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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Application Of Various Adsorbents To Remove Micro-Pollutants In Aquatic System, Chanil Jung Dec 2014

Application Of Various Adsorbents To Remove Micro-Pollutants In Aquatic System, Chanil Jung

Theses and Dissertations

Untreated or insufficiently treated pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) as well as heavy metals have influenced the ecosystem and their exposures in the water system have threatened human health; causing cancers and adverse health effect to immune system. While various water treatment techniques have been applied to solve this problem, adsorption has been considered as one of the most efficient and manageable water purification techniques. Advanced analysis methods for aqueous contaminants have improved comprehension, allowing proficiency about the fate of trace leveled emerging contaminants, thus allowed to reveal the adsorption mechanisms of each pollutant. This dissertation focuses on the …


Treatment Of Synthetic Oil Sands Tailing Water With Activated Carbon, Alfredo Martinez Iglesias Dec 2014

Treatment Of Synthetic Oil Sands Tailing Water With Activated Carbon, Alfredo Martinez Iglesias

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The extraction of bitumen from the Canadian tar sands has thus far generated approximately 840 billion liters of oil sands process affected water (OSPW) that is currently being stored in containment ponds. OSPW is known to be acutely toxic to various organisms, due to the presence of naphthenic acids (NAs). The scale and sheer volume of OSPW being stored in tailing ponds have generated serious public concerns. Many emerging technologies have been investigated as treatment options for OSPW reclamation. This work studied the feasibility of using granular activated carbon (GAC) to adsorb several naphthenic acids in a model solution of …


Predictive Model Development For Adsorption Of Organic Contaminants By Carbon Nanotubes, Onur Apul Aug 2014

Predictive Model Development For Adsorption Of Organic Contaminants By Carbon Nanotubes, Onur Apul

All Dissertations

The main objective of the study was to investigate mechanisms and statistical modeling of synthetic organic contaminant (SOC) adsorption by carbon nanotubes (CNTs). First, predictive models were developed for adsorption of low molecular weight aromatic compounds by multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) using experimental data for 59 compounds. Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) and linear solvation energy relationship (LSER) approaches were employed and developed models were externally validated using an independent dataset obtained from the literature. Up to date, no QSAR model has been reported for predicting adsorption of organics by CNTs. No LSER model is available which comprehensively investigates the adsorption …


Adsorption Of Halogenated Aliphatic Contaminants By Graphene Nanomaterials: Comparison With Carbon Nanotubes And Granular Activated Carbons, Yang Zhou Aug 2014

Adsorption Of Halogenated Aliphatic Contaminants By Graphene Nanomaterials: Comparison With Carbon Nanotubes And Granular Activated Carbons, Yang Zhou

All Theses

Graphene nanomaterials are two-dimensional single layer sp2 hybridized carbon atoms densely packed in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice and can be visualized as basic building blocks for fullerenes, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and graphite. In addition, they are hydrophobic nanomaterials and possess a large specific surface area (SSA), thus they have been evaluated as promising adsorbents to remove synthetic organic compounds (SOCs) from water. As with granular activated carbons (GACs) and CNTs, adsorption behavior of SOCs on graphene depends on the physicochemical properties of the adsorbents (e.g., specific surface area, pore size distribution and surface chemistry), SOCs (e.g., hydrophobicity, molecular size and …


Removal And Recovery Of Heavy Metals By Nickel Smelter Slag, Maame Kyeiwaa Addai Jan 2014

Removal And Recovery Of Heavy Metals By Nickel Smelter Slag, Maame Kyeiwaa Addai

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research was performed to assess the potential of nickel smelter slag, an industrial waste, as an adsorbent in the removal of heavy metals from solution. Results from batch studies on the effect of pH, metal-slag contact time, particle size, competition by other ions and slag dose were used to estimate the optimum adsorption conditions of the slag as an adsorbent for Cu, Pb, Cd, Ni and Zn. Adsorption of Cu and Pb were akin to the pseudo second order kinetic model and followed the Langmuir adsorption isotherm model. The calculated k2 values were 0.18 mg g-1min …


A Psa Process For An Oxygen Concentrator, Aaron A. Moran Jan 2014

A Psa Process For An Oxygen Concentrator, Aaron A. Moran

ETD Archive

Oxygen is used in a variety of chemical processes and for medical purposes throughout the world. Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) has become a viable alternative to cryogenic distillation for the separation of oxygen from air with the development of advanced adsorbents like zeolites. PSA processes are inherently complex because it is a dynamic process. Efficient operation of a PSA process is necessary in order to utilize the capacity of the adsorbent as much as possible and reduce the power requirements of the process.In this thesis, a novel zeolite adsorbent was utilized in a PSA process for oxygen generation with the …


Mixed Surfactant Systems: Thermodynamics And Applications In Metal Oxide Imprinting, Suvid Joshi Jan 2014

Mixed Surfactant Systems: Thermodynamics And Applications In Metal Oxide Imprinting, Suvid Joshi

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

In this work we study mixtures of cationic surfactant (CTAB) and sugar based surfactant(s) (octyl beta-D-glucopyranoside (C8G1), dodecyl maltoside (C12G2) and octyl beta-D-xylopyranoside (C8X1)) to understand the non-ideal thermodynamic behavior of the mixtures of cationic and non-ionic surfactants in water and synthesis of imprinted materials. The thermodynamics of micellization, mixing and dilution of these systems are studied using Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) and the experimental data obtained are modeled with a pseudo-phase separation model with non-ideal mixing described by regular solution theory. It is shown that a model accounting for enthalpy of demicellization and enthalpy of dilution based on McMillan-Mayer …


The Effects Of Bam As An Adsorptive Media On Phosphorus Removal In Stormwater, Sultan Salamah Jan 2014

The Effects Of Bam As An Adsorptive Media On Phosphorus Removal In Stormwater, Sultan Salamah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To maintain the quality of receiving water bodies, it is desirable to remove total phosphorus (TP) in stormwater runoff. Many media filtration technologies have been developed to achieve TP and soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) removal. Efficient media adsorption is essential to insure control of stormwater phosphorus inputs to the receiving water body. This project develops and analyzes a functionalized Biosorption Media (BAM) to remove phosphorus species from stormwater runoff. One goal of this project is to find the BAM values for coefficients such as maximum adsorption capacity (QM: 4.35E-05) for the media through SRP isotherm equilibrium experiments using the Langmuir …


First-Principles Study Of The Electric Field Effect On The Water-Adsorbed Rutile Titanium Dioxide Surface, Abraham L. Hmiel Jan 2014

First-Principles Study Of The Electric Field Effect On The Water-Adsorbed Rutile Titanium Dioxide Surface, Abraham L. Hmiel

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

TiO2 is a semiconducting material that has been used extensively in many industrial applications, and recently has become a candidate for photocatalytic water splitting, fuel cell anode support materials, sensors, and other novel nanodevices. The interface of TiO2 with water, historically well-studied but still poorly understood, presents a ubiquitous environmental challenge towards the ultimate practical usefulness of these technologies. Ground-state density functional theory (DFT) calculations studying the characteristics of molecular adsorption on model surfaces have been studied for decades, showing constant improvement in the description of the energetics and electronic structure at interfaces. These simulations are invaluable in the …


Volume Swing Frequency Response Method For Determining Mass Transfer Mechanisms In Microporous Adsorbents, Mohammad Iftekhar Hossain Jan 2014

Volume Swing Frequency Response Method For Determining Mass Transfer Mechanisms In Microporous Adsorbents, Mohammad Iftekhar Hossain

Theses and Dissertations

Because of their numerous important applications in industrial catalytic, separation, and purification processes, miroporous materials have attracted considerable attention. Understanding the dynamic behavior of various gases in these porous materials is a critical step in designing, developing and effective operation of such kind of industrial processes. Frequency response (FR) methods have proven to be one of the best recently developed techniques and have been widely used to investigate kinetics behavior of various gas-solid systems due to their ability to discriminate among different rate limiting mechanisms. The current work has been focusing on the development of a volume swing frequency response …