The removal of COD from wastewater generated by petroleum refinery has been investigated by adopting electrocoagulation (EC) combined with adsorption using activated carbon (AC) derived from avocado seeds. The process variables influencing COD removal were studied: current density (2–10 mA/cm2), pH (4–9), and AC dosage (0.2–1 g/L). Response surface methodology (RSM) based on Box–Behnken design (BBD) was used to construct a mathematical model of the EC/AC process. Results showed that current density has the major effect on the COD removal with a percent of contribution 32.78% followed by pH while AC dosage has not a remarkable effect due to the good characteristics of AC derived from avocado seeds. Increasing current density gives be
... Show MoreThis paper includes an experimental study of hydrogen mass flow rate and inlet hydrogen pressure effect on the fuel cell performance. Depending on the experimental results, a model of fuel cell based on artificial neural networks is proposed. A back propagation learning rule with the log-sigmoid activation function is adopted to construct neural networks model. Experimental data resulting from 36 fuel cell tests are used as a learning data. The hydrogen mass flow rate, applied load and inlet hydrogen pressure are inputs to fuel cell model, while the current and voltage are outputs. Proposed model could successfully predict the fuel cell performance in good agreement with actual data. This work is extended to developed fuel cell feedback
... Show MoreIn the present study, activated carbon supported metal oxides was prepared for thiophene removal from model fuel (Thiophene in n-hexane) using adsorptive desulfurization technique. Commercial activated carbon was loaded individually with copper oxide in the form of Cu2O/AC. A comparison of the kinetic and isotherm models of the sorption of thiophene from model fuel was made at different operating conditions including adsorbent dose, initial thiophene concentration and contact time. Various adsorption rate constants and isotherm parameters were calculated. Results indicated that the desulfurization was enhanced when copper was loaded onto activated carbon surface. The highest desulfurization percent for Cu2O/AC and o
... Show MoreAdsorption techniques are widely used to remove certain classes of pollutants from wastewater. Phenolic compounds represent one of the problematic groups. Na-Y zeolite has been synthesized from locally available Iraqi kaolin clay. Characterization of the prepared zeolite was made by XRD and surface area measurement using N2 adsorption. Both synthetic Na-Y zeolite and kaolin clay have been tested for adsorption of 4-Nitro-phenol in batch mode experiments. Maximum removal efficiencies of 90% and 80% were obtained using the prepared zeolite and kaolin clay, respectively. Kinetics and equilibrium adsorption isotherms were investigated. Investigations showed that both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms fit the experimental data quite well. On the
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