Using machine learning to predict the performance of a cross-flow ultrafiltration membrane in xylose reductase separation

This study provides a new perspective for xylose reductase enzyme separation from the reaction mixtures—obtained in the production of xylitol—by means of machine learning technique for large-scale production. Two types of machine learning models, including an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system based on grid partitioning of the input space and a boosted regression tree were developed, validated, and tested. The models’ inputs were cross-flow velocity, transmembrane pressure, and filtration time, whereas the membrane permeability (called membrane flux) and xylitol concentration were considered as the outputs. According to the results, the boosted regression tree model demonstrated the highest predictive performance in forecasting the membrane flux and the amount of xylitol produced with a coefficient of determination of 0.994 and 0.967, respectively, against 0.985 and 0.946 for the grid partitioning-based adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, 0.865 and 0.820 for the best nonlinear regression picked from among 143 different equations, and 0.815 and 0.752 for the linear regression. The boosted regression tree modeling approach demonstrated a superior capability of predictive accuracy of the critical separation performances in the enzymatic-based cross-flow ultrafiltration membrane for xylitol synthesis

Recent advancement and applications of biochar technology as a multifunctional component towards sustainable environment

Biochar is a rich carbon source formed through biomass's thermal decomposition. Biomass-derived biochar is gaining traction in a variety of industries to alleviate the most pressing environmental problems effectively. Biochar development utilizing biomass is generating tremendous attention as a low-cost amendment because of its multiple benefits for urban science, engineering, and the environment and its capability to trap carbon in the soil. Recently, there has been a shortage of specific data connecting biochar applications for environmental development and scientific research in climate change. This article analytically assesses reported studies and examines biochar's role in hydrogel-biochar composite technology, nanotechnology, hazardous pesticide detoxification, and as a nutrient source and a catalyst for various chemical reactions. Biochar's application in modern technological advancements and innovation has a discernible effect on renewable energy and activated carbon production. There is also a discussion of the scientific findings for biochar's capacity to improve agricultural physiology and alleviate salt plant growth and development and its function in promoting animal growth. In summary, biochar has a vast number of possible uses in environmental reduction, and the mechanism by which its performances should be further investigated. Thus, incorporating biochar into the environment appears to be a 'bonus' approach for urban science and engineering technology

Challenges and emerging approaches in life cycle assessment of engineered nanomaterials usage in anaerobic bioreactor

Due to the increasing demand for sustainable energy sources and effective management of the ever-increasing volume of organic waste, anaerobic digestion (AD) has continued to play a crucial role in biogas production in recent years. Biochar (BC) is a highly flexible material manufactured by carbonizing organic resources like biomass and trash in line with circular economy standards and \“tailor-made\” for certain purposes. The capacity of BC as an additive to address various well-established crucial difficulties in AD methods has been extensively studied during the last 10 years. Nevertheless, a comprehensive and credible explanation of the BC-AD link remains elusive. The life cycle analysis (LCA) of the biogas enhancement mechanism would provide a quantitative indicator of its long-term viability. The reported LCA studies of AD processes are analyzed in this chapter, showing that few systematic studies cover the whole process; thus results may be inconclusive. LCA results can be influenced by the heterogeneity of the AD method, reactor structure and conditions, and other influences. The absence of a conventional formation for LCAs utilized to the biogas yield method is a component in the inconsistent LCA results. Other considerations for instance systematic maintenance, transportation, system boundaries, temporal units, allocation preference, and waste disposal must be involved in the LCA plan. Notably, the economic pressure of both upstream and downstream systems should be included in the LCA phase. Inevitably, process design, optimization and modeling, and intensification will be the major future research subjects. This chapter provides a thorough and critical examination of the LCA and its sustainability evaluation for the whole AD procedure, which would be helpful in potential research

Treatment of palm oil mill effluent using electrocoagulation powered by direct photovoltaic solar system

High commercial electricity consumption is one of the disadvantages in the operation of lengthy electrocoagulation processes. To cater to this problem, this study develops an integrated photovoltaic-electrocoagulation system in treating oil palm mill effluent (POME). This system has successfully reduced 23,837 mg/L of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and 15,153 mg/L of biological oxygen demand (BOD) in 8 h. It was found that the higher solar radiation harvested by photovoltaics produces a higher current intensity, which in turn generates more in-situ coagulants into the wastewater. This relates to COD and BOD removal's significance from 150 to 390 min, where the current intensities are in the maximum range (between 153–181 mA). The first-order kinetic models of COD and BOD are in good correlation coefficient, which is 0.9873 and 0.9837, respectively. Overall, this study findings recommend the possibility of sustainable operation in the actual wastewater pond

Comprehensive assessment of biochar integration in agricultural soil conditioning: Advantages, drawbacks, and future prospects

Agriculture nowadays faces numerous issues because of the fast growth in food demand and environmental considerations. Due to the rapid depletion of agricultural areas and soil quality caused by a continuously growing population and the excessive addition of chemical fertilizers, rehabilitated consideration is required for sustaining viable crop production methods. Biochar (BC) use in agricultural soils has garnered considerable interest. BCs offer significant agricultural and environmental advantages, including improved soil health, enhanced crop growth and production, carbon sequestration, reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and nutrient dynamics regulation. BC application in agricultural systems is influenced by various parameters, including pyrolysis temperature, feedstock composition, dosage and procedure, nature of the soil, crop varieties, and biotic interactions that substantially impact the efficacy of BC under varying environmental conditions. BC improved nitrogen mineralization and plant absorption by modifying the rhizosphere's abiotic and microbiological activities. Thus, BC increased the plant's resistance to pathogens, decreased the availability of heavy metals (HMs), and promoted the plant's tolerance to environmental challenges. Nonetheless, BC application is hazardous in certain circumstances. This review discusses the advantages, drawbacks, and future developments of applying BC to agricultural soils. By providing an extensive assessment of the advantages and limitations of BC integration in agriculture soil conditioning, this review is highly informative regarding the development of soil and crop-specific BC with the appropriate properties. It could help increase agriculture yield, ensure food security, and enhance environmental management. In addition, this review highlights knowledge deficits and proposes future perspectives for commercializing large-scale BC applications

The potential of poultry processing waste to generate renewable energy using Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs)

Microbial Fuel Cell (MFCs) is a concept of applying microorganisms as catalyst in fuel cell. It works by oxidizing the electron and proton and transferred to the anode chamber under anoxic conditions to produce electricity. Microbial production of electricity might become an important form of bioenergy in future because MFCs extracting electric current from a wide range of soluble or dissolved complex organic wastes and renewable biomass. The poultry processing waste is collected from the Pusat Pemprosesan Ayam Kuantan. The double chamber MFC with three different concentration of substrate is used to generate the renewable energy from the waste. Analysis of data was performed by using a 1-way analysis-of-variance (1-way ANOVA). The significant ANOVA (P<0.05) studies shown the different in values of the monitored 4 parameters which indicates the data obtained is accurate. In this study, result analysis reveals that poultry processing waste is able to use as substrate in MFC hence able to produced energy. The maximum voltage that able to produce is 0.389V by using 1.2g of substrate concentration. Meanwhile, the MFC operation also is able to remove BOD and COD. These high levels of removal efficiency demonstrate the MFC system’s ability to treat poultry processing waste with the added benefits of generating energy

Characterisation of synthesised trimetallic nanoparticles and its influence on anaerobic digestion of palm oil mill effluent

The augmentation of biogas production can be achieved by incorporating metallic nanoparticles as additives within anaerobic digestion. The objective of this current study is to examine the synthesis of Fe–Ni–Zn and Fe–Co–Zn trimetallic nanoparticles using the co-precipitation technique and assess its impact on anaerobic digestion using palm oil mill effluent (POME) as carbon source. The structural morphology and size of the synthesised trimetallic nanoparticles were analysed using a range of characterization techniques, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The average size of Fe–Ni–Zn and Fe–Co–Zn were 19–25.5 nm and 19.1–30.5 nm respectively. Further, investigation focused on examining the diverse concentrations of trimetallic nanoparticles, ranging from 0 to 50 mgL−1. The biogas production increased by 55.55% and 60.11% with Fe–Ni–Zn and Fe–Co–Zn trimetallic nanoparticles at 40 mgL−1 and 20 mgL−1, respectively. Moreover, the lowest biogas of 11.11% and 38.11% were found with 10 mgL-1 of Fe–Ni–Zn and Fe–Co–Zn trimetallic nanoparticles. The findings of this study indicated that the trimetallic nanoparticles exhibited interactions with anaerobes, thereby enhancing the degradation process of palm oil mill effluent (POME) and biogas production. The study underscores the potential efficacy of trimetallic nanoparticles as a viable supplement for the promotion of sustainable biogas generation

Advanced techniques in the production of biochar from lignocellulosic biomass and environmental applications

Biochar is a carbon-rich product obtained from the thermochemical conversion of biomass. Utilizing biochar is essential for enhancing economic viability and maintaining the ecology effectively. This work reviews the techniques for producing biochar from various lignocellulosic biomass sources. Pyrolysis technology for converting lignocellulosic biomass into biochar has emerged as a frontier research domain for pollutants removal. The effects of biomass feedstock parameters, production techniques, reaction conditions (temperature, heating rate, etc.), activation, and functional group modification are compared on biochar's physical and chemical properties. This review also focused on environmental applications in several domains, such as agriculture and wastewater treatment. Considering the extensive availability of feedstock, excellent physical/chemical surface properties, and inexpensive cost, biochar has a remarkable potential for removing water pollutants efficiently. Studying the evolution properties of biochar by in-situ or post-modification is of great significance for improving the utilization value of lignocellulosic biomass. Biochar is a valuable resource, yet its application necessitates additional research into its properties and structure, as well as the development of techniques to modify those factors

Chapter 10 - Sustainable engineering of food waste into high-quality animal feed using a drying technology

Sustainable management through recycling of the food waste into animal feedstock is one of the promising approaches to overcome the food wastage-related issues. However, this action has been limited in some developed countries due to the lack of safety and security issues. Food waste contains high moisture content and it causes the spread-out of bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and sulfate reducing bacteria. The presence of these pathogens might cause food waste to be contaminated and causes infectious and pandemic diseases to human beings via animals. Thus this chapter aimed to discuss a case study where the evaluation of an effective method for food waste recycling is highlighted. As the food waste pre-drying facilities for the prerequisite animal feedstock pellets testimonial, this study ensures the end products processed inside the university (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia) are safe to be used as animal feeds by investigating the quality of end products. The observation reveals that solar drying food waste exhibits high protein and low moisture contents which the percentage is reached to 22% and 20%, respectively. Meanwhile, the oven drying method could reduce the E. coli content to only 500×103 CFU/g. Therefore, the solar drying method is the most effective to reduce high moisture content and able to achieve high protein content which is acceptable to be used as animal feeds

Treatment of palm oil mill effluent by electrocoagulation process

Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is known to be one of the major attributer to water pollution in Malaysia due to its high concentration of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and suspended solid (SS). Various techniques of effluent treatment such as chemical coagulation, adsorption, filtration, aerobic and anaerobic treatment, ponding system etc., have disadvantages such as high retention time and substantive chemical substances. Therefore, in this study electrocoagulation technique was introduced and applied. This process offers some distinctive advantages including a simple set-up, effectively remove high concentration of pollutant, short treatment time and requires only a small treatment space. Electrochemical cell has been successfully designed for POME treatment by choosing the vertical over horizontal orientation which subsequently resulted the highest removal of 57, 53 and 5% for COD, BOD and SS respectively. Monopolar series (MP-S) has been chosen instead of monopolar parallel (MP-P) and bipolar (BP) as the electrode arrangement due to the highest removal of 65, 62 and 60% for COD, BOD and SS respectively. Steel wool has been chosen rather than iron and aluminium plate for the highest removal of 74, 70 and 66% of COD, BOD and SS respectively. Operating parameters such as electrolysis time, current intensity, inter-electrode distance and initial pH have a great influence on the removal of COD, BOD and SS. The best effective range of operating parameters to treat POME were found to be 30 to 50 minutes for electrolysis time, 15 to 20 A for current intensity, 5 to 15 mm for inter-electrode distances and 3 to 6 for initial pH value. Electricity consumption is often become the limiting factor in the electrocoagulation process, therefore in this research, the high intensity of the current (15, 20 and 25) has been introduced and studied to improve the effectiveness of the process. For particle size analysis, the average flocs size at first steady-state, floc size at breakage state, average size at second steady-state, strength factor, recovery factor, first growth rate and second growth rate were found to be 336 μm, 223 μm, 333 μm, 66.37%, 97.35%, 20.94 μm/min and 11.89 μm/min. The average flocs size at the second steady-state for 1, 5 10, 15 20 and 25 A of current intensity were 168, 252, 333, 463, 538 and 550 μm respectively. The average flocs size at the second steady-state for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 mm of inter-electrode distances were 214, 228, 208, 168, 138 and 97 μm respectively. The average flocs size at second-steady state for pH 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 were found to be 216, 244, 275, 267, 236, 191, 175 and 163 μm respectively. The optimization study using response surface methodology (RSM) indicated that the optimal COD, BOD and SS removals were achieved at 19.07 A of current intensity, 44.97 minutes of treatment time, 8.60 mm of electrode distance and 4.37 of pH. The predicted results under this optimized condition were 97.21, 99.26 and 99.00% for COD, BOD and SS removal respectively. The validation experiment showed 95.03, 94.52 and 96.12% for COD, BOD and SS removal with 2.29%, 5.01% and 1.96% of standard error respectively. Overall, the treatment by using electrocoagulation process demonstrated an effectiveness and time saving technique for pollutant removal from POME