Phosphates in wastewater at elevated concentrations cause eutrophication of water bodies and their removal from treated wastewater is essential before effluents are discharged to the environment. Phosphates are predominately removed during wastewater treatment by chemical precipitation which is usually expensive and has a significant environmental footprint. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of waste recycled bricks as adsorbent for phosphate removal during wastewater treatment. The kinetics, isotherms, and thermodynamics of adsorption were investigated to establish the mechanisms of adsorption. The results showed that adsorption capacities increased with an increase in contact time, adsorbent dosage, and initial phosphate concentration. The kinetic study indicated that adsorption was governed by several mechanisms with various processes dominating different stages of the adsorption. The adsorption process was better represented by the pseudo-second-order k... [more]

This paper presents a comparison of the impact of milling technology in the computer numerically controlled (CNC) machining centre and selective laser sintering (SLS) and on the structure and properties of solid Ti6Al4V alloy. It has been shown that even small changes in technological conditions in the SLS manufacturing variant significantly affect changes from two to nearly two and a half times in tensile and bending strengths. Both the tensile and bending strength obtained in the most favourable manufacturing variant by the SLS method is over 25% higher than in the case of cast materials subsequently processed by milling. Plug-and-play SLS conditions provide about 60% of the possibilities. Structural, tribological and electrochemical tests were carried out. In vitro biological tests using osteoblasts confirm the good tendency for the proliferation of live cells on the substrate manufactured under the most favourable SLS conditions. The use of SLS additive technology for the manufactu... [more]

The hydrodynamics parameters of microbubbles in a bubble column were studied in an air−water system with a range of superficial gas velocity from 0.013 to 0.100 m/s using a differential pressure transmitter, double probe optical fiber probe, and electrical resistance tomography (ERT) technique. Two kinds of microbubble generators (foam gun, sintered plate) were used to generate microbubbles in the bubble column with a diameter of 90 mm, and to compare the effects of different foaming methods on the hydrodynamics parameters in the bubble column. The hydrodynamic behavior of the homogeneous regime and the transition regime was also studied. The results show that, by changing the microbubble-generating device, the hydrodynamic parameters in the column are changed, and both microbubble-generating devices can obtain a higher gas holdup and a narrower chord length distribution. When the foam gun is used as the gas distributor, a higher gas holdup and a narrower average bubble chord length ca... [more]

Homogeneous mixture models are widely used to predict the hydrodynamic cavitation. In this study, the constant-transfer coefficient model is implemented into a homogeneous cavitation model to predict the heat and mass diffusion. Modifications are made to the average bubble temperature and the Peclet number for thermal diffusivity in the constant-transfer coefficient model. The evolutions of a spherical bubble triggered by negative pressure pulse are simulated to evaluate the prediction of heat and mass diffusion by the homogeneous model. The evolutions of three bubbles inside a rectangular tube are simulated, which show good accuracy of the homogeneous model for multibubbles in stationary liquid.

Pipelines are like a lifeline that is vital to a nation’s economic sustainability; as such, pipelines need to be monitored to optimize their performance as well as reduce the product losses incurred in the transportation of petroleum chemicals. A significant number of pipes would be underground; it is of immediate concern to identify and analyse the level of corrosion and assess the quality of a pipe. Therefore, this study intends to present the development of an intelligent model that predicts the condition of crude oil pipeline cantered on specific factors such as metal loss anomalies (over length, width and depth), wall thickness, weld anomalies and pressure flow. The model is developed using Feed-Forward Back Propagation Network (FFBPN) based on historical inspection data from oil and gas fields. The model was trained using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm by changing the number of hidden neurons to achieve promising results in terms of maximum Coefficient of determination (R2) va... [more]

The installed productive capacity of a healthcare center’s equipment limits the efficient use of its resources. This paper, therefore, analyzes the installed productive capacity of a hospital angiography room and how to optimize patient demand. For this purpose, a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model based on historical variables from the current system was created using computer software. The authors analyzed 2044 procedures performed between 2014 and 2015 in a hospital in San José, Costa Rica. The model was statistically validated to determine that it does not significantly differ from the current system, considering the DMAIC stages for continuous process improvement. In the current scenario, resource utilization is 0.99, and the waiting list increases every month. The results showed that the current capacity of the service could be doubled, and that resource utilization could be reduced to 0.64 and waiting times by 94%. An increase in service efficiency could be achieved by shorte... [more]

Suspended solids in the injection water cause impairment of water injectivity during waterflooding operations. Suspended solids affect reservoir properties and decrease the permeability of reservoir rocks causing an increase of injection pressure and a decrease in water injectivity. Removal of all suspended solids from injection water is an expensive and economically unfeasible process. To minimize the effects of suspended solids to the formation, it is necessary to determine an impairment mechanism of suspended solids on oil displacement and, therefore, optimize the water treatment process. In this paper, an analytical model that describes the relationship between injection water quality and impairment mechanisms on oil displacement is presented. A formation impairment was calculated, introducing the parameter called impairment ratio, which represents the ratio between suspended solids and pore size distribution of reservoir rock. Based on the impairment ratio, decreases in porosity a... [more]

A numerical model is created to simulate the discharge performance of aluminum-air batteries (AABs) with alkaline electrolyte. The discharge voltage and power density, as a function of the discharge current density, are predicted for the modeled AAB and compared with experimental measurements. A good agreement between model and experiment is found. The effect of various model parameters on the battery performance is studied by adjusting the parameters within a suitable range. The results show that electrolyte thickness is a key factor that can strongly increase the power density and the corresponding current density as the electrolyte thickness decreases. The peak of power density is increased by a factor of two if the electrolyte thickness is reduced from 7 mm to 3 mm. The alkaline concentration is also an important factor, since both the voltage and power density curves are significantly raised as the NaOH concentration is increased from 1 to 4 mol/L. The partial oxygen pressure play... [more]

Cupriavidus necator DSM 545 can utilise glycerol to synthesise poly(3-hydroxybutyric acid) under unbalanced growth conditions, i.e., nitrogen limitation. To improve poly(3-hydroxybutyric acid) (PHB) batch production by C. necator through model-guided bioprocessing or genetic engineering, insights into the dynamic effect of the fermentation conditions on cell metabolism are crucial. In this work, we have used dynamic flux balance analysis (DFBA), a constrained-based stoichiometric modelling approach, to study the metabolic change associated with PHB synthesis during batch cultivation. The model employs the ‘minimisation of all fluxes’ as cellular objectives and measured extracellular fluxes as additional constraints. The mass balance constraints are further adjusted based on thermodynamic considerations. The resultant flux distribution profiles characterise the evolution of metabolic states due to adaptation to dynamic extracellular conditions and provide further insights towards improv... [more]

The dynamics of the 3-dimensional flow of magnetized Carreau fluid past a paraboloid surface of revolution is studied through thermal radiation and mass transfer analysis. The impacts of Brownian motion and chemical reaction rate are considered on the flow dynamics. The system of nonlinear PDEs are converted to coupled ODEs by employing suitable transformation relations. The developed ODEs are solved by applying the standard procedure of homotopy analysis method (HAM). The impacts of various interesting parameters on the state variables of the Carreau fluid (velocity components, temperature, concentration, and shear stress) are explained through various graphs and tables. It is found that the horizontal velocity components augment with the rising magnetic parameter and Grashof number values. The fluid temperature augments with the higher values of the pertinent parameters except Prandtl number. The Nusselet number and fluid concentration enhance with the augmenting Brownian motion para... [more]

The deposition parameters involved in chemical bath deposition were optimized by a response surface methodology to synthesize upright ZnO rod arrays with large diameters. The effects of the factors on the preferential orientation, aspect ratio, and diameter were determined systematically and efficiently. The results demonstrated that an increased concentration, elevated reaction temperature, prolonged reaction time, and reduced molar ratio of Zn2+ to tri-sodium citrate could increase the diameter and promote the preferential oriented growth along the [002] direction. With the optimized parameters, the ZnO rods were grown almost perfectly vertically with the texture coefficient of 99.62. In the meanwhile, the largest diameter could reach 1.77 μm. The obtained rods were merged together on this condition, and a dense ZnO thin film was formed.

A new high γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) producing strain of Bacillus cereus was successfully isolated from soy sauce moromi. This B. cereus strain named KBC shared similar morphological characteristics (Gram-positive, rod-shaped) with the reference B. cereus. 16S rRNA sequence of B. cereus KBC was found to be 99% similar with B. cereus strain OPWW1 under phylogenetic tree analysis. B. cereus KBC cultivated in unoptimized conditions using De Man, Rogosa, Sharpe (MRS) broth was capable of producing 523.74 mg L−1 of GABA within five days of the cultivation period. By using response surface methodology (RSM), pH level, monosodium glutamate (MSG) concentration and temperature were optimized for a high concentration of GABA production. The pH level significantly influenced the GABA production by B. cereus KBC with p-value = 0.0023. GABA production by B. cereus KBC under the optimized condition of pH 7, MSG concentration of 5 g L−1 and temperature of 40 °C resulted in GABA production of 3393.02... [more]

Carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas, capture has recently become a crucial technological solution to reduce atmospheric emissions from fossil fuel burning. Thereafter, many efforts have been put forwarded to reduce the burden on climate change by capturing and separating CO2, especially from larger power plants and from the air through the utilization of different technologies (e.g., membrane, absorption, microbial, cryogenic, chemical looping, and so on). Those technologies have often suffered from high operating costs and huge energy consumption. On the right side, physical process, such as adsorption, is a cost-effective process, which has been widely used to adsorb different contaminants, including CO2. Henceforth, this review covered the overall efficacies of CO2 adsorption from air at 196 K to 343 K and different pressures by the carbon-based materials (CBMs). Subsequently, we also addressed the associated challenges and future opportunities for CBMs. According to this r... [more]

This study focuses on the techno-economic assessment integrated with detailed optimisation of a four step vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) process for post-combustion CO2 capture and storage (CCS) from steam-methane reformer dried flue gas containing 20 mol% CO2. The comprehensive techno-economic optimisation model developed herein takes into account VSA process model, peripheral component models, vacuum pump performance, scale-up, process scheduling and a thorough cost model. Three adsorbents, namely, Zeolite 13X and two metal-organic frameworks, UTSA-16 and IISERP MOF2 are optimised to minimise the CO2 capture cost. Monoethanolamine (MEA)-based absorption technology serves as a baseline case to assess and compare optimal techno-economic performances of VSA technology for three adsorbents. The results show that the four step VSA process with IISERP MOF2 outperforms other two adsorbents with a lowest CO2 capture cost (including flue gas pre-treatment) of 33.6 € per tonne of CO2 avoided an... [more]

Semicontinuous distillation is a new separation technology for distilling multicomponent mixtures.
This process was designed using design methodologies with heuristic components that evolved
over twenty years. However, the fundamental philosophy of these design methodologies, which
involves guessing, checking and then using a black-box optimization procedure to find the values
of the design variables to meet some performance criteria, has not changed. Mainly, to address the
problem of having a heuristic simulation termination criterion in the black-box optimization phase,
the single shooting method for semicontinuous distillation design was proposed in this study. We
envision that this is a first step in the transformation of the semicontinuous distillation design
process for obtaining optimal designs. We demonstrate the application of this method using two
case studies, which involve the separation of hexane, heptane and octane.

To improve the ability of the rice husk to purify colored wastewater, effluent from the alkaline scouring of cotton yarn was used immediately after the scouring (without cooling and additionally added chemicals) in order to remove the non-cellulosic silicon-lignin shield from the rice husk’s surface. This rice husk, with 93.8 mg/g adsorption capacity, behaves similarly as the rice husk treated with an optimized alkaline scouring recipe consisting of 20 g/L NaOH, 2 mL/L Cotoblanc HTD-N and 1 mL/L Kemonecer NI at 70 °C for 30 min with an adsorption capacity of 88.9 mg/g of direct Congo red dye. Treating one form of waste (rice husk) with another (effluent from the alkaline scouring of cellulosic plant fibers), in an effort to produce a material able to purify colored effluent, is an elegant environment-friendly concept based on the circular economy strategy. This will result in a closed-loop energy-efficient process of the pre-treatment of cotton (alkaline scouring), modification of rice... [more]

In tropical countries, such as Thailand, the variation of tree moisture content can be significant based on seasonal variations in rainfall. Pulp mill operation optimization accounting for wood moisture variation was used to determine optimal operation conditions and minimize production cost. The optimization models were built using empirical modeling techniques with simulated data from the IDEAS software package. Three case studies were performed. First, a base case of nominal annual operation at a fixed production rate was used to calculate production cost that varies with wood moisture content. The second case is annual optimization where production was allowed to vary monthly over an annual cycle to minimize production cost. For the third case, real-time optimization (RTO) was used to determine optimal production rate with the wood moisture content varying every 3 days. The rolling horizon approach was used to schedule production to keep inventory levels within bounds and with a pe... [more]

As a type of airtight conveying mode, pneumatic conveying has the advantages of environmental friendliness and conveying without dust overflow. The application of the pneumatic conveying system in the field of coal particle conveying can avoid direct contact between coal particles and the atmosphere, which helps to reduce the concentration of air dust and improve environmental quality in coal production and coal consumption enterprises. In order to predict pressure drop in the pipe during the horizontal pneumatic conveying of large coal particles, the Lagrangian coupling method and DPM (discrete particle model) simulation model was used in this paper. Based on the comparison of the experimental results, the feasibility of the simulation was verified and the pressure drop in the pipe was simulated. The simulation results show that when the flow velocity is small, the simulation results of the DPM model are quite different from that of the experiment. When the flow velocity is large, the... [more]

Deep learning based on a large number of high-quality data plays an important role in many industries. However, deep learning is hard to directly embed in the real-time system, because the data accumulation of the system depends on real-time acquisitions. However, the analysis tasks of such systems need to be carried out in real time, which makes it impossible to complete the analysis tasks by accumulating data for a long time. In order to solve the problems of high-quality data accumulation, high timeliness of the data analysis, and difficulty in embedding deep-learning algorithms directly in real-time systems, this paper proposes a new progressive deep-learning framework and conducts experiments on image recognition. The experimental results show that the proposed framework is effective and performs well and can reach a conclusion similar to the deep-learning framework based on large-scale data.

Laccase enzyme from white-rot fungi is a potential biocatalyst for the oxidation of emerging contaminants (ECs), such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals and steroid hormones. This study aims to develop a three-step platform to treat ECs: (i) enzyme production, (ii) enzyme concentration and (iii) enzyme application. In the first step, solid culture and liquid culture were compared. The solid culture produced significantly more laccase than the liquid culture (447 vs. 74 µM/min after eight days), demonstrating that white rot fungi thrived on a solid medium. In the second step, the enzyme was concentrated 6.6 times using an ultrafiltration (UF) process, resulting in laccase activity of 2980 µM/min. No enzymatic loss due to filtration and membrane adsorption was observed, suggesting the feasibility of the UF membrane for enzyme concentration. In the third step, concentrated crude enzyme was applied in an enzymatic membrane reactor (EMR) to remove a diverse set of ECs (31 compounds in six group... [more]

TiO2 nanoparticles were prepared via an electrochemical method using pulse alternating current and applied in the photocatalytic oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) to 2,5-diformylfuran (DFF). Its physicochemical properties were characterized by SEM, HRTEM, XRD, and BET methods. The effect of scavenger and UVA light intensity was studied. The results revealed that electrochemically synthesized TiO2 nanoparticles exhibit higher DFF selectivity in the presence of methanol (up to 33%) compared with commercial samples.

The most promising direction for obtaining a unique combination of difficult-to-combine properties of low-carbon steels is the formation of a dispersed ferrite microstructure and a volumetric system of nanoscale phase precipitates. This study was aimed at establishing the special features of the composition influence on the characteristics of the microstructure, phase precipitates, and mechanical properties of hot-rolled steels of the ferritic class. It was carried out by transmission electron microscopy and testing the mechanical properties of metal using 8 laboratory melts of low-carbon steels microalloyed by V, Nb, Ti, and Mo in various combinations. It was found that block ferrite prevails in the structure of steel cooled after hot rolling at a rate of 10−15 °C/s. Lowering of the microalloying components content leads to a decrease in the block ferrite fraction to 20−35% and the dominance of polygonal ferrite. The presence of nanoscale carbide (carbonitride) precipitates of austeni... [more]

The discharge of toxic heavy metals including zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), and cadmium (Cd) in water above the permissible limits causes high threat to the surrounding environment. Because of their toxicity, heavy metals greatly affect the human health and the environment. Recently, better remediation techniques were offered using the nanotechnology and nanomaterials. The attentions were directed toward cost-effective and new fabricated nanomaterials for the application in water/wastewater remediation, such as zeolite, carbonaceous, polymer based, chitosan, ferrite, magnetic, metal oxide, bimetallic, metallic, etc. This review focused on the synthesis and capacity of various nanoadsorbent materials for the elimination of different toxic ions, with discussion of the effect of their functionalization on the adsorption capacity and separation process. Additionally, the effect of various experimental physicochemical factors on heavy metals adsorption, such... [more]

The isomerization of glucose-containing hydrolysates to fructose is a key step in the process from lignocellulosic biomass to the platform chemical hydroxymethylfurfural. We investigated the isomerization reaction of glucose to fructose in water catalyzed by hydrotalcite. Catalyst characterization was performed via IR, XRD, and SEM. Firstly, glucose solutions at pH-neutral conditions were converted under variation of the temperature, residence time, and catalyst loading, whereby a maximum of 25 wt.% fructose yield was obtained at a 38 wt.% glucose conversion. Secondly, isomerization was performed at pH = 2 using glucose solutions as well as glucose-containing hydrolysates from lignocellulosic biomass. Under acidic conditions, the hydrotalcite loses its activity for isomerization. Consequently, it is unavoidable to neutralize the acidic hydrolysate before the isomerization step with an inexpensive base. As a neutralizing agent NaOH is preferred over Ba(OH)2, since higher fructose yields... [more]

Following the success of and the high demand for recombinant protein-based therapeutics during the last 25 years, the pharmaceutical industry has invested significantly in the development of novel treatments based on biologics. Mammalian cells are the major production systems for these complex biopharmaceuticals, with Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines as the most important players. Over the years, various engineering strategies and modeling approaches have been used to improve microbial production platforms, such as bacteria and yeasts, as well as to create pre-optimized chassis host strains. However, the complexity of mammalian cells curtailed the optimization of these host cells by metabolic engineering. Most of the improvements of titer and productivity were achieved by media optimization and large-scale screening of producer clones. The advances made in recent years now open the door to again consider the potential application of systems biology approaches and metabolic engine... [more]