Iranica Journal of Energy & Environment
Volume:6 Issue: 3, Summer 2015

In this study, four main types of fuel such as pure Diesel, Biodiesel, Diesel Dual Fuel (DDF), and Biodiesel with DDF were employed to obtain the comparison of the engine performance and emission parameter. The use of compressed natural gas (CNG) in diesel engines can be considered as one of the optimum alternative solution for reducing fuel consumption rate. CNG can partly replace diesel fuel in the combustion chamber, while the remaining diesel is used as a testing fuel. The biodiesel employed in this research was extracted from waste cooking oil which was provided by Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM). The results of the engine tests showed that an increase in biodiesel percentage in the testing fuel compound resulting in the reduction of the engine power. Biodiesel used with CNG (B20-DDF) showed a better result of engine torque compared to other types of fuel tested. It was recorded from this particular work research that, when the composition of the biodiesel in the fuel increased, the inherent biodiesel properties like NOx emissions seemed to decrease; however, unburnt hydrocarbon (HC) was found to increase due to incomplete combustion of biodiesel fuel compound.

There are great concerns, that the IC Engines are responsible for extreme atmospheric pollution. Therefore, the studies on use of alcohols in 4-Stroke spark ignition (SI) Engines are important. In this study, the properties of the blended fuels were calculated. The effect of methanol-gasoline blends on emissions was investigated experimentally. The emissions were measured with the use of methanol-gasoline blends (M5 and M10) have been compared with the pure gasoline. The test was conducted at the constant speed of 90 km/h and at different wheel powers. From the analysis, it was concluded that when the engine was fuelled on methanol gasoline blends, CO2, CO, HC and NOx vehicular emissions were found to decreased at all wheel powers at 90 km/h. In addition, air-fuel ratio also increased with the increase percentage of methanol in the gasoline.

In this work, research were carried out on properties of biocoal briquettes produced from Okaba coal in Nigeria, melon shell on one hand and corn cob on the other hand with a view to find out their effect on coal briquette. The research involves the production of briquettes from coal and the biomass at the following ratios of 100:0, 90:10, 80:20, 70:30, 60:40, 50:50, 40:60 and 0:100, coal to biomass, using cassava starch as binder and calcium hydroxide as desulphurizing agent. The briquettes were produced mechanically using a manual briquetting machine with pressure maintained at 5MPa. It was found that the burning rate and reduction in smoke emission revealed improvement with increase in biomass concentration. The findings also show that sulphur content in the biocoal briquette reduces with increase in the biomass. The biobriquette with 10% corn cob had the highest calorific value of 22.05 MJ/kg while the 60% melon shell composition had the least value of 21.14 MJ/kg, the 40% corn cob composition had the lowest burning time of 30.1seconds and high combustion rate of 0.076 g/min; while the 10% melon shell composition had the highest burning time and lowest combustion rate. The biocoal briquette sample with 40% corn cob gave the best combustible values, but for industrial heating that requires a long simmering phase, biobriquettes containing 10% corn cob may be preferred due to its high calorific value.

This study aimed to investigate how safranin-O can be removed from aqueous solutions by adsorption on pineapple peels. The effect of solution pH, initial dye concentration, contact time and adsorbent dose were studied. The optimum adsorption capacity of 26.08 mg/g was achieved under the experimental condition of pH, temperature and contact time of 6, 293K and 80 min, respectively. Also further analysis revealed that 93.24% of safranin-O was significantly removed at 120 mg/L dye concentration in 80 minutes contact time. From the result of the isotherm studies, it was revealed that the equilibrium data is well fitted to Freundlich model while the adsorption kinetic data showed that the adsorption process was well described by the pseudo-second order kinetic model. Finally, it can be deduced that pineapple peels had a great potential in adsorbing and removal of safranin-o from aqueous solution.

This study aims at investigating the adsorption of Zinc and lead ions onto thiolated tea (Camellia sinensis) seed shell (TTSS) in batch process. Equilibrium data were fitted into Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin–Radushkevich isotherm models. The equilibrium data favored the Langmuir adsorption isotherm with maximum adsorption monolayer coverage of 397.6 and 475 mg/g for Pb (II) and Zn (II), respectively. In order to fit the kinetic data, three kinetic models; Lagergren first-order, pseudo-second-order and intraparticle diffusion models were used. The adsorption behavior was best described by pseudo-second-order with qe value of 76.61and 97.19 mg/g for Pb (II) and Zn (II), respectively. Thermodynamic parameters such as changes in Gibbs free energy ΔGo, enthalpy ΔHo, and entropy ΔSo were calculated. Adsorption process was found to be feasible, endothermic, and spontaneous. The energy of adsorption values of the metal ions (0.717 and 0.759 kJ/mol) and the large negative value of ΔGo confirm the physiosorption nature of the adsorption of Pb (II) and Zn (II) onto TTSS.

Application of an ionic liquid (4-Methyl-2-pentanone) carrier on liquid-liquid extraction of nickel and cadmium from aqueous solutions is reported. 4-Methyl-2-pentanone was found to dissolve in octanol (as diluent) and was capable of extracting both nickel and cadmium ions, however in terms of extraction efficiency, 4-Methyl-2-pentanone has higher capability for nickel extraction in compare to cadmium. The effects of feed phase pH, carrier concentration, mixing time, stripping phase pH and inert salt concentration on extraction of nickel and cadmium were analyzed using factorial design for screening experiment and face centered composite design of experiments for optimization. The results of liquid-liquid extraction process led to removal of 91% of nickel ions and 32% of cadmium from mixed Ni-Cd aqueous feed phase with carrier concentration of 250 mM, feed phase pH of 4, mixing time of 5 minutes and 1.5 M of sodium sulphate as inert salt. In stripping phase, both nickel and cadmium were highly stripped while stripping phase pH was set at alkaline range of 10-11. The effect of feed phase pH on distribution ratio (Feed/Org) for both metals was investigated and the results revealed that one nickel ion is extracted into the organic phase by an average 3.2 of 4- Methyl-2-pentanone molecules to form nickel-4-Methyl-2-pentanone complex, while for cadmium extraction, the carrier molecules involved in metal-carrier complexation is equal to 2.

In this study, different numerical models are computed and compared with particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurement for wake correlation of a 4.5 m of diameter wind turbine rotor. The collaborative European wind turbine MEXICO project is carried out in three commonly experimental defined test cases at wind speeds of 10, 15 and 24 m.s-1. To discuss the rotor near wake, a laminar Navier-Stokes approach and a Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes turbulent model both coupled with an actuator disc (AD) technique are computed, then compared with a direct model from the literature called TAU/DM as a full rotor technique. The actuator disc momentums are calculated using user defined functions (UDF) in FLUENT introduced as UDF/AD technique in this paper. The results are discussed in detail and compared with PIV detailed measurements.

This study conducted using a NaI (Tl) gamma-ray spectrometer for the assessment of naturally radioactive materials. This apparatus is devoted to the quantitative and qualitative determination of U, Th, and K in soil samples collected from the city of Najaf, Iraq. The average of concentrations in the surveyed soil samples were ranged from 55 to 102 Bq kg-1, ND to 448 Bq kg-1 and 79 to 1887 Bq kg-1 for 238U, 232Th, and 40K, respectively. To assess the radiological hazard of radioactivity in the soil samples, the radium equivalent activity, annual effective dose, external hazard, and internal indices were calculated. The Raeq values of soil samples were lower than 370 Bq kg-1 recommended maximum levels of radium equivalents in soil.

Sources of radioactivity in the aquatic environment include naturally occurring radionuclides, fallout from the atmospheric and radioactive effluent from nuclear facilities that was released either accidentally or routinely. Depending upon the element and the chemical form, radionuclides may accumulate in bottom sediment or remain in the water column in the dissolved state. Marine organisms receive external radiation exposure from radionuclides in water and sediment. Radiological risk assessment was made for marine fish that are exposed to 137Cs, 226Ra, 228Ra and 40 K along Manora channel Karachi coast of Pakistan using ERICA tool software. The ERICA tool is a software system that has a structure based upon the tiered ERICA integrated approach to assessing the radiological risk to terrestrial, freshwater and marine biota. The results were calculated using Tier 1 and Tier II assessments which are based on media concentration and use pre-calculated environmental media concentration limits to estimate risk quotients. If the sum of the risk quotients is <1, then it can be assured that there is a very low probability that the assessment dose rate to any organism exceeds the incremental screening dose rate and therefore the risk to non-human biota can be considered negligible. Risk quotient in this study is far below 1 which reveals that there is no evidence of deleterious effect of radionuclide for marine biota of the area under study.

Comparative study of trace level of extracted mercury in different types of water was successfully carried out. Data sets of batch samples were grouped in two clusters (C I; 4, C II; 4) to represent similarity of data structure under optimized and direct extraction procedure respectively. Similarity level for inter batch samples (optimized procedure) was obtained in the range of 96.7 – 99.2 %; which was better than by direct extraction (67.2 – 92.5 %) with mean distance from centroid was calculated at 0.462. The first two components (PC1 and PC2) on score plot explained about 86.2 % (ultrapure) and 73.9 % (salt water) of the total variance in signal data sets. In discriminant analysis, latent variables namely pH, extraction time and temperature were able to enhance the correctness of inter batch sample variations accounted to be 80 and 91.7 %. A fitted model expressed by multiple linear regressions obtained with two organomercury species (methyl and ethyl) were recognized as independent variables explained about 90.04 % (ultrapure) and 90.85 % (salt water) traceability from sum of peak areas. Analysis of real samples gave relative standard deviation value of less than < 0.33 % indicating that good performance in terms of repeatability. Recovery was found to range from 75.62 – 95.46% (river water) and 73.44 - 91.14 % (sea water).

The Occurrence of nine selected pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs), namely Paracetamol, Carbamazepine, Sulfamethoxazole, Pentoxifylline, Gemfibrozil, Diclofenac, Ibuprofen, Tetracycline and Naproxen were investigated in influents and effluents of two drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) across Shanghai, China. In addition, the removal of these compounds in both DWTPs with differentexisting technologies (DWTP-A: biofiltration process, activated carbon and ozonation; DWTP-B: sand filtration and coagulation, flocculation and sedimentation) was investigated.The concentrations of these compounds in the influents from the two DWTPs showed substantial variations with average concentrations ranging from 3.24ng L-1for Tetracycline to 62.3ng L-1for Gemfibrozil, while Naproxen and Carbamazepine were found in effluents with average concentration of 0.26 ng L-1and 1.53 ng L-1, respectively. The risk assessment based on the „„worst-case scenario‟‟ of the monitoring data from the influents of the present study suggested that Diclofenac and Sulfamethoxazole could pose a medium risk to the aquatic organisms while other compounds showed no potential toxic risks to aquatic organisms. A screening level risk assessment implied that the concentrations of the detected PhACs are well below levels that would pose a risk to the health of consumers of drinking water at Shanghai, China. Biodegradation using ozone was found to be the most effective mechanism for removing concentrations of PhACs, while filtration appeared to be a minor process for removing all PhACs.

Waste minimization plays an important role in sustainable industrial waste management. It is the most effective method in controlling waste arising. There are some common factors contribute in effective practicing of waste minimization in both developing and developed countries. This study examines and compares the most important solutions and approaches in enhancement of practicing waste minimization among 214 manufacturing industries in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Quantitative data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. It was revealed that improvement in internal monitoring system has the higher effectiveness in practicing waste minimization among other factors (SI=67.40%). Also respondent‘s perception toward approaches regarding awareness, encouragement and cooperation were found significantly higher than other approaches (p<0.05). The findings of this study highlight the necessity of training programs and technology modification as well as improvement in monitoring systems.