Iranica Journal of Energy & Environment
Volume:6 Issue: 1, Winter 2015

With a growing focus on renewable energy, interest in design of wind turbines has also been expanding. In today’s market, the horizontal axis (windmill) turbine is the most common type in use; but, vertical axis (Darrieus) turbines have certain advantages. Darrieus turbines, which are liftdriven, have a higher power potential than the horizontal, or drag-driven turbines. The main flaw with their design is their inability to self-start. Darrieus turbines require an external energy source to bring the device to a minimum rotational speed. This paper presents design, construction and testing of a vertical axias (Darrieus) wind turbine with 3 blades, starting solely from the low energy of the wind. A separate drag device (Savonius type turbine) on the top of an existing Darrieus turbine was mounted to make the turbine self start at low wind speed. The cut-in speed of the turbine was 3 m/s, cut-off speed was 20 m/s and power obtained was 50 Watts at wind velocity of 6 m/s. The testing with primiarly available permanent magnetic generator sponsored by industry resulted in 35 Watts at 9m/s.

Activated carbon was produced from rice husk via thermal pretreatment preceding chemical modification with phosphoric acid. In order to study the effect of phosphoric acid modification, the characteristics of the activated carbon produced were determined before and after acid modification and subsequently compared. These characteristics include surface morphology, surface functional groups, surface area, average pore diameter and pore volume. Characterization results showed that modification of the thermally treated rice husk with phosphoric acid enhanced the surface area of the activated carbon from 12.47 to 102.4m2/g. The average pore diameter was also enhanced from 2.4 to 1.82nm. It also shows improvement in micropore volume from 0.0052 to 0.034cm3/g. SEM analysis confirmed the improvement in surface area and pore development resulting from the phosphoric acid modification while FTIR analysis revealed the existence of phosphorous-oxy-containing functional groups on the surface of the phosphoric acid modified activated carbon.

Chemometric methods were applied to Linggi River water quality data sets to evaluate spatial - temporal variations and identify sources of pollutants. In 2011, the data sets consist of 11 variables, monthly collected from 26 sampling stations. Three clusters (C1;, C2; 10 C3; 10 stations) were generated using a cluster analysis method; four latent factors were identified by principle component analysis with factor analysis method. The scree plot was used to identify the number of principle components and show pronounced change after 4 eigenvalues. Four principle components explained about 80.8 % of the total variance in the water data sets from eigenvalue > 1. Using a discriminant analysis method, the discriminant function weighed with 5 (pH, biochemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, iron and ammonia nitrogen) and 7 (pH, conductivity, biochemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, iron, manganese and ammonia nitrogen) variables capable to distinguish between 84.6 % spatial and 83.3 % temporal variation, respectively. Linggi River water quality status were explained in that pollution mainly originated from agriculture run off or aquaculture residue (nutrients), soil weathering or industrial discharge (metals), and solid waste disposal site or municipal discharge (biochemicals). This study successfully demonstrated that chemometric methods demonstrate useful information for further monitoring strategies.

Desertification and deforestation are great problems facing developing nations. Adequate means of disposing wastes are also lacking، hence، converting them to other useful products such as briquettes for domestic fuel is desirable. The purpose of this work is to study some properties of briquettes made from groundnut shell and waste paper admixture with a view of addressing handling، transportation، and storage problems which is associated with biomass when used as fuels. Briquettes were manufactured using a motorized briquetting machine using five groundnut shells، waste paper mixing ratios (by weight)، i. e.، 10:90; 20:80; 30:70; 40:60; and 50:50. Obtained results showed that briquette produced using 10:90 waste groundnut shell - waste paper ratios exhibited the largest (though minimal) linear expansion on drying. While the compressed (maximum) density of the briquettes ranged between 627. 59 kg/m3 and 878. 10 kg/m3. For the relax density ranged from 281. 43 kg/m3 and 499. 38 kg/m3، there was little variation in the relax ratio of 2. 22 or 2. 23. The durability rating of the briquettes ranged in 55 and 91%. It was concluded that stable briquettes could be formed from waste paper mixed with groundnut shell of up to 20% groundnut shell admixture.

Dam construction has caused pressure upon land use/land cover change (LUCC) which is a major cause of bio-environmental changes. In this paper, the environmental impacts of Sattarkhan dam construction from 1987 to 2010 were monitored and recent changes are analyzed, using the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) images of 1987 and 2010; the time before and after the dam construction. The methodology consists of two main stages. In the first stage, image process techniques were employed to classify satellite images using the post- classification comparison change detection method. Results indicate that irrigated agriculture, bare lands, and dry agriculture were reduced in the study period, while water bodies and built-up areas increased. Based on this finding, significant changes in land use/land cover have occurred in Sattarkhan dam basin. In the second stage the bioenvironmental indices were applied to evaluate the bioenvironmental impacts of LUCC and it revealed that the maximum detrimental indices were concerned with conversion of agricultural land use and orchards to built-up lands and water bodies. As an overall evaluation, dam construction has a positive impacts rather than negative environmental impacts.

To assess the leakage of sanitation service in urban areas on the contamination of water streams and soil besides, a risk assessment study was conducted through the intake of edible plants from polluted irrigated suburban area of El-Zomor area, Egypt. The results revealed that concentrations of trace elements were several folds higher in the studied site compared to the background level in the earth crust indicating that the soil of the studied area is contaminated with heavy metals. Therefore, contamination factor (CF) values of this area indicate that soils were considerably contaminated with Cd, moderately contaminated with Co, Cu, Pb and Mn, but showed signs of low contamination with other metals. Enrichment factor (EF) indicating that moderate enrichment of Cu and very significant enrichment for Cd were contributed to anthropogenic source. To assess the health risk, estimated exposure and risk index were calculated. For the non-carcinogenic risk, the studied elements were not found to cause any risks to the local population, since the hazard index (HI) for studied trace elements were lower than the safe level. The level of cancer risk associated with exposure to these elements falls within the range of safe limits (10-4–10-6) so we consider the risk is unacceptable.

The present study premeditated to explore and compare the potential of Aspergillus sp. to degrade monocrotophos in soil. Two different strains of Aspergillus sp. viz Aspergillus niger JQ660373 and Aspergillus flavus, were tested under anaerobic conditions for their monocrotophos (150 μg Kg-1) degrading ability in sandy loam soil for a period of 30 days. The water-holding capacity was maintained at 60% and samples were incubated at 25 ± 4 °C. After regular time interval of 5 days, the samples were collected and estimated for residual monocrotophos concentration. Residual monocrotophos was extracted with ethyl acetate and estimated by spectrophotometric method at 254nm. The degradation of monocrotophos in soil was observed to be rapid and followed first order kinetics. A 99% of applied pesticide was degraded within 30 days of incubation. It was found that Aspergillus niger was more efficient for the degradation of monocrotophos than Aspergillus flavus. The half life of monocrotophos for Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus was found to be 7.35 and 9.23 days, respectively. Degradation process was assessed by HPTLC and FTIR analysis. These revealed reduction in the peak of standard monocrotophos as a measure of hydrolytic cleavage of vinyl bond with the formation of inorganic phosphates and release of carbon dioxide and ammonia. It could be concluded from the study that these two fungal strains had the ability to degrade monocrotophos in soil.

Analytical parameters of immunochromatographic test-systems, such as the detection limit and working range, depend on many factors. However, the process of choosing the concentration and composition of reagents applied to test strip membranes, and choosing the membranes themselves has not been systematically described for commercially produced tests or for scientific studies. Here, we present the results of a study to determine how the properties of the test system components, using mycotoxin aflatoxin B1 as an example, affect its analytical performance. A comparison of different membranes used for immunochromatography was performed as well as reagent concentrations and composition of intermolecular conjugates. Optimization of the immunochromatographic system indicated a limit of aflatoxin B1 detection equal to 0.2 ng/mL. The effectiveness of the system in testing plant extracts with minimal (twice) dilution prior to analysis was determined and the final content of methanol in the course of immunoassay was 35%.

Tuna fish belongs to Scombridae family which includes Sardinae, Macerels, Tuna and many other species. These fish are harvested in a 30 thousands kilometers area in Persian Gulf and are processed in conserve factories. About 20± 3 wet weight percent of Tuna fish are by product. These by product were studied to extract the high-value productions; marine oils rich of unsaturated multiple-band fatty acids, in which 100kg was obtained from Chabahar and transferred to Urmia for analysis. Extracting oil was made using the Dyer and Bligh standard method. The results showed that 80± 5 % of wet weight of eye wastes of Tunas fish was oil; profile of the extracted oils were made using gas chromatography. The results showed that eye wastes of Tuna fish oil had 21.47% saturated fatty acids, 25.70% single band unsaturated fatty acids, and the total value of the unsaturated multiple band was 40.99%. The fatty acid contents of arachidonic acid, linolenic acid, linoleic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid were 1.78, 4.10, 6.20, 17.40 and 9.86% of the total fatty acids, respectively. Also, the results revealed that eye wastes of Tuna fish is considered for the first time as the new and rich source of Omega 3 and Omega 6.