Investigation of Carbon Footprints of Three Desalination Technologies: Reverse Osmosis (RO), Multi-Stage Flash Distillation (MSF) and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED)

Nowadays, the drinking water shortage is increasing, mainly due to rapid population growth, climate change, wasteful overuse of water, and pollution. Under the current circumstances, a quarter of the world's population will not have access to good quality drinking water. Thus, another solution must be adopted in areas with insufficient freshwater. One possible line is the desalination of seawater, one of the most practical solutions to solve the problem of drinking water shortage along the oil availability shore and continues to expand globally. Water produced may also be utilized for irrigation, reducing a region's reliance on imports, contributing to the local economy, and improving food supplies. However, this process is not a consequences-free procedure; it may cause several environmental and human health problems.The three most applied desalination technologies are reverse osmosis (RO), multi-stage flash distillation (MSF), and multi-effect distillation (MED). In this study, the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) of drinking water produced from seawater using these three technologies with fossil and renewable energy sources were investigated based on two methods: life cycle assessment (LCA) using SimaPro life cycle analysis software and carbon footprints. As a result, RO technology has significantly lower CO2 emissions than thermal technologies. The RO combined renewable energy is the most environmentally friendly; provides outstanding benefits in terms of human health and ecosystem quality. This technology may still evolve in the future to produce longer-lasting, cheaper membranes, and the energy requirements of this process are lower with applying modern energy recovery systems

Development of Hybrid Organophilic Pervaporation and Distillation Method for Separation of Mixture Containing Heterogeneous Azeotropic

The study is motivated by the industrial separation problem in the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industry, that is isobutanol removal from process wastewater. There are several options for separating the isobutanolwater system. When separating on an industrial scale, it is essential that the most suitable alternative is implemented. The classical method of isobutanol-water separation is distillation. However, since the mixture forms a heteroazeotrope, only an azeotrope composition can be achieved with traditional distillation. Azeotropic distillation is a solution, the alternative is membrane separation, including pervaporation. The aim of this study is to investigate and optimize hybrid organophilic pervaporation and distillation processes for the separation of the isobutanol-water mixture. The examination is carried out in professional flowsheet simulator environment with user-added organophilic pervaporation membrane modules, phase separator and distillation column. Applying this new process, it is possible to obtain 99.9 weight% alcohol and water product from the initial 7 weight% isobutanol - 93 weight% water mixture

Life Cycle, PESTLE and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis of Membrane Contactor-Based Nitrogen Recovery Process

Nitrogen is one of the most critical nutrients in the biosphere, and it is an essential nutrient for plant growth. Nitrogen exists in the atmosphere vastly as a gaseous form, but only reactive nitrogen is usable for plants. It is a valuable resource and worth recovering in the wastewater sector. The aim of this work was to prepare a comprehensive environmental analysis of a novel membrane contactor-based process, which is capable of highly efficient nitrogen removal from wastewater. Life cycle assessment (LCA), PESTLE and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) were applied to evaluate the process. The EF 3.0 method, preferred by the European Commission, IMPACT World+, ReCiPe 2016 and IPCC 2021 GWP100 methods were used with six different energy resources—electricity high voltage, solar, nuclear, heat and power and wind energy. The functional unit of 1 m3 of water product was considered as output and “gate-to-gate” analysis was examined. The results of our study show that renewable energy resources cause a significantly lower environmental load than traditional energy resources. TOPSIS score was used to evaluate the alternatives in the case of MCDA. For the EU region, the most advantageous option was found to be wind energy onshore with a score of 0.76, and the following, nuclear, was 0.70

Separation of Alcohol-Water Mixtures by a Combination of Distillation, Hydrophilic and Organophilic Pervaporation Processes

It can be stated that in the fine chemical industries, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, large amounts of liquid waste and industrial waste solvents are generated during the production technology. Addressing these is a key issue because their disposal often accounts for the largest proportion of the cost of the entire technology. There is need to develop regeneration processes that are financially beneficial to the plant and, if possible, reuse the liquid waste in the spirit of a circular economy, in a particular technology, or possibly elsewhere. The distillation technique proves to be a good solution in many cases, but in the case of mixtures with high water content and few volatile components, this process is often not cost-effective due to its high steam consumption, and in the case of azeotropic mixtures there are separation constraints. In the present work, the membrane process considered as an alternative; pervaporation is demonstrated through the treatment of low alcohol (methanol and ethanol) aqueous mixtures. Alcohol-containing process wastewaters were investigated in professional process simulator environment with user-added pervaporation modules. Eight different methods were built up in ChemCAD flowsheet simulator: organophilic pervaporation (OPV), hydrophilic pervaporation (HPV), hydrophilic pervaporation with recirculation (R-HPV), dynamic organophilic pervaporation (Dyn-OPV), dynamic hydronophilic pervaporation (Dyn-HPV), hybrid distillation-organophilic pervaporation (D + OPV), hybrid distillation-hydrophilic pervaporation (D + HPV), and finally hybrid distillation-hydrophilic pervaporation with recirculation (R-D + HPV). It can be stated the last solution in line was the most suitable in the terms of composition, however distillation of mixture with high water content has significant heat consumption. Furthermore, the pervaporation supplemented with dynamic tanks is not favourable due to the high recirculation rate in the case of tested mixtures and compositions

Antibacterial activity of Piper betle extracts on Helicobacter pylori and identification of potential compounds

Helicobacter pylori is one of the most common infectious bacteria in the world that causes gastric diseases leading to cancer. The increase of multiple antibiotic resistance rates of H. pylori have been reported worldwide. Thus, development of novel drugs is urgently required. Piper betle has many therapeutic values in traditional medicine. In this study, therefore, we investigated antibacterial activity of P. betle extracts and their fractions against a H. pylori strain isolated in Vietnam. The agar disk diffusion assay showed inhibition zone of ethyl acetate extract and methanol extract from P. betle leaf that of were 46 mm and 32 mm in diameter, respectively. After fractionation of the ethyl acetate extract through silica gel column chromatography, two peaks, PD2 and PD3, out of 12 fractions showed the strongest antibacterial activity. PD2 was sub-fractionated further by re-chromatography on the silica gel column, and subfraction TK12 gave best resolution on LC-MS analysis. Finally, 4 potential compounds, quercetrin, calodenin B, vitexin and plicatipyrone, were identified in TK12 fraction.

Modelling of Hybrid Method for VOC Removal from Process Wastewater: Distillation and Hydrophilic Pervaporation

The study is motivated by the industrial problem from pharmaceutical industry, which is ethanol and methanol removal from process wastewater. To complete this goal hybrid method is investigated and optimized. Two distillation columns are sufficient for separation of alcohol-water mixture. Suitable water can be purified as bottom product of first column. Ethanol and methanol purification is achieved with combination of second distillation column and pervaporation. The target of this research is to rigorously model and optimize the separation of water-ethanol-methanol ternary mixture in professional flowsheet simulator environment. The minimal sufficient membrane transfers area and number of minimal theoretical stages of the columns are determined. Cost estimation is also investigated according to Douglas methodology. Considering the simulation and economic results it can be determined that, the hybrid configuration is suitable for separation of ternary mixture in 99.5 weight percent purity

Sustainable technology solutions for reuse of process wastewaters from fine chemical industries

In the fine chemical industries, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, production technology generates large amounts of liquid waste and industrial waste solvents. Separation of various organic substances used in industry, such as adsorbable organic halides (AOX), from industrial wastewater is an important task of environmental protection. In this work, two technologies were compared to investigate the recycling/reuse of organic material of process wastewaters. The analysis was based on real case study from fine chemical industry. The separation efficiency, operational parameters and cost analysis were carried out to examine stripping and distillation technologies. The calculation was achieved in professional flowsheet simulator environment. According to the results, it can be determined there is no significant difference in separation efficiency of wastewater output streams. However, in the case of distillation technology, the reuse of halides can be possible inside the factory, so this is the recommended procedure for environmental protection. The cost of recovery technologies is also compared with waste incineration. These calculations also demonstrate the effectiveness of the treatment methods, because with recovery technologies it is possible to obtain a reduction of up to 85% compared to incineration