CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TOPICS

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.

Industrial wastewater has been posing a serious threat to the world, especially the African continent where the industrial wastwater treatment technology has not been fully developed and implemented by the industrialists. The industrialists are more concerned with how to maximize profits from the investment; hence little or no attention is paid to the wastewater generated, which causes a lot of havoc to the environment. This problem is compounded by the att...

ABSTRACT

The research project studies the analysis of pear and its oil. The mesocarp from edible African pear “DacryodesEdulis” were evaluated for their oil yield. The pulp from this pear were oven dried at 100oC-105oC to a moisture content level of 29%.The mesocarp was subjected to proximate analysis to determine the percentage of the moisture, ash, fat, crude fibre, crude protein and carbohydrate content which resulted to the values of 29%, 2%, 19.6%, 25.5%, 11.9%, and...

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

In recent years, increasing awareness of environmental impact of organic and inorganic compounds has prompted the purification of waste water prior to discharge into natural waters. A number of conventional treatment technologies have been considered for treatment of waste water contaminated with organic substance. Among them, the adsorption process has been found to be the most 4 effective method while activated carbon is regarded as the most effective material...

ABSTRACT

In this study, proximate analysis and characterization techniques were carried out on maize tassel fibres in order to check its feasibility as a bio-sorbent for bio-sorption process before the immobilization with Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA). The moisture content, ash content, apparent density, particle size and crude protein of maize tassel fibre were determined to show that the bio-material was exceptional for its use in column adsorption. The surface chemistry of the bio-mate...

ABSTRACT

As interest in biomass utilization into combustion fuels grows, the torrefaction, becomes ever more important. Torrefaction is aimed to maximize energy by removing undesirable components (water, hemicellulose and volatile matter) which cause poor ignition characteristic, excessive smoking and low combustion efficiency when used for energy generation in boilers and blast furnaces. In this research, the effect of torrefaction on the physiochemical and combustion characteristi...

ABSTRACT

This research work focused on the production of bio-based products and response optimization of bio-oil yield operating parameters from shea butter shell. The Thermogravimetry Analysis (TGA) was used to determine the thermal stability of the shea butter shell and found to be stable at temperature 400 °C. Also, for the bio-char produced, it was found to be stable at temperature 700 °C. Design of Experiment (DOE) was applied to establish optimal pyrolysis conditions f...

ABSTRACT

This research presents the “Optimization Studies of Process Parameters for the Adsorption of Copper and Arsenic Ions from Simulated Waste Water using Chitosan and Chitosan – Zeolite Beads” which was achieved by developing adsorbents of chitosan and chitosan – zeolite composite beads under acidic and alkaline conditions such as acetic acid and sodium hydroxide mediums. The prepared adsorbents were characterized using X – Ray Diffraction, Brunaue...

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this work is to model and simulate the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) riser of a refinery having Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC) Kaduna as a study. The unit’s operation is cracking of heavy gasoil (VGO) to light weight oils in the presence of catalyst (zeolite). The method employed involves the collection of operating conditions, feed stock stream analysis data from the refinery which was processed in order to obtain mass fraction...

ABSTRACT

Extraction is an important separation process for separating high value-added light oils from unconventional oils matrix such as bitumen and extra heavy oil. Thus it is important to understand the extraction process and the characterization of its products. Extraction of Agbabu bitumen yield 54.3 % maltene, 23.7% asphaltene and 21% impurities. The yield of maltene is almost twice (2 times) the yield of asphaltene. Agbabu bitumen, maltene and asphaltene fractions were analyz...

ABSTRACT

Air pollutions pollutant showed that the extent of spreading depends on the motor vehicle traffic population of the area. This pollution strongly generated through combustion of fossil fuels presents difficult environmental challenge to societies as it could degrade the environment and affect human health and quality of life. Vehicular emissions are major contributors to air pollution in urban areas as they contain harmful gases. The levels of carbon monoxide has been inves...

ABSTRACT

The aim of the research was to carryout adsorption study of the removal of chromium(vi) and copper(ii) ions from well water using pectin-chitosan polyelectrolyte complex as adsorbent. The optimum pH and ratio of pectin/chitosan was determined and the chitosan/pectin complex was characterized by using FTIR, BET, XRD, and SEM. Finally, removal efficiency of the PEC for chromium and copper was studied under optimum conditions. I.e. 0.4 g adsorbent mass, 1.221 and 0.12 mg/L of...

INTRODUCTION

The most common type of heat exchanger used in industry contains a number of parallel tubes enclosed in a shell and is thus called a shell and tube heat exchanger.  These heat exchangers are employed when a process required large quantities of fluid to be heated or cooled.  Due to their compact design, these heat exchangers contain a large amount of heat transfer area and also provide a high degree of heat transfer efficiency.

 ...

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY/INTRODUCTION

The Co-operative thrift and Credit Society is now in existence in many institutions of higher learning.  Based on this, one might start to wonder what this research topic is all about, since such a programme is not a new one.

All the same, the truth remains that the existence of Co-operative, Thrift and Credit Society in our higher institutions, one side is lower than the other, badly balanced.  This is to say that its present...

ABSTRACT

Deep eutectic solvents (DES) were synthesized from different mole ratios of K2CO3/glycerol at 400 rpm and 353 K for a period of 2 hours toform a homogenous transparent colorless liquid. ThreeDES were successfully formed at the ratio 1:20, 1:30 and 1:40. The DES synthesized were used as catalyst in transesterification reactionof Jatrophacurcasoil with time varied from 30 to 120 minutes, concentration of DES varied from 8 to 10% w/w, stirred at 300 rpm with a magnetic stirrer...

Abstract

The necessity to source clean energy and contain CO2 emissions has brought about a global interest in the use of biomass as an environmental friendly renewable energy route. One of the drawbacks in the conversion of biomass to energy via pyrolysis/gasification is the liberation of CO2 from the syngas.This study was carried out in a two- stage catalytic process using rice husk as feed, ZSM-5 catalysts for cracking and reforming of the pyrolysis volatiles and calcineddolomite...

ABSTRACT

Public water supply is distributed through water pipe network, which affects the quality of water that gets to the consumers when the integrity of the pipe distribution network is compromised. Hence, this study aimed at investigating and modelling water quality deterioration in the distribution network of Kaduna Metropolis. In order to achieve this water samples were obtained from selected points along the distribution network of Kaduna metropolis for water quality analysis...

Abstract

This research focused on the production of furfural from microalgae biomass and optimizing the process parameters using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Furfural production was carried out by hydrolysis of Pentosans to Pentoses where Pentosans in hemicelluloses is hydrolyzed with dilute mineral acids and NaCl as a promoter at relatively low temperature to pentoses and subsequent dehydration of pentoses to furfural in a single stage process. Central Composite Design (CCD)...

ABSTRACT

High-density polyethylene composites of date seed powder were prepared at filler loadings of 0 to 40wt%. The particle sizes of the date seed powder investigated were 72, 125, 150 and 180µm. Calcium carbonate was used as a reference filler. The high- density polyethylene composites were prepared in a two-roll mill machine and the resulting composites were extruded as sheets. Mechanical, thermal, morphological and physical properties of the composites were determined. R...

ABSTRACT

Biological systems usually consist of large number of components and involve processes at a variety of spatial, temporal and biological scales. This study presents a framework for model identification and the use of Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) in systems biology modelling and shows how the information content of clinical data from Short Insulin Tolerance Test (SITT) can be handled by optimal model-based estimation techniques. The goal is to identify dynamic model of t...

ABSTRACT

Aromatization is an important process for catalytic conversion of light alkanes to aromatics which are essential feedstocks to petrochemical industries. A number of catalysts have been used for this transformation among which Zn/ZSM-5 emerged so far best owing to its good dehydrogenating activity, lower cost and environmental friendliness. Compared with similar metals used in aromatization reaction, zinc is known to be unstable at reaction conditionsdue to its low melting p...

ABSTRACT

The successes recorded at the laboratory for the synthesis of zeolite Y and ZSM-5 using Kankara kaolin sourced from Katsina state, Nigeria as starting material necessitated the need for upscale of the production process. This thesis focused on the development of three pilot size production units and characterizing the products obtained from those units. Pilot size reactors for dealumination and production of zeolite Y and ZSM-5 were developed and test run. Manual means of d...

Abstract

The research titled Development of Eucalpytus tereticornis composite for chromium (VI) and lead (II) ions adsorption from simulated wastewater was aimed to establish the efficacy of Eucalpytus tereticornis composite as an adsorbent applied in the adsorption of Cr6+ and Pb2+ ions from simulated solution of respective ions. The adsorbent was pretreated with 0.5M of Nitric acid to remove the adsorbent colouration and soluble organic compound. Characterization of the adsorbent...

Abstract

In this work, the properties of baobab/sisal fibre reinforced low density polyethylene hybrid composites were studied. The effect of fibre loading and fibre treatment with varying sodium hydroxide (NaOH)concentration on the composite properties was investigated. The developed composites were characterized for tensile strength, modulus of elasticity (MOE), elongation at break, hardness and impact strength.Analysis of the results showed that, for the monolith...

Excerpt from the Study

The following conclusions were be drawn from the work

1. Undoped goethite catalyst, copper doped (A) catalyst with 0.2 wt% Cu,copper doped (B) catalyst with 1.6wt% Cu and copper doped (C) catalyst with 3.3wt% Cuwere synthesized by precipitation method and characterized using XRD, surface area analysis, AAS and SEM techniques. 2. Batchwise depuration of the Kaduna refinery wastewaterwas achieved at optimum conditions of 360 minutes re...

ABSTRACT

Neem (Azadirachta indica A. Juss) is perhaps the most useful traditional medicinal plant in India. Each part of the neem tree has huge insecticidal property and is thus commercially exploitaed. During the last two decades, apart from the chemistry of the neem compounds, considerable progress has been achieved regarding the biological activity and insecticidal applications of neem. It is now considered as a valuable source of unique natural products for bota...