents are far more than the first level incident, consideration of this issue and the provision of appropriate strategies for identifying and evaluating this type of incident is very important. Major efforts have been made in the area of process safety is in risk assessment and identify possible scenarios and their probability of occurrence, and have not addressed the financial consequences of an incident. In this research, an algorithm has been developed to estimate the financial losses incurred with an industrial unit due to a domino incident and various... 

FRP confinement studies on concrete square columns and its effect on design and retrofitting has been the topic of numerous studies in recent years and due to wide spread usage of FRP in structural retrofitting, these studies are still carried out by researchers. One of the most common and accurate methods for predicting the behavior of structures is modeling by Finite Elements Method (FEM). This study aims to assess the effects of corner radius on axially loaded reinforced FRP-confined concrete columns and their behavior for different corner radiuses using FEM software. Using the capability of FEM in ABAQUS software (V 6.8-1), the behavior of square reinforced concrete (RC) columns... 

The release of toxic materials causes tragic accidents every year. There are various techniques in order to mitigate the release effect of these materials such as Application of air jets, steam curtains and water curtains. This study presents numerical calculations to reproduce the continuous ammonia release dispersion with and without the mitigating influence of a downwind water curtain using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software ANSYS Fluent 15.0. The RNG model coupled with Lagrangian discrete phase model (DPM) was used to simulate the dilution effectiveness of the water curtain system. The ammonia absorption was taken into account by means of user-defined functions (UDF). The... 

Inherent safety means that the process is naturally safe and the conditions of occurrence of unsafe cases and situations are eliminated from the system so that unsafe conditions can be controlled and prevented from occurrence by means of layers of protection. In general, evaluation of inherent safety may be studied in two different conditions; the first one is associated with the units that are not completely designed and built yet. In the initial steps of developing a process, there is much freedom in the determination of materials, equipment, and designing variables. As soon as the process enters its life cycle, making changes in the process will be very difficult and expensive. Therefore,... 

In order to better understand the performance of the Iranian health insurance industry, household decisions to purchase private health insurance are analyzed using a two-stage (Heckman) model on Survey of Family Income and Expenditure data. Probit and OLS regressions are used to examine the factors influencing the probability and amount of private health insurance purchased. Generally, factors affecting the probability of having insurance also influence the amount of insurance coverage purchased. The results show the importance of some demographics on the insurance decision, particularly age, gender and marital status. Socio-economic factors such as education, income, employment sector,... 

Up to now, compared with the comprehensive research for developing robust watermarking algorithms, no equal attention has been devoted to the proposition of benchmarks tailored to assess the watermark robustness. In addition, almost all the state of the art benchmarks only integrate a number of common image processing operations like geometrical transformations to remove watermarks. However, the quality of the processed image is often too degraded to permit further commercial exploitation. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, the design of these tools does not take into account the statistical properties of the images and watermarks in the design of attacks. In spite of the significant... 

The present study was aimed at investigating the relationship between reading comprehension ability as probably the most vital language skill especially in academic contexts (Farrell, 2009) and critical thinking as one of the most debated issues among scholars in modern education (Ku, 2009; Rudd, 2006). To this end, 200 male and female university students studying English Translation and Literature were chosen as the participants who sat for two tests. The first was a reading section of a retired TOEFL test provided by educational testing service in which the participants' scores were regarded as their reading comprehension ability. The second was the California Critical Thinking Skills...