Chemical Engineering Commons^™

Improving And Modeling Bacteria Recovery In Hollow Disk System, Clifton Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Identifying antibiotic resistance in blood infections requires separating bacteria from whole blood. A hollow spinning disk rapidly removes suspended red blood cells by leveraging hydrodynamic differences between bacteria and whole blood components in a centrifugal field. Once the red cells are removed, the supernatant plasma which contains bacteria is collected for downstream antibiotic testing. This work improves upon previous work by modifying the disk design to maximize fractional plasma recovery and minimize fractional red cell recovery. V-shaped channels induce plasma flow and increase fractional plasma recovery. Additionally, diluting a blood sample spiked with bacteria prior to spinning it increased the …

Purification Of Biomass Hydrolyzates For The Promotion Of Xylose Diester Formation, Laura Fernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The application of a novel xylose isolation procedure using phenyl boronic acid esterification has been limited to the hydrolyzates of low extractive biomasses like hardwoods and agricultural resides. Hydrolyzates with lower sugar and higher extractive concentrations, like softwoods, have not yielded xylose, or even xylose diester (XDE), the first intermediate product in the new process, under the same conditions. This research applied evaporation concentration, adsorbent separation and membrane filtration to these lower performing biomass hydrolyzates to maximize the yield of the XDE formation step of the new xylose extraction process. Lab-scale tests of these techniques were applied to pine hydrolyzate …

Fabrication Of Polyvinylidene Fluoride Hollow Fiber Membranes For Membrane Distillation, Abdullah Al Balushi

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Desalination technologies can help humanity tap into the most abundant source of water on earth, seawater; however, desalination is an energy-demanding process. Most of the desalination plants worldwide use conventional energy resources; therefore, desalination leaves a large carbon footprint. Solar energy is an available source of energy that can be harvested and integrated into desalination systems.

Membrane distillation (MD) is an emerging purification technology that many offers many advantages over traditional desalination systems. For starters, it can utilize low-grade thermal energy to drive the separation, therefore, it can be suitably integrated into the solar-thermal energy scheme. Additionally, MD can be …

A Study Of Protein And Peptide-Directed Nanoparticle Synthesis For Catalytic Materials, Abdollah Mosleh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nanoparticles have received much attentions due to their unique properties that makes them suitable candidates for a broad range of applications. As the size of particles decreases, their surface area-to-volume ratio would increase which is the main cause of much attention. In addition to the size, their morphologies and compositions may also play important roles for defining unique properties. Nanoparticle synthesis include both bottom-up and top-down strategies. To control the process of inorganic nanoparticles synthesis one could follow the bottom-up approach to have atom-level control over their compositions, morphologies, phases, and sizes which is the subject of this work. Due …

Engineered Carbon-Nanocatalyst Composites And Carbon Mixed ‎Matrix Membranes ‎For Water And Wastewater Treatment ‎, Mojtaba Abolhassani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Carbonaceous materials such as graphene oxide, and activated ‎carbon have a wide range of ‎applications in water and wastewater treatment due to the high surface ‎area, unique structure, ‎and chemical and thermal stability. Carbon-based materials can be used as a ‎membrane, an ‎adsorbent, a support for nanomaterials, or ‎as a filler within membranes to remove contaminants ‎from water. In this research, the specific carbon materials and how their properties influence their ‎use and performance in ‎specific engineering applications is explored. ‎

Here, membrane filtration and adsorption/degradation of the water and wastewater using carbon-‎based material are investigated. The research firstly focuses …

Process/Equipment Design Implications For Control System Cybersecurity, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

An emerging challenge for process safety is process control system cybersecurity. An attacker could gain control of the process actuators through the control system or communication policies within control loops and potentially drive the process state to unsafe conditions. Cybersecurity has traditionally been handled as an information technology (IT) problem in the process industries. In the literature for cybersecurity specifically of control systems, there has been work aimed at developing control designs that seek to fight cyberattacks by either giving the system appropriate response mechanisms once attacks are detected or seeking to make the attacks difficult to perform. In this …

Thermostable Lyoprotectant-Enhanced Cell-Free Protein Synthesis For On-Demand Endotoxin-Free Therapeutic Production, Kristen M. Wilding, Emily Long Zhao, Conner C. Earl, Bradley Charles Bundy

Faculty Publications

Cell-free protein synthesis has emerged as a promising platform for the production of therapeutic proteins due to its inherently open reaction environment, flexible reaction conditions and rapid protein synthesis capabilities. In recent years, lyophilized cell-free systems have widened the application space of cell-free technology by improving reagent stability outside of cold-chain storage. Current embodiments of the system, however, demonstrate poor stability at elevated temperatures. Lyoprotectants have long been recognized for the ability to preserve the activity of biological molecules during drying processes, but the application of this technology to lyophilized cell-free systems has been limited and has failed to address …

The Statistics Of Directed Evolution: From Library Generation To High Throughput Screens, Keith Tyo

Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXI

Directed evolution has been recognized as a powerful approach to creating enzymes and cells with desirable properties, such as growth on a new substrate, thermotolerance, or even novel reaction mechanisms. The directed evolution approach is to generate diversity through genetic mutations and screen the diversity for mutants that have improved properties compared to the parent. This diversification and screening can be repeated to generate mutants with superior properties.

While the concept is straightforward, the devil is in the details. How should I create diversity (error prone PCR, mutagenic primers, transposons…)? How much diversity do I need (10³, 10 …

K-Fit: Parameterizing Kinetic Models Of Metabolism Using Multiple Fluxomic Datasets, Costa Maranas

Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXI

Kinetic models predict the metabolic flows by directly linking metabolite concentrations and enzyme levels to reaction fluxes. Robust parameterization of organism-level kinetic models that faithfully reproduce the effect of different genetic or environmental perturbations remains an open challenge due to the intractability of existing algorithms. This paper introduces K-FIT, an accelerated kinetic parameterization workflow that leverages a novel decomposition approach to identify steady-state fluxes in response to genetic perturbations followed by a gradient-based update of kinetic parameters until predictions simultaneously agree with the fluxomic data in all perturbed metabolic networks. The applicability of K-FIT to large-scale models is demonstrated by …

Biologicalisation: A Nature-Based Digital Manufacturing Revolution, William Whitford

Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXI

Industry 4.0 is changing our manufacturing concepts [1]. Biologicalisation is the use of 4.0 principals in concert with biological and bio-inspired materials, chemistries and functions to support an efficient and sustainable manufacturing schema. From product design, to development and manufacturing, biomimetic product designs and bio-integrated manufacturing systems describe this biological transformation of manufacturing [2].

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract.

Advanced Technologies And Computational Modeling In Continuous Bioprocessing Heather Brooke, Pall Corporation, Usa, Heather Brooke, Edita Botonjic-Sehic

Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXI

Biotech companies have been emphasizing the implementation and utilization of process analytical technology (PAT) and chemometrics in biomanufacturing. Advanced technologies and computation modeling have contributed significantly in making this capability come to life. Although there are still gaps in the area of advanced analytics for the process, computation modeling has started to contribute towards process characterization, which will lead to real-time process control. PAT and modeling infrastructure can be utilized in integrated continuous bioprocessing to gain better process understating, reduce production cycle time, improve yield, advance efficiency by converting from a batch process into a continuous process, and reduce cost …

Conference Program, Christina Chan, Mattheos Koffas, Steffen Schaffer, Rashmi Kshirsagar

Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXI

No abstract provided.

Physico-Chemical Characteristics Of Ethanol–Diesel Blend Fuel, Tarek M. Aboul-Fotouh, Eslam Alaa, M. A. Sadek, Hany A. Elazab Dr

Chemical Engineering

In this research we are discussing the physicochemical characteristics of sweet diesel after desulphurization alone and also these characteristics are tested with the adding of high purity HPLC ethanol (99.9%). Those fuel properties of ethanol blended with diesel were experimentally determined to find their stability and to increase their properties and efficiency in the diesel engines. First we made 4 blends of diesel with ethanol and the fifth sample was pure diesel. The samples were 0% ethanol and 100 % diesel, the second sample was 5% ethanol and 95 % diesel, the third sample was 10 % ethanol and 90% …

High Octane Number Gasoline-Ether Blend, Hany A. Elazab Dr

Chemical Engineering

Gasoline produced in Egypt is a low-grade gasoline that contains high concentration of harmful components that are having a toll on our environment. In addition, those pollutants cause countless diseases and deaths annually to the Egyptian population. This paper targets two main sectors in the production of commercial gasoline. The improvement engine efficiency through the upgrading of octane number is first experimented by using a blendstock that ranges from gasoline fractions and Isomerates. An optimum was then chosen depending on the results obtained from different tests. Through those experiments, it was determined which samples obeyed the EU regulation for transportation …

Beneficial Reuse Of Industrial Co2 Emissions Using A Microalgae Photobioreactor: Waste Heat Utilization Assessment, Daniel T. Mohler, Michael H. Wilson, Zhen Fan, John G. Groppo, Mark Crocker

Center for Applied Energy Research Faculty and Staff Publications

Microalgae are a potential means of recycling CO₂ from industrial point sources. With this in mind, a novel photobioreactor (PBR) was designed and deployed at a coal-fired power plant. To ascertain the feasibility of using waste heat from the power plant to heat algae cultures during cold periods, two heat transfer models were constructed to quantify PBR cooling times. The first, which was based on tabulated data, material properties and the physical orientation of the PBR tubes, yielded a range of heat transfer coefficients of 19–64 W m⁻² K⁻¹ for the PBR at wind speeds of 1–10 …

Phosphine Oxide Containing Poly(Pyridinium Salt)S As Fire Retardant Materials, Maksudul M. Alam, Bidyut Biswas, Alexi K. Nedeltchev, Haesook Han, Asanga D. Ranasinghe, Pradip K. Bhowmik, Kisholoy Goswami

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Research

Six new rugged, high-temperature tolerant phosphine oxide-containing poly(4,4′-(p-phenylene)-bis(2,6-diphenylpyridinium)) polymers P-1, P-2, P-3, P-4, P-5, and P-6 are synthesized, characterized, and evaluated. Synthesis results in high yield and purity, as confirmed by elemental, proton (1H), and carbon 13 (13C) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra analyses ... See full text for complete abstract.

High Octane Number Gasoline-Ether Blend, Tarek M. Aboul-Fotouh, Sherif K. Ibrahim, M. A. Sadek, Hany A. Elazab

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Gasoline produced in Egypt is a low-grade gasoline that contains high concentration of harmful components that are having a toll on our environment. In addition, those pollutants cause countless diseases and deaths annually to the Egyptian population. This paper targets two main sectors in the production of commercial gasoline. The improvement engine efficiency through the upgrading of octane number is first experimented by using a blend stock that ranges from gasoline fractions and Isomerates. An optimum was then chosen depending on the results obtained from different tests. Through those experiments, it was determined which samples obeyed the EU regulation for …

Bioproduction Of Adipic Acid Using Engineered Pseudomonas Putida Kt2440 From Lignin-Derived Aromatics, Howard Willett

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Current industrial synthesis of adipic acid is nonrenewable and depends on a carcinogenic starting material, benzene. Biocatalysis with an engineered microorganism could turn a renewable feedstock into a value-added chemical such as adipic acid. Here we engineered P. putida KT2440 to transform lignin-derived aromatics, coumarate and ferulate, into adipic acid. Lignin is a recalcitrant plant biopolymer burned for thermal energy. Conversion of lignin into a value-added chemical will improve the efficiency of lignocellulose processing plants. The best performing engineered KT2440 strain produces 2.52 mM adipate at a 9.5% (mole/mole) yield. This was achieved by the genetic insertion of non-natural biosynthetic …

Enabling High Energy Density Aluminum Anodes For Alkaline Batteries, Xinyi Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

Zn-MnO₂ primary alkaline batteries stood out immediately among all batteries after it was introduced in the late 1980s and has attracted world-wide attention. These batteries have dominated the portable power market for decades as a highly effective energy storage system with high energy density, long life and low self-discharge, dependable safety and other superiorities.

In order to achieve higher cell-level energy density, Aluminum has long been considered a very attractive anode material for alkaline batteries because of its high theoretical capacity (2980 mAh/g; 2.60 Ah/cm³) and low price. However, some early efforts to utilize aluminum anodes did …

Liquid Phase Modeling In Heterogeneous Catalysis, Mohammad Shamsus Saleheen

Theses and Dissertations

Conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into transportation fuels or commodity and specialty chemicals will be an important and fast-growing industry within the United States over the coming decades. Its growth will be driven by a variety of factors, including increased energy demands, environmental considerations, national security, and government mandates. To achieve the desired energy efficiency and economic impact, the emerging biorefining industries need novel heterogeneous catalysts with exceptional activity, selectivity, and stability. Catalytic materials developed in the petrochemical industries are generally not suitable for processing highly functionalized feedstocks typical of the biorefinery landscape. Due to the characteristics of this biomass feedstock …

Flame Spray Pyrolysis Of Ce-Mn Solid Solutions For Catalytic Applications, Nicole Cordonnier

Theses and Dissertations

Flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) is a method of quickly synthesizing active particles in a flame. Precursors are dissolved in a flammable organic solvent before being sprayed into the flame environment where they rapidly burn. Particle formation occurs on the order of 10 milliseconds. FSP has been shown to be a viable method of producing materials on an industrial scale, capable of producing grams of particles per minute. Metastable structures which exist in the liquid phase, but are difficult to synthesize using traditional impregnation methods can be formed with FSP due to fast quenching times. For example, solid solutions of Ce-Zr …

Energy Transformation And Conservation Investigation, Mike Jackson, Holly Haney

High School Lesson Plans

Students will use a thermoelectric generator module to analyze the relationship between thermal and electrical energies. Using data collection sensors and analysis software, students will investigate the relationship between the temperature gradient across a thermoelectric generator module and the resulting electrical potential. Students will then use their data and analysis to solve problems relating to waste thermal energy in electrical systems and communicate their work to their peers and teacher.

Correlating Pressure, Fluidization Gas Velocities, Andsolids Mass Flowrates In A High-Pressurefluidized Bed Coal Feed System, Jacob Talailetalalelei Tuia

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis was to understand what parameters would be most impactful when delivering dry, pulverized coal in a dilute-phase, with a high-pressure feed-system to a pressurized oxy-combustion (POC) reactor. Many studies have conveyed materials in dense-phase plugs at high-pressure or in dilute-phase flows at atmospheric pressure. Very few studies have fluidized and conveyed materials in dilute-phase flows at high pressure, as we needed to. Additionally, studies which might have been applicable based upon system -pressure and -phase delivered findings that were empirically based and therefore not specifically applicable to non-similar systems. 220 different tests were ran using …

Ranking And Clustering Of Drosophila Olfactory Receptors Using Mathematical Morphology, Jayanta Kumar Das, Pabitra Pal Choudhury, Neelambuj Chaturvedi, Mohd Tayyab, Sk Sarif Hassan

Journal Articles

This article introduces an alignment-free clustering method in order to cluster all the 66 DORs sequentially diverse protein sequences. Two different methods are discussed: one is utilizing twenty standard amino acids (without grouping) and another one is using chemical grouping of amino acids (with grouping). Two grayscale images (representing two protein sequences by order pair frequency matrices) are compared to find the similarity index using morphology technique. We could achieve the correlation coefficients of 0.9734 and 0.9403 for without and with grouping methods respectively with the ClustalW result in the ND5 dataset, which are much better than some of the …

Physico-Chemical Characteristics Of Ethanol–Diesel Blend Fuel, Tarek M. Aboul-Fotouh, Eslam Alaa, M. A. Sadek, Hany A. Elazab

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this research we are discussing the physicochemical characteristics of sweet diesel after desulphurization alone and also these characteristics are tested with the adding of high purity HPLC ethanol (99.9%). Those fuel properties of ethanol blended with diesel were experimentally determined to find their stability and to increase their properties and efficiency in the diesel engines. First, we made 4 blends of diesel with ethanol and the fifth sample was pure diesel. The samples were 0% ethanol and 100 % diesel, the second sample was 5% ethanol and 95 % diesel, the third sample was 10 % ethanol and 90% …

Advanced Measurement Techniques For Enabling Multiphase Reactors And Flow Systems For Sustainable And Cleaner Processes, Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Carbon Nanotube And Cellulose Nanocrystal Hybrid Films, Mingzhe Jiang, Robert Seney, Paul Charles Bayliss, Christopher L. Kitchens

Publications

The use of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) in high performance coatings is attractive for micro-scale structures or device fabrication due to the anisotropic geometry, however CNC are insulating materials. Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are also rod-shaped nanomaterials that display high mechanical strength and electrical conductivity. The hydrophobic regions of surface-modified CNC can interact with hydrophobic CNT and aid in association between the two anisotropic nanomaterials. The long-range electrostatic repulsion of CNC plays a role in forming a stable CNT and CNC mixture dispersion in water, which is integral to forming a uniform hybrid film. At concentrations favorable for film formation, the multiwalled …

Notes On The Economics Of Residential Hybrid Energy System, Mahelet G. Fikru, Gregory M. Gelles, Ana M. Ichim, Joseph D. Smith

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Despite advances in small-scale hybrid renewable energy technologies, there are limited economic frameworks that model the different decisions made by a residential hybrid system owner. We present a comprehensive review of studies that examine the techno-economic feasibility of small-scale hybrid energy systems, and we find that the most common approach is to compare the annualized life-time costs to the expected energy output and choose the system with the lowest cost per output. While practical, this type of benefit—cost analysis misses out on other production and consumption decisions that are simultaneously made when adopting a hybrid energy system. In this paper, …

Modeling The Interplay Between Photosynthesis, Co2 Fixation, And The Quinone Pool In A Purple Non-Sulfur Bacterium, Adil Alsiyabi

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Rhodopseudomonas palustris CGA009 is a purple non-sulfur bacterium (PNSB) that can fix CO₂ and nitrogen or break down organic compounds for its carbon and nitrogen requirements. Light, inorganic, and organic compounds can all be used for its source of energy. Excess electrons produced during its metabolic processes can be exploited to produce hydrogen gas or biodegradable polyesters (polyhydroxybutyrate). A genome-scale metabolic model of the bacterium was reconstructed to study the interactions between photosynthesis, carbon dioxide fixation, and the redox state of the quinone pool. A comparison of model-predicted flux values with published in vivo MFA fluxes resulted in predicted …

Recycling Of The Mixture Resulted From Roller Kiln Waste And Ceramic Tiles Sludge Waste In The Manufacturing Of Ceramic Floor Tiles, Mai H. Roushdy

Chemical Engineering

Ceramic tiles industry produced many types of wastes that are routinely discarded as stock piles. One of the environmental problems associated with roller kilns is the periodic need to grind its rollers which results in a waste powder. The second type of waste is ceramic tiles sludge which produced from a water treatment plant in the ceramic tiles factory. This paper investigates the probability of substituting part of the main body of floor tiles mixture by these two types of waste powder. Many Experiments were done on the raw materials. Rectangular tile specimens were molded, dried and fired. Linear firing …