Chemical Engineering Commons^™

Fabrication Of Flexible, Biofunctional Architectures From Silk Proteins, Ramendra K. Pal

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in the biomedical field require functional materials and processes that can lead to devices that are biocompatible, and biodegradable while maintaining high performance and mechanical conformability. In this context, a current shift in focus is towards natural polymers as not only the structural but also functional components of such devices. This poses material-specific functionalization and fabrication related questions in the design and fabrication of such systems. Silk protein biopolymers from the silkworm show tremendous promise in this regard due to intrinsic properties: mechanical performance, optical transparency, biocompatibility, biodegradability, processability, and the ability to entrap and stabilize biomolecules. The unique …

Renewable Carbon From Lignin Biomass And Its Electrode And Catalyst Applications In Batteries, Supercapacitors, And Fuel Cells, Muslum Demir

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last century, almost all of the carbon materials developed for the energy industry are derived from fossil fuels. The growing global concerns about energy needs, fossil fuels consumption, and the related environmental issues have motived scientists to find new, green and sustainable energy resources such as the wind, solar and biomass energy. Essentially, biomass-derived materials can be utilized in energy storage and conversion devices such as Li-ion batteries, fuel cells, and supercapacitors. Among the biomass resources, lignin is a high volume byproduct from the pulp and paper industry and is currently burned to generate electricity and steam. The …

Evaluation Of Combined Low-Salinity Water And Microgel Treatments To Improve Oil Recovery Using Partial Fractured Carbonate Models, Ali K. Alhuraishawy, Baojun Bai

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Combining two methods in one process to enhance oil recovery represents a needed cost savings in the oil industry. Microgels are used as conformance control agents to improve oil sweep efficiency and control excess water production. Low-salinity waterflooding (LSWF) is used as a wettability alteration agent in carbonate reservoirs and improves displacement efficiency. This paper offers a comprehensive understanding of the combined technology through laboratory experiments. The focus of this study is to see how microgels and low water salinity perform in porous media by creating flow resistance to injected fluid thereby changing the wettability and enhancing the sweep and …

Analysis Of Ior Pilots In Bakken Formation By Using Numerical Simulation, Dheiaa Alfarge, Mingzhen Wei, Baojun Bai, Mortadha Alsaba

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Bakken is the most productive formation among unconventional plays in North America. This formation has 7.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil. However, the primary oil recovery is still low as 5-10%. Miscible natural gas and carbon dioxide (CO₂) might be the most two potential strategies to improve oil recovery in such complex play. In this study, some of the IOR pilots which have been conducted in Montana, North Dakota, and South Saskatchewan have been presented. The performance results of these pilots in US-Bakken versus Canadian-Bakken have been compared. Moreover, the reasons beyond the successful IOR pilots in Canadian-Bakken …

Optimizing Injector-Producer Spacing For Co2 Injection In Unconventional Reservoirs Of North America, Dheiaa Alfarge, Mingzhen Wei, Baojun Bai, Abdullah Almansour

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Shale oil reservoirs such as Bakken, Niobrara, and Eagle Ford have become the main target for oil and gas investors as conventional formations started to deplete and diminish in number. These reservoirs have a huge oil potential; however, the predicted primary oil recovery is still low as average of 7.5 %. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) flooding has been a controversial approach to increase oil recovery in these poor-quality formations. This study investigated the effect of injector-producer spacing, in range of 925-1664 ft, on CO₂ performance in these plays by using numerical simulation methods. CO₂ utilization value under …

2016-2017 Che Newsletter, Department Of Chemical Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Department of Chemical Engineering Newsletters

Table of Contents

• Department
• Convocation
• Student News
• Faculty
• Alumni & Friends

Time Series Pattern Discovery Techniques For Well-To-Well Log Correlation, Chanchai Apiwatsakulchai

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Well log data is one of the most abundant data sources for subsurface characterization since almost all drilled wells are logged. Subsurface characterization requires correlated well log information. Processes to help perform well-to-well log correlation have been developed in this study based on the two approaches: pattern matching and pattern discovery. Pattern matching focuses on finding a known pattern of interest in uncorrelated wells. The use of Euclidean, Hamming, and Levenshtein distances in similarity measurement, Piecewise Aggregate Approximation (PAA), and Symbolic Aggregate approXimation (SAX) data representation helps create reduced-resolution while maintains the main characteristics of the signals. Multi-resolution analysis provides …

Coal Combustion Products Utilization For Soil Amendment, Tran Thi Anh Tuyet

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Nowadays, coal has a crucial role in generating energy all over the world. As a result, the consumption of coal creates a huge amount of coal combustion products, including bottom ash and fly ash. The coal ash has the potential characteristics to become a resource material in agriculture such as its texture, water holding capacity, bulk density, pH etc., and contains almost all the essential plant nutrients. However, most of the coal ash created is dumped into the landfill, which is a contributing factor in the environmental degradation. This study wants to use coal ash in agriculture as a way …

Assisted Methane Hydrate Formation With The Addition Of Promoters, Chutikan Jaikwang

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Natural gas hydrates play an important role in the largest reservoir of hydrocarbons on earth. The gas hydrates have received increasing attention in an excellent way of new technology for gas in large quantity storage and transportation. However, the main challenge to use methane hy¬drates has faced many challenges such as the slow formation rate, low growth rate during hydrate formation, and low conversion ratio of gas to solid hydrates leading to poor storage capacity. In this work, methane hydrate formation and dissociation in the presence of different Cyclopentane (CP), Tetra-n-butyl phosphonium bromide (TBPB) and Tetra-n-butyl ammonium bromide (TBAB) concentrations …

Microbial Conversion Of Cellulose To Sugars By Bacterial Enzyme, Kessara Seneesrisakul

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This work studied the conversion of lignocellulosic materials to sugars, the intermediates for bioethanol production, by a bacterial enzyme. Due to the complex structure of lignocellulose, a cellulase enzyme cannot effectively access and hydrolyse cellulose fibers. Various pretreatment processes of lignocellulose have been studied to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis to date. In this work, corncob was firstly studied for microbial pretreatment using three microorganisms including two bacterial strains of Bacillus subtilis A 002 and Cellulomonas sp. TISTR 784 and a fungal strain of Phanerochaete sordida SK7. The results showed that the microbial pretreatment with P. sordida SK7 was the most effective …

Effects Of Bead Size And Concentration Of Unstable Asphaltenes Obtained From Different Centrifugation Techniques On Asphaltene Deposition In Packed Bed Apparatus, Kimchhay Lao

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Asphaltenes are the heaviest and most polar fraction of petroleum crude oil. They are the collection of components that can be soluble in aromatics solvents such as benzene or toluene, but insoluble in normal alkanes, n-pentane, n-hexane, or n- heptane. Asphaltenes are a class of molecules consisted of grouped aromatic rings with alkane chains. Changing pressure, temperature, composition, and shear rate during transportation can cause precipitation and deposition, resulting in reduced reservoir productivity due to restricted flow lines, fouling and blockages in the pore spaces of the reservoir. The goal of this investigation is to assess validity of two aspects …

Adsorptive Bubble Separation For Oil Removal, Paweena Kanokkarn

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This present work emphasized on the current knowledge regarding (i) feasibility of multi-stage forth flotation operation for oil removal, and (ii) comprehension of dynamic surface tensions of surfactant solutions in relation to foam characteristics. A multi-stage forth flotation efficiency depends on the enhancement of interfacial adsorption and the number of bubble caps and tray. The operational parameters including foam height, air flow rate and feed flow rate were controlled to obtain the optimum process performance. Under the optimum conditions—a number of trays of 4, a foam height of 60 cm, an air flow rate of 40 L/min, a feed flow …

Investigation Of Asphaltene Aggregation Kinetics In The Presence Of Water-In-Oil Emulsion, Penpitcha Roengsamut

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Asphaltene is a component of the petroleum liquid defined operationally. It represents the most refractory (or the heaviest fraction). It is well-known that changes in temperature, pressure, or composition can destabilize asphaltenes and cause aggregation and deposition in porous formations, production lines, and processing facilities (Sheu and Mullins 1995). This leads to the study of the behavior of asphaltene aggregation and parameters that could affect the rate of aggregation which, in this case, is water-in-oil emulsion. In addition, the asphaltene aggregation model derived by Haji-Akbari (2013) is applied as a framework in this study which explains the correlation between the …

Study On Energy Storage Ability Of Zno/Tio2 For Photocatalytic Degradation Of Isopropanol, Ratchawan Jarumanee

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The photocatalytic degradation of isopropanol under UV irradiation was studied by using p-n junction of ZnO/TiO2 photocatalysts prepared by sol-gel technique. Their energy storage ability was tested with their photocatalytic activity where there was no UV illumination. That was investigated by illumination the system with UV light for 2 h and off for 2 h until 8 h. The composition and surface structure of the catalyst were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), surface area analysis, and particle size analysis. The change in the isopropanol concentration was observed by using gas chromatography. The result showed that the …

Vegetable Oil Based Microemulsion Biofuels, U-Larak Peson

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The growth of energy demand increases dramatically which has resulted in an increase of exhaust emissions to air quality deterioration. Therefore, there are driving forces in the development of renewable energy production technologies. Vegetable oils based reverse micelle microemulsions have been increased in attention for biofuel production. This work aims to formulate microemulsion biofuel containing palm oil/diesel blend as nonpolar phase, and ethanol/butanol, as a polar phase. The nonionic alcohol ethoxylate surfactant with the different numbers of EO groups, EOn (n=1, 3, 5, and 9) were selected as a stabilizing agent. A pseudo-ternary phase diagram was conducted to determine an …

Improvement Of Life Cycle Assessment Software And Its Applications, Yodsathorn Chavewanmas

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

LCSoft is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software which developed for perform LCA together with process design. It is a stand-alone tool with ability to be integrated with other process design tools such as process simulation software (PROII/ASPEN), economic analysis tool (ECON), and sustainable process design tool (SustainPro). In addition, several optional interpretation features are available such as, sensitivity analysis, alternative comparison, and eco-efficiency evaluation. In this research, LCSoft had been improved in performance and application range. The development framework consisted of four tasks. The first task deals with improvement of LCI and LCIA calculation which new pathway for calculation and …

Methane Adsorption By Carbon Molecular Sieve Derived From Polycarbonate And Polyaniline, Jakchai Thawornwatthanasirikul

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The adsorptions of methane by carbon molecular sieves (CMS) were investigated at 35°C and 45°C by volumetric apparatus with the pressure range from 0 to 800 psia. CMS was prepared from polymer precursors such as polycarbonate (PC) and polyaniline (PANI) by carbonization under nitrogen inert atmosphere and activation by CO2 at temperature 700, 800 and 900°C. The yield of CMS is decreased with increasing carbonization and activation temperature. The methane adsorption capacity at 35°C of CMS derived from PC is 2.82 mmol CH4/g. The methane adsorption of the samples from PC is higher than those obtained from PANI for the …

Effect Of Oxygen-Containing Functional Groups On Methane Adsorption By Activated Carbon, Kittima Dheerapreampree

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Natural gas has been applied as a fuel for vehicle because it is cheaper and cleaner burning than other fuels. In the vehicle, natural gas is ordinarily reserved by compressing and storing under high pressure at room temperature but this method has several limitations (e.g. low energy density, high weight of tank). Therefore, a porous material with high specific surface area (e.g. activated carbon) is suggested to eliminate the limitations of natural gas storage by compression, natural gas is adsorbed at relatively low pressure and room temperature. The adsorption capacity of activated carbons is related with their physical and chemical …

The Incipient Layer Of Wax Deposit, Tunya Ketjuntiwa

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The formation of the incipient layer of wax deposit when waxy oil is exposed to a cold surface is studied. Using a cold-finger apparatus, the evolution of deposit thickness is monitored with a video camera, allowing one to resolve the deposit layer formation from inception up to long times where deposit thickness no longer times where deposit thickness no longer grows. Characterization of wax deposits show that incipient layer has identical composition to waxy oil, indicating that deposit is not formed by a diffusion process. Modelling shows deposit formation at the investigated conditions cannot be explained by a diffusion process.

Material Flow Analysis (Mfa) Study For Sustainable Management Of Pvc Wastes In Thailand (Phase Iii), Wikanda Khomchu

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) products are used for domestic consumption more than 400,000 tons annually and tend to be increasing in Thailand. After discarded, these products will become wastes which are being accumulated and could cause several environmental problems if they are disposed by inappropriate method. In previous studies, our group investigated the material flow of PVC in Thailand to handle the PVC waste problems. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) model was developed to estimate the quantity and route of PVC wastes in Thailand. Furthermore, the primary data were collected from recycle shops and landfill sites were used to estimate the amount …