Electrospinning is a novel technique that can be used to produce highly porous fibers with highly tunable properties. In this research, this technique is adopted to prepare the electrospun nanofiber membrane for membrane distillation application. A custom-built electrospinning setup was made to prepare the nanofibers membrane. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) polymer was used in the electrospinning process due to its high hydrophobicity. Electrospun (PVDF) nanofibers were tested in direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) process using 0.6 M sodium chloride as a feed solution. The resulting nanofiber membrane exhibited high performance in DCMD (i.e. relatively high water flux and high salt rejection). It has been found that the prepared membrane has a uniform and fibrous structure as indicated by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Relatively thin fibers with a diameter of 250 nm were produced during the Electrospinning process.
Batch reactive distillation was studied in packed bed column. Esterification of methanol with acetic acid to produce methyl acetate and water with homogenous sulfuric acid as a catalyst was considered. This system was chosen because the reaction is reversible and the boiling point of reactant and products are different.
The reaction was carried out with and without distillation column and shows that the reactive distillation is more efficient from the conventional process (reactor and then separation). The conversion of acetic acid and concentration of methyl acetate increase by (30.43% and 75.14%) respectively at the best condition (reflux ratio 2, feed mole ratio 2 and batch time 90 minute).
The influence of various parameters, s
Nanofiltration (NF) ceramic membrane have found increasing applications particularly in wastewater and water treatment. In order to estimate and optimize the performance of NF membranes, the membrane should be characterized correctly in terms of their basic parameters such as effective pore radius (rp) and equivalent effective thickness as well as effective surface charge ( ), the effective charge density ( ) and Donnan potential ( ). The impact of electrokinetic (zeta) potential on the membrane surface charge density, effective membrane charge density and Donnan potential at two different concentrations of the reference solutions 0.001, 0.01 M sodium chloride at various pH values from 3 to 9, and effective po
... Show MoreThe deficiency of potable water resources and energy supply is emerging as a significant and concerning obstacle to sustainable development. Solar and waste heat-powered humidification dehumidification (HDH) desalination systems become essential due to the severe impacts of global warming and water shortages. This problem highlights the need to apply boosted water desalination solutions. Desalination is a capital-intensive process that demands considerable energy, predominantly sourced from fossil fuels worldwide, posing a significant carbon footprint risk. HDH is a very efficient desalination method suitable for remote areas with moderate freshwater requirements for domestic and agricultural usage. Several operational and maintenance conce
... Show MoreFerric oxide nanoparticles Fe3O4NPs have been prepared by the coprecipitation method, which were used to functionalize the surface of electrospun nanofibers of polyacrylonitrile to increase their effectiveness in adsorption of Congo red (CR) dye from their aqueous solutions. The effect factors of adsorption were systematically investigated such as adsorbent mass, initial concentration, contact time, temperature, ionic strength and pH. The maximum adsorbed amount of the dye was at 0.003g of adsorbent. The adsorption of dye increased with increasing initial dye concentration and the system reaches to the equilibrium state at 150 min. The adsorbed dye capacity decreases with increasing temperature which indicates to the exothermic nature of ad
... Show MoreA method has been demonstrated to synthesise effective zeolite membranes from existing crystals without a hydrothermal synthesis step.
In this study, we fabricated nanofiltration membranes using the electrospinning technique, employing pure PAN and a mixed matrix of PAN/HPMC. The PAN nanofibrous membranes with a concentration of 13wt% were prepared and blended with different concentrations of HPMC in the solvent N, N-Dimethylformamide (DMF). We conducted a comprehensive analysis of these membranes' surface morphology, chemical composition, wettability, and porosity and compared the results. The findings indicated that the inclusion of HPMC in the PAN membranes led to a reduction in surface porosity and fiber size. The contact angle decreased, indicating increased surface hydrophilicity, which can enhance flux and reduce fouling tendencies. Subsequently, we evaluated the e
... Show MoreIn this paper, membrane-based computing image segmentation, both region-based and edge-based, is proposed for medical images that involve two types of neighborhood relations between pixels. These neighborhood relations—namely, 4-adjacency and 8-adjacency of a membrane computing approach—construct a family of tissue-like P systems for segmenting actual 2D medical images in a constant number of steps; the two types of adjacency were compared using different hardware platforms. The process involves the generation of membrane-based segmentation rules for 2D medical images. The rules are written in the P-Lingua format and appended to the input image for visualization. The findings show that the neighborhood relations between pixels o
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