Development of New Metrics and a Tool for Social Quantification of Sustainable Process Design

The concept of sustainable design has emerged as a new paradigm. Sustainability combines economic, environmental and social aspects of Process design. In our research all the available metrics, tools that are being used for social quantification with good definition, description and calculation methodology is reviewed. Then a new tool is proposed which considers both the inherent safety and occupational health quantification for sustainable process design. The method is tailored for the process research and development stage by including only such chemical properties and process operating conditions which are obtainable at early design stage. The approach is demonstrated for the two alternative processes of DME production and for the base case and optimized case Acrylonitrile production using simulation engine ASPEN PLUSTM . With the help of the developed standard index scale and the retrofitted SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR the best socially sustainable process design is assessed.Chemical Engineerin

Sustainable approach of solid waste management of small urban area: case for Habiganj municipality in Bangladesh

Existing solid waste management system of Habibganj municipality (pourashava) of Bangladesh was studied. A total of 234 households were surveyed. Solid waste generation rate was found to be 0.36 kg/cap/day. Household waste disposal was one of the main problems across the city. Among the different options of waste disposal, 21.4% and 23.9% respondents generally threw their wastes into nearby ponds and drains, respectively. About 14.5% of the sampled households discarded their wastes in their respective compound and only 12% households used bins supplied by the municipality. About 10.7% households disposed their garbage on the roadside. Lack of awareness, lack of dustbins, and improper maintenance of drainage system and lack of drainage facilities were the main reasons of the current inadequacy of the management system as reported by 183 (78%) respondents. The results indicate that for a 200 MT capacity composting plant, safe distance will be about 800 m from the disposal site in terms of odorous impact, while 500 m for health impact. In this study, a sustainable management system of solid waste disposal is suggested for the Habibganj municipal area

A single-stage partial oxidation of methane to methanol: a step forward in the synthesis of oxygenates

An NTP hybrid system was designed in combination with metal oxide (MOX)-coated glass beads (GB) to synthesize value-added fuels and chemicals directly from methane. The combined plasma-packed mode was found to be a promising alternative to thermal catalysis, as it successfully enabled the single-step partial oxidation of methane to produce liquid oxygenates at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. When comparing plasma without packing (58%) and MOX/GB coupled plasma mode, the later method enhances the liquid selectivity to 74% with the introduction of C2 oxygenates in addition to C1 chemicals. Among the coated materials applied, NiO-coated GBs showed the highest liquid yield of ∼10%, including the maximum methanol yield of ∼5%, while coupled with NTP-DBD mode. Gas discharge-promoted methane conversion was observed in the presence of GB and MOX/GB, which can be attributed to the enhanced electric field generated as a result of the improved plasma strength created by the beads. Also, the oxide layer of metal oxide nanoparticles provides a catalytic base for adsorption/desorption of methane and other gas phase active species, which can facilitate the partial oxidation process of methane either by the gas-phase active oxygen species or through the interaction of surface hydroxyl groups

Applications of Capillary Electrochromatography-mass spectrometry: Method Development and validation of Kynurenine Pathway Metabolites Analyses in Human Plasma and Characterization of Hydrophilic Interactions with Performance Evaluation in CEC Based Monolithic Stationary Phases

Capillary electrochromatography (CEC) is one of the capillary electrophoresis (CE) modes that have been hyphenated to mass spectrometry (MS of MS/MS) for the analysis of both neutral and charged analytes with shorter analysis time, higher column efficiency, higher sensitivity, good selectivity, and much lower sample consumption. This research expands CEC-MS applications in the kynurenine pathway of tryptophan catabolism, builds insights into the molecular recognition mechanism in hydrophilic interaction CEC (HICEC), and develops a monolithic CEC-based exploratory quantitative approach. Chapter 1 presents an overview of a number of several essential aspects related to capillary electrochromatography (CEC) and CEC hyphenated to mass spectrometry (CEC-MS or CEC-MS/MS). A literature survey was performed within the databases Wiley Online Library, ScienceDirect, PMC/PubMed, Web of Sciences, and other sources by google search. A total of 163 studies reporting qualitative and quantitative analysis of achiral CEC and CEC-MS or CEC-MS/MS were identified and reviewed. Chapter 2 delineated the open tubular CEC-MS method development, optimization, and validation for the qualitative and quantitative analyses of kynurenine pathway metabolites in the human plasma sample. Validation parameters such as limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantitation (LOQ), linearity range, recovery, precision, and accuracy were established according to FDA guidelines. The endogenous concentration of the metabolites and pairs of the level of metabolites with significant positive correlation for inflammatory biomarkers [C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α)] were statistically evaluated. Chapter 3 described the development and comparison between the retention models based on linear solvation energy relationships (LSER) and its modified version hydrophilic subtraction model (HSM). The calculation of the retention factor was modified for CEC, which showed a good fit in the HSM model. Chapter 4 aimed at developing a scoring approach to compare the performance of different CEC-MS monolithic stationary phases (SPs). The proposed score reflects the potential of a set of CEC-MS conditions to provide useful analytical information for a given compound and the best signal selected from the different detected adducts. The scores allowed the evaluation of each stationary phase and optimized the number of CEC monoliths needed to analyze test solutes

Promising catalytic activity by non-thermal plasma synthesized SBA-15-supported metal catalysts in one-step plasma-catalytic methane conversion to value-added fuels

A non-thermal dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma reactor was integrated with an M/SBA-15 (M = Pd, Pt, Ag and Au) catalyst, where metal reduction was achieved by H2 plasma treatment. Subsequently, the plasma-catalytic combination mode was tested for the methane partial oxidation reaction to liquid oxygenates, and the results were compared with the plasma-only system in terms of reactant conversion, energy efficiency and product distribution. The results from the characterization of the catalysts confirmed that the plasma treatment improved the surface characteristics of the catalysts and also modified or expanded the discharge on the catalytic surface. The plasma energetic species generally helped to flatten the metal nanoparticles over the support surface, which resulted in a better dispersion with the formation of smaller nanoparticles. A total liquid selectivity of 70% was achieved for the plasma-treated Pt/SBA-15-DBD system with almost 12% CH4 conversion compared to 58% total liquid at 7% CH4 conversion with the plasma-only system