Chemical Engineering Commons^™

The Effects Of Diffusion, Capillary Heterogeneity, And Porous Media Morphology On Co2 Migration In Porous Media, Oluseye Babafemi Adeyemi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Modified Invasion Percolation (MIP) model was used to simulate the invasion of CO2 into a medium initially saturated with water and the style of capillary heterogeneity in combination with buoyancy and viscous forces were varied to yield 105 different simulation scenarios. Thereafter, the invasion of the CO2 gas is simulated using a finite difference model and the effective mass transfer coefficient is determined and linked to various styles of capillary heterogeneity. Results show that an increase in saturation does not result in an increase in mass transfer coefficient rather, the surface area, which in turn is controlled by the …

Development Of Silicon-Based Anodes And In-Situ Characterization Techniques For Lithium Ion Batteries, Jinho Yang

Wayne State University Dissertations

Development of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) with higher capacity has been booming worldwide, as growing concerns about environmental issues and increasing petroleum costs. The demands for the LIBs include high energy and power densities, and better cyclic stability in order to meet a wide range of applications, such as portable devices and electric vehicles. Silicon has recently been explored as a promising anode material due to its low discharge potential (<0.4 V) and high specific capacity (4200 mAh g^-1). The capacity of silicon potentially exceeds more than 10 times of the conventional graphite anode (372 mAh g^-1). However, the silicon anode experiences huge volume …

Evaluation Of Cotton Valley "D" Sand Production In Stampede Field, Mississippi, U.S.A., Patrick Lawrence Murphy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Degradable Borate Glass Polyalkenoate Cements, L. Shen, A. Coughlan, Mark R. Towler, M. Hall

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Glass polyalkenoate cements (GPCs) containing aluminum-free borate glasses having the general composition Ag₂O-Na₂O-CaO-SrO-ZnO- TiO₂-B₂O₃ were evaluated in this work. An initial screening study of sixteen compositions was used to identify regions of glass formation and cement compositions with promising rheological properties. The results of the screening study were used to develop four model borate glass compositions for further study. A second round of rheological experiments was used to identify a preferred GPC formulation for each model glass composition. The model borate glasses containing higher levels of TiO₂ (7.5 mol %) …

Scale-Up And On-Line Monitoring Of Gas-Solid Systems Using Advanced And Non-Invasive Measurement Techniques, Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan, Shreekanta Aradhya, Faraj Zaid, Neven Ali, Thaar Aljuwaya

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Industry relies on gas-solid systems for numerous processes. Flow dynamics play an important role in achieving the desired results. The present study proposes, validates and demonstrates a novel mechanistic scale-up approach based on maintaining similar radial profile or cross sectional distribution of gas holdup in two different gas-solid systems in order to achieve hydrodynamics similarity using advanced measurement techniques. This new methodology for scale-up and design has been implemented on gas-solid spouted bed which has been used for drying, granulation and coating. The development can be extrapolated to other gas-solid systems encountered in phosphate processes.

Atomic Layer Deposition, Paul Kubicza

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

Less Is More: Long-Term In Vitro Exposure To Low Levels Of Silver Nanoparticles Provides New Insights For Nanomaterial Evaluation, Kristen K. Comfort, Laura K. Braydich-Stolle, Elizabeth I. Maurer, Saber M. Hussain

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

In view of the vast number of new nanomaterials (NMs) that require testing and the constraints associated with animal models, the majority of studies to elucidate nanotoxicological effects have occurred in vitro, with limited correlation and applicability to in vivo systems and realistic, occupational exposure scenarios.

In this study, we developed and implemented a chronic in vitromodel coupled with lower, regulatory dosages in order to provide a more realistic assessment of NM-dependent consequences and illuminate the implications of long-term NM exposure. When keratinocytes were exposed to 50 nm silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs), we determined that chronically dosed cells operated …

Approximations To The Solution Of The Frank-Kamenetskii Equation In A Spherical Geometry, Moustafa A. Soliman

Chemical Engineering

In this paper, an approximate analytical solution for Frank-Kamenetskii equation modeling a thermal explosion in a sphere, is obtained. The approximate solution is obtained by perturbation methods in terms of small and large distance parameter. The approximate solution is compared with the numerical solution obtained from an initial value problem formulation to the original boundary value problem. The approximate solution obtained is valid for all values of the distance parameter. For the original boundary value problem and for a given Frank-Kamenetskii parameter, a nonlinear algebraic equation needs to be solved to be able to apply the approximate solution.

One-Step Production Of Long-Chain Hydrocarbons From Waste-Biomass-Derived Chemicals Using Bi-Functional Heterogeneous Catalysts, Cun Wen, Elizabeth A. Barrow, Jason R. Hattrick-Simpers, Jochen A. Lauterbach

Faculty Publications

n this study, we demonstrate the production of long-chain hydrocarbons (C₈₊) from 2-methylfuran (2MF) and butanal in a single step reactive process by utilizing a bi-functional catalyst with both acid and metallic sites. Our approach utilizes a solid acid for the hydroalkylation function and as a support as well as a transition metal as hydrodeoxygenation catalyst. A series of solid acids was screened, among which MCM-41 demonstrated the best combination of activity and stability. Platinum nanoparticles were then incorporated into the MCM-41. The Pt/MCM-41 catalyst showed 96% yield for C₈₊ hydrocarbons and the catalytic performance was stable …

Tuning The Underwater Oleophobicity Of Graphene Oxide Coatings Via Uv Irradiation, H. Li, Yi Huang, Y. Mao, W. Xu, Harry J. Ploehn, Miao Yu

Faculty Publications

Ultraviolet (UV) irradiation was utilized to gradually modify the chemistry and structure of graphene oxide (GO) flakes, as confirmed by XPS and AFM. Ultrathin GO coatings/membranes, made of UV-irradiated flakes, showed tunable underwater oleophobicity. UV-treated, superoleophobic GO membranes exhibited excellent antifouling capability for oil/water separation.

Effect Of Ionic Liquid Electrolytes In Dsscs With Titanium Dioxide (Tio2) Inverse Opal Structures, Naomi S. Ramesar

Dissertations and Theses

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are low-cost alternatives to conventional solar cells that can work well in low-light conditions. Despite considerable study on improving the efficiency of DSSCs, the current liquid electrolyte cell has plateaued at a conversion efficiency of ~ 12%. A major problem with these cells regarding their applicability is the low viscosity and high volatility of the toxic electrolyte, i.e., acetonitrile, which cause leakage and volatilization. We propose that using ionic liquids (ILs), which are more viscous, less volatile, and conductive, may be more suitable electrolytes. However, one unwanted side effect of the higher viscosity of the ILs …

Toward Polymer Coating With Easy Ice Release, Chenyu Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Minimizing adhesion of ice has been the subject of extensive studies for applications such aircraft wings, wind turbine blades spacecraft, power transmission wires, while a growing interest concerns coatings for aerospace applications. The work described here describes progress for coatings and ice release test method development over the last few years. Major achievements include: (1) New Rigid Adherent-Resistant Elastomers (RARE), (2) A new Epoxied Cylinder (EC) adhesion test, (3) Validation of an ice release test, and (4) Study of ice adhesion strength on coating thickness for a PDMS elastomer. Rigid Adhesion-Resistance Elastomers (RARE) are comprised of 3F 1 terminated with …

Spatial Moment Analysis Of Reactive And Radioactive Solute In River System With Layered Porous Bed, Shadab Anwar

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Mass exchange between river stream and riverbed is critical towards remediation of contaminated river system. Spatial moment analysis of reactive and radioactive solute in river channel with underlying porous bed is applied to understand the qualitative description of solute plume in riverbed and river stream. Semi-analytical solutions for zeroth-, first- and second-order spatial moment of reactive and radioactive solute are derived in Laplace domain. The spatial moments of concentration are numerically inverted. Parabolic velocity in river channel and exponentially decaying velocity in porous bed are linked using a slip velocity at the interface. The model is verified against the semi-analytical …

Factors Influencing Material Loss During Iron Ore Pellet Handling, Joseph A. Halt

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Iron ore concentrate pellets have the potential to fracture and abrade during transportation and handling, which produces unwanted fine particulates and dust. Consequently, pellet producers characterize the abrasion resistance of their pellets, using an Abrasion Index (AI), to indicate whether their products will produce unacceptable levels of fines. However, no one has ever investigated whether the AI correlates to pellet dustiness.

During the course of this research, we investigated the relationship between AI and iron ore concentrate pellet dustiness using a wide range of industrial and laboratory pellet samples. The results showed that, in general, AI can be used to …

Life Cycle Assessments (Lcas) Of Pyrolysis-Based Gasoline And Diesel From Different Regional Feedstocks: Corn Stover, Switchgrass, Sugar Cane Bagasse, Waste Wood, Guinea Grass, Algae, And Albizia, Matthew J. Mihalek

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Renewable hydrocarbon biofuels are being investigated as possible alternatives to conventional liquid transportation fossil fuels like gasoline, kerosene (aviation fuel), and diesel. A diverse range of biomass feedstocks such as corn stover, sugarcane bagasse, switchgrass, waste wood, and algae, are being evaluated as candidates for pyrolysis and catalytic upgrading to produce drop-in hydrocarbon fuels. This research has developed preliminary life cycle assessments (LCA) for each feedstock-specific pathway and compared the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the hydrocarbon biofuels to current fossil fuels. As a comprehensive study, this analysis attempts to account for all of the GHG emissions associated with each …

Purification And Effectiveness Of Vaccines And Antiviral Compounds, Maria F. Gencoglu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Viral infections account for over 13 million deaths per year. Antiviral drugs and vaccines are the most effective method to treat viral diseases. Antiviral compounds have revolutionized the treatment of AIDS, and reduced the mortality rate. However, this disease still causes a large number of deaths in developing countries that lack these types of drugs. Vaccination is the most effective method to treat viral disease; vaccines prevent around 2.5 million deaths per year. Vaccines are not able to offer full coverage due to high operational costs in the manufacturing processes. Although vaccines have saved millions of lives, conventional vaccines often …

Enzyme Optimization For Lignocellulose Hydrolysis Using Mechanistic Modeling, Adam S. Marlowe

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

A novel mechanistic model for the saccharification of cellulose and hemicellulose is utilized to predict the products of hydrolysis over a range of enzyme loadings and times. The mechanistic model considers the morphology of the substrate and the kinetics of enzymes to optimize enzyme concentrations for the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose and hemicellulose simultaneously. Substrates are modeled based on their fraction of accessible sites, glucan content, xylan content, and degree of polymerizations. This enzyme optimization model takes into account the kinetics of six core enzymes for lignocellulose hydrolysis: endoglucanase I (EG1), cellobiohydrolase I (CBH1), cellobiohydrolase II (CBH2), and endo-xylanase (EX) …

Characterizing And Improving Production Of Fermentable Sugars And Co-Products From A Forest Product Industry Wastewater Stream, Jifei Liu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Hardboard processing wastewater was evaluated as a feedstock in a bio refinery co-located with the hardboard facility for the production of fuel grade ethanol. A thorough characterization was conducted on the wastewater and the composition changes of which during the process in the bio refinery were tracked. It was determined that the wastewater had a low solid content (1.4%), and hemicellulose was the main component in the solid, accounting for up to 70%. Acid pretreatment alone can hydrolyze the majority of the hemicellulose as well as oligomers, and over 50% of the monomer sugars generated were xylose. The percentage of …

New Microfluidic System To Increase Robustness Of Electrode Performance And Develop Point-Of-Care Hematocrit Device, Hwi Yong Lee

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

The present dissertation aimed to develop a new microfluidic system for a point-of-care hematocrit device. Stabilization of microfluidic systems via surfactant additives and integration of semipermeable SnakeSkin® membranes was investigated. Both methods stabilized the microfluidic systems by controlling electrolysis bubbles. Surfactant additives, Triton X-100 and SDS stabilized promoted faster bubble detachment at electrode surfaces by lowering surface tension and decreased gas bubble formation by increasing gas solubility. The SnakeSkin® membranes blocked bubbles from entering the microchannel and thus less disturbance to the electric field by bubbles occurred in the microchannel. Platinum electrode performance was improved by carbonizing electrode surface using …

Investigation Of Air Jigging And Air Classification To Recover Metallic Particles From Analytical Samples, Hrishikesh Vilas Shinde

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Analyzing “nuggety” gold samples commonly produces erratic fire assay results, due to random inclusion or exclusion of coarse gold in analytical samples. Preconcentrating gold samples might allow the nuggets to be concentrated and fire assayed separately. In this investigation synthetic gold samples were made using similar density tungsten powder and silica, and were preconcentrated using two approaches: an air jig and an air classifier. Current analytical gold sampling method is time and labor intensive and our aim is to design a set-up for rapid testing. It was observed that the preliminary air classifier design showed more promise than the air …

Dynamics And Control Of Reactive Distillation Process For Monomer Synthesis Of Polycarbonate Plants, Mathkar Alawi A Alharthi

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Polycarbonate (PC) is an important engineering thermoplastic that is currently produced in large industrial scale using bisphenol A and monomers such as phosgene. Since phosgene is highly toxic, a non-phosgene approach using diphenyl carbonate (DPC) as an alternative monomer, as developed by Asahi Corporation of Japan, is a significantly more environmentally friendly alternative. Other advantages include the use of CO₂ instead of CO as raw material and the elimination of major waste water production. However, for the production of DPC to be economically viable, reactive-distillation units are needed to obtain the necessary yields by shifting the reaction-equilibrium to the …

2013-2014 Che Newsletter, Department Of Chemical Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Department of Chemical Engineering Newsletters

Table of Contents

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

Updated Screening Criteria For Steam Flooding Based On Oil Field Projects Data, Mariwan Qadir Hama

Masters Theses

"Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) screening is considered the first step in evaluating potential EOR techniques for candidate reservoirs. Therefore, as new technologies are developed, it is important to update the screening criteria. Many of the screening criteria for steam flooding that have been described in the literature were based on data collected from EOR surveys biennially published in the Oil & Gas Journal. However, these datasets contain some problems, including outliers, missing data, inconsistent data and duplicate data, that could affect the accuracy of the results. Despite the importance of ensuring the quality of a dataset before running analyses, data …

Theoretical Analysis Of Shape Separation Of Particles Using Flow Field-Flow Fractionation, Mehrdad Alfi

Masters Theses

"Size separation of spherical and rod-like particles in Flow Field-flow Fractionation was investigated theoretically. The effect of cross flow migration and rod orientation was also investigated as a new mode of study. It has been shown that the rod local orientation makes different diffusivity values in comparison with spherical particles and helps particle separation. Additionally, a new mechanism of lift-hypelayer mode was used for rod-like particles which can be compared with steric mode of spherical particles. This mechanism is said to be due to hydrodynamic interaction of rod-like particle with wall and with other rods.

As a measure of axial …

Aspen Simulation Of Furfural And Hydroxymethylfurfural Production From Biomass, Zachary Daniel King

Masters Theses

"Biomass field liquefaction is a concept where green biomass is chemically treated to produce organic liquids using small-scale equipment in the field. If liquefaction occurs as the crop is harvested, the energy requirements for growing the biomass can be charged to the crop as if the biomass were left in the field. The energy in the organic liquid product is available at the expense of the energy required by the process. A simplified process was simulated using ASPEN to assess the energy production feasibility.

Acid catalyzed liquefaction of cellulose and hemicellulose solids produces furfural and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). The simulation assumed …

Data Analysis And Summary For Surfactant-Polymer Flooding Based On Oil Field Projects And Laboratory Data, Pratap D. Chauhan

Masters Theses

"Enhanced oil recovery screening is considered as an important first step towards evaluating a potential EOR technique for a candidate reservoir. A vast amount of research is continuously been conducted in EOR. Therefore, it is imperative to update the screening criteria regularly.

This study involves updating the screening criteria for surfactant polymer flooding for field projects dataset and laboratory dataset. Many of the screening criteria for surfactant-polymer flooding in the literature were achieved on the basis of data collected from the EOR surveys published biennially in Oil & Gas Journals. However, these datasets contain problems like missing data and inconsistent …

Gel Treatment Field Application Survey For Water Shut Off In Production Wells, Jingyi Liao

Masters Theses

"Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) screening criteria are considered as a guideline for candidate evaluation and determination. Not many screening criteria for gel treatment had been published. Some published gel treatment application surveys for water shut off only include limited number of oil fields and locations.

The current work aims to summarize the worldwide gel treatment applications for water shut off in production wells by creating and analyzing a dataset from a variety of sources. This study started from collecting and cleaning the gel treatment application data. All the data were from SPE field publications from 1990 to 2012 and from …

Nanofiltration Membranes From Oriented Mesoporous Silica Thin Films, Mary K. Wooten

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

The synthesis of mesoporous silica thin films using surfactant templating typically leads to an inaccessible pore orientation, making these films not suitable for membrane applications. Recent advances in thin film synthesis provide for the alignment of hexagonal pores in a direction orthogonal to the surface when templated on chemically neutral surfaces. In this work, orthogonal thin film silica membranes are synthesized on alumina supports using block copolymer poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(propylene glycol)-block-poly(ethylene glycol) (P123) as the template. The orthogonal pore structure is achieved by sandwiching membranes between two chemically neutral surfaces, resulting in 90 nm thick films. Solvent flux of ethanol through …

Quartz Crystal Microbalance Investigation Of Cellulosome Activity From Clostridium Thermocellum On Model Cellulose Films, Shanshan Zhou

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

The cost of deconstructing cellulose into soluble sugars is a key impediment to the commercial production of lignocellulosic biofuels. The use of the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) to investigate reaction variables critical to enzymatic cellulose hydrolysis is investigated here, extending previous studies of fungal cellulase activity for the first time to whole cell cellulases. Specifically, the activity of the cellulases of Clostridium thermocellum, which are in the form of cellulosomes, was investigated. To clearly differentiate the activity of free cellulosome and cell-bound cellulosome, the distribution of free cellulosome and cell-bound cellulosome in crude cell broth at different growth stages …

Functionalized Membranes For Environmental Remediation And Selective Separation, Li Xiao

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

Membrane process including microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) have provided numerous successful applications ranging from drinking water purification, wastewater treatment, to material recovery. The addition of functional moiety in the membranes pores allows such membranes to be used in challenging areas including tunable separations, toxic metal capture, and catalysis. In this work, polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) MF membrane was functionalized with temperature responsive (poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), PNIPAAm) and pH responsive (polyacrylic acid, PAA) polymers. It’s revealed that the permeation of various molecules (water, salt and dextran) through the membrane can be thermally or pH controlled. The introduction of …