Two modes of electrochemical harvesting for microalgae were investigated in the current work. A sacrificial anode (aluminum) was used to study the electrocoagulation-flotation process, and a nonsacrificial anode (graphite) was used to investigate the electroflotation process. The study inspected the effect of chloride ions concentration and the interelectrode distance on the performance of the electrochemical harvesting processes. The results demonstrated that both electrodes achieved maximum harvesting efficiency with a 2 g/L NaCl concentration. Interestingly, by increasing the NaCl concentration to 5 g/L, the harvesting efficiency reduced dramatically to its lowest value. Generally, the energy consumption decreased with increasing
... Show MoreThe cost of microalgae harvesting constitutes a heavy burden on the commercialization of biofuel production. The present study addressed this problem through economic and parametric comparison of electrochemical harvesting using a sacrificial electrode (aluminum) and a nonsacrificial electrode (graphite). The harvesting efficiency, power consumption, and operation cost were collected as objective variables as a function of applied current and initial pH of the solution. The results indicated that high harvesting efficiency obtained by using aluminum anode is achieved in short electrolysis time. That harvesting efficiency can be enhanced by increasing the applied current or the electrolysis time for both electrode materials, where 98
... Show MoreIn this study, hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HDMAB) - bentonite was synthesized by placing alkylammonium cation onto bentonite. Adsorption of textile dye such as direct Yellow 50 on natural bentonite and HDMAB -bentonite was investigated. The effects of pH, contact time,dosage clay and temperature were investigated experimentally .The Langmuir and Freundlish isotherms equations were applied to the data and values of parameters of these isotherm equations were evaluated. The study indicated that using 0.2 g of HDMAB (hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide) lead to increase the percentage removal(R%) from 78% for pure bentonite to 99 %. The optimum pH value for the adsorption experiments was found to be pH=3 and therefore all the experim
... Show MoreCoagulation - flocculation are basic chemical engineering method in the treatment of metal-bearing industrial wastewater because it removes colloidal particles, some soluble compounds and very fine solid suspensions initially present in the wastewater by destabilization and formation of flocs. This research was conducted to study the feasibility of using natural coagulant such as okra and mallow and chemical coagulant such as alum for removing Cu and increase the removal efficiency and reduce the turbidity of treated water. Fourier transform Infrared (FTIR) was carried out for okra and mallow before and after coagulant to determine their type of functional groups. Carbonyl and hydroxyl functional groups on the surface of
... Show MoreThe removal of direct blue 71 dye from a prepared wastewater was studied employing batch electrocoagulation (EC) cell. The electrodes of aluminum were used. The influence of process variables which include initial pH (2.0-12.0), wastewater conductivity (0.8 -12.57) mS/cm , initial dye concentration (30 -210) mg/L, electrolysis time (3-12) min, current density (10-50) mA/cm2 were studied in order to maximize the color removal from wastewater. Experimental results showed that the color removal yield increases with increasing pH until pH 6.0 after that it decreased with increasing pH. The color removal increased with increasing current density, wastewater conductivity, electrolysis time, and decreased with increasing the concen
... Show MoreTrickle bed reactor was used to study the hydrogenation of nitrobenzene over Ni/SiO2 catalyst. The catalyst was prepared using the Highly Dispersed Catalyst (HDC) technique. Porous silica particles (capped cylinders, 6x5.5 mm) were used as catalyst support. The catalyst was characterized by TPR, BET surface area and pore volume, X-ray diffraction, and Raman Spectra. The trickle bed reactor was packed with catalyst and diluted with fine glass beads in order to decrease the external effects such as mass transfer, heat transfer and wall effect. The catalyst bed dilution was found to double the liquid holdup, which increased the catalyst wetting and hence, the gas-liquid mass transfer rate. The main product of the hydrogenation reaction of n
... Show MoreThis work was conducted to determine the volumetric mass transfer coefficient (Ky.a) infixed bed adsorption using hexane-benzene mixture by adsorption onto a fixed bed of white silica gel. Benzene concentration was measured by gas chromatography. The effect of feed flow rate and initial concentration of benzene in hexane-benzene mixture on the volumetric mass transfer coefficient and on the adsorption capacity of silica gel was investigated.
In general, the volumetric mass transfer coefficient increases with increasing hexane flow rate, and with increasing initial concentration of benzene in the mixture. The ultimate value of (Ky.a) was at 53 ml/min of hexane flow rate with benzene initial concentration of (6.53 wt. %), and it wa
... Show More