Engineering Commons^™

Surface Reservoirs Dominate Dynamic Gas-Surface Partitioning Of Many Indoor Air Constituents, Chen Wang, Douglas B. Collins, Caleb Arata, Allen H. Goldstein, James M. Mattila, Delphine K. Farmer, Laura Ampollini, Peter F. Decarlo, Atila Novoselac, Marina E. Vance, William W. Nazaroff, Jonathan P.D. Abbatt

Faculty Journal Articles

Human health is affected by indoor air quality. One distinctive aspect of the indoor environment is its very large surface area that acts as a poorly characterized sink and source of gas-phase chemicals. In this work, air-surface interactions of 19 common indoor air contaminants with diverse properties and sources were monitored in a house using fast-response, on-line mass spectrometric and spectroscopic methods. Enhanced-ventilation experiments demonstrate that most of the contaminants reside in the surface reservoirs and not, as expected, in the gas phase. They participate in rapid air-surface partitioning that is much faster than air exchange. Phase distribution calculations are …

Using Ftir-Atr To Predict Saccharification From Enzymatic Hydrolysis Of Physically Pretreated Lignocellulosic Biomass, Rajasri Alaparthi

Master’s Theses

Producing biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass (i.e., non-edible plants) can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The main challenge in converting lignocellulose to fuel, however, lies in the bioconversion process of biomass to sugars. To overcome the recalcitrance of the plant cell walls, pretreatment (e.g., ball milling) can be coupled with enzymatic hydrolysis to produce sugar monomers (e.g., glucose and xylose). The research question in this thesis study was “Can Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy Attenuated Total Reflectance (FTIR-ATR) applied to untreated and physically pretreated lignocellulosic biomasses coupled with chemometric analysis predict sugar yields from enzymatic hydrolysis?” PLS models were constructed by correlating the …

Aqueous And Oil Products From Hydrothermal Liquefaction Of Manure Digestate, Kenzie Burns

Honors Theses

Hydrothermal liquefaction is a promising thermochemical waste-to-energy (WtE) technology for conversion of wet biomasses, such as manure and digested manure, into value-added products, namely energy-rich biofuel and a nutrient-rich aqueous product. WtE technologies can address environmental issues relating to overproduction of organic wastes and increasing dependence on fossil fuels, which leads to climate change. HTL has not been implemented on a commercial scale, in part due to the uncertainty regarding specific reaction pathways for different feedstocks and ideal conditions for production of the most valuable products.

This research investigates the compositions of the aqueous and oil products from HTL of …