Search results for "ta218"
showing 10 items of 83 documents
Pharmaceuticals in processing of municipal sewage sludge studied by grab and passive sampling
2018
Abstract Concentrations of pharmaceuticals, consisting of four anti-inflammatory and one antiepileptic drug, were studied in the aqueous and solid phase of municipal sewage sludge, collected from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in central Finland. The samples included untreated municipal sludge from the biological wastewater treatment, digested sludge and sludge before and after composting. First, samples were taken as grab samples to study the bioavailable part in aqueous phase but also the part in solid fraction. Later, the long-term concentrations were studied by passive sampling with styrene divinylbenzene-reverse phase sulfonated (SDB-RPS) disks. In the untreated solid sludge, the …
Simultaneous production of furfural and levulinic acid from pine sawdust via acid-catalysed mechanical depolymerization and microwave irradiation
2019
Abstract In this work pine sawdust was converted into levulinic acid (LA) and furfural. Sawdust was first pre-treated with sulfuric acid-catalysed mechanical depolymerization. The conversion reactions were then performed with microwave heating at 180 °C. To enhance the furfural yield and the efficient separation of furfural and LA, a biphasic water-toluene reaction system was used. The effect of an additional catalyst, AlCl3, on the yield of LA and furfural was also studied. According to the results the pre-treatment method enhanced the yields of LA. In addition, due to the microwave heating the reaction times were short. Additional AlCl3 catalyst enhanced the LA yield, however excellent fu…
Sulphate removal over barium-modified blast-furnace-slag geopolymer
2016
Blast-furnace slag and metakaolin were geopolymerised, modified with barium or treated with a combination of these methods in order to obtain an efficient SO4(2-) sorbent for mine water treatment. Of prepared materials, barium-modified blast-furnace slag geopolymer (Ba-BFS-GP) exhibited the highest SO4(2-) maximum sorption capacity (up to 119mgg(-1)) and it compared also favourably to materials reported in the literature. Therefore, Ba-BFS-GP was selected for further studies and the factors affecting to the sorption efficiency were assessed. Several isotherms were applied to describe the experimental results of Ba-BFS-GP and the Sips model showed the best fit. Kinetic studies showed that th…
Influence of torrefaction pretreatment on the pyrolysis of Eucalyptus clone: A study on kinetics, reaction mechanism and heat flow
2016
Abstract The adverse nature of biomass requires specific pretreatment processes to better utilize it in bioenergy applications, and torrefaction is one of the most recognized thermal pretreatment methods. In this regard, we studied the effect of torrefaction pretreatment on kinetics, reaction mechanism and heat flow during the pyrolysis of biomass by making a comparative analysis between the pyrolysis of dried and torrefied Eucalyptus wood. Torrefied biomass was produced at three temperatures, namely 250, 275 and 300 °C. Pyrolysis was performed at 700 °C. The char yield during pyrolysis increased from 22.39 percent to 36.34 percent when the torrefaction temperature was increased from 250 to…
Effects of pyrolysis temperature on the hydrologically relevant porosity of willow biochar
2018
Biochar pore space consists of porosity of multiple length scales. In direct water holding applications like water storage for plant water uptake, the main interest is in micrometre-range porosity since these pores are able to store water that is easily available for plants. Gas adsorption measurements which are commonly used to characterize the physical pore structure of biochars are not able to quantify this pore-size range. While pyrogenetic porosity (i.e. pores formed during pyrolysis process) tends to increase with elevated process temperature, it is uncertain whether this change affects the pore space capable to store plant available water. In this study, we characterized biochar poro…
Localized surface plasmon resonance in silver nanoparticles: Atomistic first-principles time-dependent density-functional theory calculations
2015
We observe using ab initio methods that localized surface plasmon resonances in icosahedral silver nanoparticles enter the asymptotic region already between diameters of 1 and 2 nm, converging close to the classical quasistatic limit around 3.4 eV. We base the observation on time-dependent density-functional theory simulations of the icosahedral silver clusters Ag$_{55}$ (1.06 nm), Ag$_{147}$ (1.60 nm), Ag$_{309}$ (2.14 nm), and Ag$_{561}$ (2.68 nm). The simulation method combines the adiabatic GLLB-SC exchange-correlation functional with real time propagation in an atomic orbital basis set using the projector-augmented wave method. The method has been implemented for the electron structure…
Remote Sensing of 3-D Geometry and Surface Moisture of a Peat Production Area Using Hyperspectral Frame Cameras in Visible to Short-Wave Infrared Spe…
2016
Miniaturized hyperspectral imaging sensors are becoming available to small unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) platforms. Imaging concepts based on frame format offer an attractive alternative to conventional hyperspectral pushbroom scanners because they enable enhanced processing and interpretation potential by allowing for acquisition of the 3-D geometry of the object and multiple object views together with the hyperspectral reflectance signatures. The objective of this investigation was to study the performance of novel visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral frame cameras based on a tunable Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI) in measuring a 3-D digital sur…
UAV-based hyperspectral monitoring of small freshwater area
2014
Recent development in compact, lightweight hyperspectral imagers have enabled UAV-based remote sensing with reasonable costs. We used small hyperspectral imager based on Fabry-Perot interferometer for monitoring small freshwater area in southern Finland. In this study we shortly describe the utilized technology and the field studies performed. We explain processing pipeline for gathered spectral data and introduce target detection-based algorithm for estimating levels of algae, aquatic chlorophyll and turbidity in freshwater. Certain challenges we faced are pointed out.
Multicriteria evaluation of alternatives for remote monitoring systems of municipal buildings
2014
Abstract Conservation of natural resources drives municipalities to monitor their heat, power and water consumption more accurately. The objective of this study was to evaluate different implementation possibilities for remote monitoring systems for the municipal buildings of two medium-sized municipalities, Hollola and Nastola in Southern Finland. Four different alternatives were considered: (1) a system by an external service provider, (2) a system provided by the local energy distribution company, (3) a system built by the municipalities themselves, and (4) using the current manual system but with more frequent data collection. The alternatives were evaluated in terms of multiple functio…
Bilevel heat exchanger network synthesis with an interactive multi-objective optimization method
2012
Abstract Heat exchanger network synthesis (HENS) has been an active research area for more than 40 years because well-designed heat exchanger networks enable heat recovery in process industries in an energy- and cost-efficient manner. Due to ever increasing global competition and need to decrease the harmful effects done on the environment, there still is a continuous need to improve the heat exchanger networks and their synthesizing methods. In this work we present a HENS method that combines an interactive multi-objective optimization method with a simultaneous bilevel HENS method, where the bilevel part of the method is based on grouping of process streams and building aggregate streams …