The computational cost associated with the use of highfidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models poses a serious impediment to the successful application of formal sensitivity analysis in engineering design. Even though advances in computing hardware and parallel processing have reduced costs by orders of magnitude over the last few decades, the fidelity with which engineers desire to m...

Point of use (POU) household water treatment is increasingly being adopted as a solution for access to safe water. Non-tuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM) are found in water, but there is little research on whether NTM survive POU treatment. Mycobacteria may be removed by multi-barrier treatment systems that combine processes such as coagulation, settling and disinfection. This work evaluated remova...

Harvesting of microalgae is a cost-consuming step for biodiesel production. Cellulose has recently been studied as a biocompatible and inexpensive flocculant for harvesting microalgae via surface modifications such as cation-modifications. In this study, we demonstrated that cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) played a role as a microalgal flocculant via its network geometry without cation modification...

Chitosan is a unique biopolymer in the respect that it is abundant, cationic, low-toxic, non-immunogenic and biodegradable. The relative occurrence of the two monomeric building units (N-acetyl-glucosamine and D-glucosamine) is crucial to whether chitosan is predominantly an ampholyte or predominantly a polyelectrolyte at acidic pH-values. The chemical composition is not only crucial to its sur...

Lignocelluloses materials were selected for ethanol production, but certain problems occurred, such as the hydrolysis and detoxification process. A biological flocculation technology was to apply for the detoxification of acid hydrolyzate of lignocelluloses materials. Meanwhile chitosan was confirmed as the best biological flocculant which showed good detoxification effect. In order to reach th...

Kaewchai, S. and Prasertsan, P. Screening and application of thermotolerant microorganisms and their flocculant for treatment of palm oil mill effluent Songklanakarin J. Sci. Technol., 2002, 24(3) : 413-420 Among fifteen thermotolerant polymer-producing isolates, three strains SM 29, WD 90, and SM 38 produced polymer posessing very high flocculating activities (24.81, 14.63 and 10.84, respectiv...

In this study the feasibility of preparing bioflocculant from excess biological sludge was investigated. Hydrochloric acid was used to disintegrate sludge to prepare bioflocculant. The effects of acid dosage and flocculating conditions were studied. The optimized disintegration conditions was that acid dosage was 10 mL for 50 mL sludge suspension. Factors such as bioflocculant dosage, pH and te...

In the context of wastewater treatment with microalgae cultures, coagulation-flocculation followed by sedimentation is one of the suitable options for microalgae harvesting. This process is enabled by the addition of chemicals (e.g. iron). However, in a biorefinery perspective, it is important to avoid possible contamination of downstream products caused by chemicals addition. The aim of this s...

Microalga is the only feedstock that has the theoretical potential to completely replace the energy requirements derived from fossil fuels. However, commercialization of this potential source for fuel applications is hampered due to many technical challenges with harvesting of biomass being the most energy intensive process among them. The fresh water microalgal species, Scenedesmus abundans, h...