A review on activated carbon: process, application and prospects

Activated carbon (AC) is used in different states of applications after its discovery as a strong and reliable adsorbent. An overview on AC is presented together with revisiting the sources of AC generation; methods used to generate AC comprising of pyrolysis activation; physical activation; chemical activation and steam pyrolysis. The important factors affecting the AC production, the possible applications of AC and their future prospects are also discussed. AC is applied in water, wastewater and leachate treatments in many countries, especially to polish the color, remove the odor and some heavy metals. It is cheap and available, and can be produced from agricultural waste materials, e.g. rice husk, palm oil shell and coconut shell. The AC’s fine and porous structure and an extremely large particle surface area (>1000 m2/g) results in making it possessed powerful adsorptive properties. Therefore, the adsorption process using AC is found to be a potentially viable method of removing pollutants from aqueous solutions

Влияние вспомогательных веществ на физико-химические свойства и токсичность инсектицидов

The paper shows the possibility of using various substances with insecticide to reduce the norms of the drug per unit area. Preparations Sumi-alpha and Kurakron in full and half-norms jointly and severally with the subsidiary additives slightly altered physico-chemical properties of solutions. Oils increases the toxicity of solutions.В работе показана возможность использования различных веществ совместно с инсектицидами для снижения норм препарата на единицу площади. Препараты Суми-альфа и Куракрон в полной и половинной нормах в отдельности и совместно с вспомогательными добавками несколько изменяли физико-химические свойства растворов. Масла повышали токсичность растворов

Recent advances on palm oil mill effluent (POME) pretreatment and anaerobic reactor for sustainable biogas production

Palm oil is one of the leading agricultural crops in the world, as it dominates 34% of the global vegetable oil market, with approximately 64.6*103 million kgs of production in 2017. However, along with its breakthrough, the generation of palm oil mill effluent (POME) as uncontrolled waste has become a serious matter and requires proper management to reduce its negative effects on the environment. Subsequently, the high organic content of POME makes it possible to convert waste into value-added products, such as biogas. A ratio of 0.5 for biological oxygen demand to chemical oxygen demand (BOD/COD) indicates a high possibility for biological treatment. Recently, the utilisation of POME as a cheap source for biogas production has gained an extraordinary amount of attention, and intensive research has been conducted on the upstream to downstream process. Finding the most suitable and efficient pretreatment technique and reactor configuration are vital parameters for the treatment and conversion of POME to biogas. This review describes existing pretreatment processes for POME and recommends recently manufactured high-rate anaerobic reactors as the most suitable and efficient pretreatment technique for maximising the extraction of biogas from POME

Analysis and modelling of predation on biofilm activated sludge process: Influence on microbial distribution, sludge production and nutrient dosage

The influence of predation on the biofilm activated sludge (BAS) process is studied using a unified model that incorporates hydrolysis and predation phenomena into the two stages of the BAS system: moving bed biofilm reactor pre-treatment (bacterial-predator stage) and activated sludge (predator stage). The unified model adequately describes the experimental results obtained in a cellulose and viscose full-scale wastewater plant and has been used to evaluate the role and contribution of predator microorganisms towards removal of COD, nutrient requirements, sludge production and microbial distribution. The results indicate that predation is the main factor responsible for the reduction of both nutrient requirements and sludge production. Furthermore, increasing the sludge retention time (SRT) does not influence the total biomass content in the AS reactor of a BAS process in two different industrial wastewater treatments

Chemical characteristics of native soil in shrimp Gher and agricultural land

This study was conducted to characterize the native soil at shrimp Gher and agricultural land in Khulna, Bangladesh. Eight locations were selected and among them five Ghers from south part of Dumuria which is about 60 km away from KUET campus, Khulna, Bangladesh. In the laboratory, various parameters such as salinity, organic content, chloride, pH, alkalinity, conductivity and moisture content were determined by following standard methods. The chloride and alkalinity were determined manually and pH, conductivity and salinity were determined by digital meter. The organic and moisture content both were highest at 30 cm depth for both the cases of shrimp Gher and agricultural land. Chloride was highest at 15 cm depth for both the cases shrimp Gher and agricultural land. Alkalinity was highest at 30 cm depth for shrimp Gher, however, the lowest was for agricultural land. It is concluded that the salinity and organic content vary with depth, age and soil condition

Optimizing the performance of a paper mill effluent treatment

The paper making industry is characterized by high rate of water consumption and hence high rate of wastewater generation. The purpose of this research was to assess and optimize the existing complete mix activate sludge treatment plant that is used to treat the high strength paper mill effluent with the highest possible efficiency at a reasonable cost. The collected paper mill wastewater is equalized in an equalization tank before being pumped to the treatment plant. The treatment plant includes chemical treatment unit, complete mix activated sludge and granular media filtration unit. The results showed that effluent of a chemical treatment unit was found to be relatively similar to the laboratory simulated plain sedimentation unit. It can be concluded that addition of chemical coagulant can be eliminated with an overall saving of chemical addition costs. The complete mixing activated sludge achieved good removal of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD). Furthermore, the results showed that the plant is operated under low BOD:P ratio. The treatment efficiency of the plant can be improved by increasing the phosphorous dose to the plant to have BOD:P ratio of 100:0.5 to 100:1. It was found that 50% of the treated effluent is recycled to the manufacturing process, however this percentage can be increased through proper plant optimization and control of nutrient addition to the activated sludge unit

The Potential Use of Moringa peregrina Seeds and Seed Extract as a Bio-Coagulant for Water Purification

Moringa is a genus with many applications; some of these applications can be linked to their use in traditional medicine and as a source of nutrients, and traditionally, some species have been used for water purification. Many studies have been conducted to assess the use of different species of Moringa for water purification. One of the species that is extensively studied is M. Oleifera because of its wide geographical distribution. There are limited studies on M. peregrina due to its limited geographical distribution, as it is native to the Arabian Peninsula and some other countries in the Middle East. The aim of this study is to assess the potential use of M. peregrina for water coagulation. This study was conducted using synthetic water samples as well as real, untreated wastewater samples to determine the potential of M. peregrina seeds for water coagulation. The results revealed that M. peregrina seed extract had better turbidity removal at 60 °C compared with the use of the seed extract at room temperature, and increasing the ionic strength of the extracting solution could also improve the efficiency of the seed extract in terms of turbidity removal. Furthermore, the de-oiled seed extract showed efficiency comparable with that of the raw seeds. Application to the real wastewater samples showed that the de-oiled seed extract showed percentage removal of 38%, 81%, and 74% for SCOD, turbidity, and color, respectively. Furthermore, the de-oiled M. peregrina seed extract at a dose of 200 mg/L equivalent to raw seeds was capable of removing 97.4%, 66.5%, 51.8%, 50.3%, and 45.8% of Mo, Cu, Cd, Cr, and Co, respectively

Collision-Free Autonomous Navigation Solution for Mobile Wheeled

A Master of Science thesis in Mechanical Engineering by Ahmed Moataz Mahmoud Elsergany entitled, “Collision-Free Autonomous Navigation Solution for Mobile Wheeled”, submitted in April 2023. Thesis advisor is Dr. Mamoun Abdel-Hafez and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Mohammad Jaradat. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) have become an imperative tool that is employed in a wide range of industrial sectors including oil and gas, agriculture, and defence. Their autonomy makes them an excellent choice for remote operations, particularly in complex outdoor environments. Therefore, the development of outdoor navigation solutions for UGVs has received the attention of many researchers in the field. This thesis is concerned with improving the outdoor localization of autonomous vehicles that use low-cost Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) sensors in their operations. We propose a novel Kalman Filter (KF) based sensor fusion algorithm for low-cost and loosely coupled GPS/INS integration that tackles the linearization issues of a conventional Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) as well as addresses the errors associated with the Unscented Transformation (UT) of quaternion states in the traditional Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) found in literature. Our algorithm termed the Augmented Quaternion Unscented Kalman Filter (AQUKF) offers an improved sensor fusion algorithm that accurately estimates both quaternion and non-quaternion states. Additionally, we consider the use of a multi-input Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) to recursively update the measurement noise covariance of our stochastic filter to match the noise statistics of the actual system. The resulting Fuzzy Adaptive Augmented Quaternion Unscented Kalman Filter (FA-AQUKF) reduces estimation uncertainties with the additional adaptive component, thus improving the accuracy of our localization solution. Initially, the performance of our proposed algorithms is evaluated using experimentally generated vehicle trajectories and validated against commercial solutions. Upon achieving satisfactory results, the algorithms are then implemented in real-time for the autonomous navigation of a Robot Operating System (ROS) operated UGV in the presence of static and dynamic obstacles. Results of all conducted experiments prove that our proposed algorithms deliver a significant improvement in vehicle state estimation and outdoor localization, besides satisfying the practical level of safety and accuracy desired for practical autonomous navigation applications.College of EngineeringDepartment of Mechanical Engineerin