Suspended sludge deammonification technologies are frequently applied for sidestream ammonia removal from dewatering liquors resulting from a thermal hydrolysis anaerobic digestion (THP/AD) process. This study aimed at optimizing the operation, evaluate the performance and stability of a full-scale suspended sludge continuous stirred tank reactor (S-CSTR) with a hydrocyclone for anaerobic ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AMX) biomass separation. The S-CSTR operated at a range of nitrogen loading rates of 0.08−0.39 kg N m−3 d−1 displaying nitrogen removal efficiencies of 75−89%. The hydrocyclone was responsible for retaining 56−83% of the AMX biomass and the washout of ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) was two times greater than AMX. The solid retention time (SRT) impacted on NOB washout, that ranged from 0.02−0.07 d−1. Additionally, it was demonstrated that an SRT of 11−13 d was adequate to wash-out NOB. Microbiome analysis revealed a higher AMX abundance... [more]

This paper presents the results of numerical simulations of flow in a periodic channel with the walls covered in the central part by spherical elements that have the same overall surface areas but different radii. Two distributions of the sphere are considered, with the subsequent rows placed one after another or shifted. The computations are performed using the high-order code, whereas the solid elements are modelled with the help of the immersed boundary method. For selected cases, the results are validated by comparison with the solutions obtained using the ANSYS Fluent code on a very dense body-fitted mesh. It was found that the increase in the sphere diameter slows down the flow, which is attributed to the larger blockage of the channel cross-section caused by larger spheres and the occurrence of intense mixing (recirculation) between the spheres. The velocity profiles in the vicinity of the sphere are largely dependent on sphere diameter and rise when it increases. It was found t... [more]

Biochar is generally accepted and increasingly valued in scientific circles as solid products in the thermochemical conversion of biomass, mainly because of its rich carbon content. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of biochar from different sources on wheat growth. In particular, this work focused on the effect of different preparation methods and raw material of biochar on the growth of wheat and aim to find a potential soil substitute that can be used for crop cultivation. Two synthetic methods were evaluated: hydrothermal conversion and pyrolysis. The characterization of biochar was determined to explore the impact of its microstructure on wheat growth. The results show that the yield of biochar produced from high-pressure reactor is significantly higher than that obtained by using microwave reactor. For example, the biochar yield obtained through the former is about six times that of the latter when using steamed bread cooked as biomass raw material. In add... [more]

Oftentimes, the employment of entomoremediation to reduce organic wastes encounters ubiquitous shortcomings, i.e., ineffectiveness to valorize recalcitrant organics in wastes. Considering the cost-favorability, a fermentation process can be employed to facilitate the degradation of biopolymers into smaller organics, easing the subsequent entomoremediation process. However, the efficacy of in situ fermentation was found impeded by the black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) in the current study to reduce coconut endosperm waste (CEW). Indeed, by changing into ex situ fermentation, in which the fungal Rhizopus oligosporus was permitted to execute fermentation on CEW prior to the larval feeding, the reduction of CEW was significantly enhanced. In this regard, the waste reduction index of CEW by BSFL was almost doubled as opposed to in situ fermentation, even with the inoculation of merely 0.5 wt % of Rhizopus oligosporus. Moreover, with only 0.02 wt % of fungal inoculation size to execute the ex... [more]

Selected Extended Abstracts from the Systems & Control Division Sessions of the 72nd Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, October 23-26, 2022, Vancouver, BC

Patients with renal anemia (RA) are usually treated with recombinant human erythropoietin (EPO) because of insufficient renal EPO secretion. The establishment of a good hemoglobin (Hgb) response model is a necessary condition for dose optimization design. The purpose of this paper is to apply physics-informed neural networks (PINN) to build the Hgb response model under EPO treatment. Neural network training is guided by physiological model to avoid overfitting problem. During the training process, the parameters of the physiological model can be estimated simultaneously. To handle differential equations with impulse inputs and time delays, we propose approximate analytical expressions for the pharmacokinetic (PK) model and weighted formulations for the pharmacology (PD) model, respectively. The improved PK/PD model was incorporated into PINN for training. Tests on simulated data show that the proposed method has good performance.

The historical prices of oil, coal, and natural gas in the United States after adjusting for energy content and inflation are computed and provided in a comparative context from 1984 to the present (August 2022). The price history reflects impacts by disruptive local or global events. Although current oil and gas prices are high, when adjusted for inflation, they are still not as high as prices experienced during the early 1980s and late 2000s. However, high global inflation rates compound other factors that are increasing energy prices now, leading to record high prices in absolute terms, and sticker shock to consumers worldwide. The recent impacts of the pandemic, Texas Freeze, and Russian invasion of mainland Ukraine are evident. Although oil and gas generally trend up or down together, they remain decoupled on an energy basis as they have been since 2006.