School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

CH4220 Special Topics in Green Chemistry and Engineering. Yoel Sasson

Assignment No. 4 (6 questions)

October 19th 2017. To be submitted by October 30th 2017

Submission of this assignment contributes 4% to the final course grade.

Please type your paper. Grading for papers written by hand will be lower.

[1] The absorption of chromium from waste water by a solid biosorbent based on the brown algae
Sargassum sp. was tested in a packed column. Three parameters were suspected to have effect on
the efficiency of the absorption (q measured in mg/g adsorbent): (1) The amount of the biosorbent
(g), (2) the concentration of chromium in the waste water (mg/liter) and (3) the column feed rate
(ml/sec). The experimental high and low levels of these variables are summarized in table 1. The
design matrix and the experimental results are shown in Table 2.

Determine which process variables and combination of variables are affecting the observed results.
Propose a model equation for the process based on these variables.

Using your model predict the absorption efficiency using 5g of absorbent , chromium concentration
of 500 mg/liter and column flow rate of 0.04 ml/second.

Download the demo version (and manual) of Statgraphics software (www.statgraphics.com) and use
the DOE module (screening) to calculate and plot the above results.
Table 2

Experiment Absorbent Cr Flow Absorption

concentration Rate efficiency
g ml/sec (mg/g)
mg/lit

1 -1 -1 -1 4.92

2 1 -1 -1 4.04

3 -1 1 -1 9.06

4 1 1 -1 12.71

5 -1 -1 1 4.33

6 1 -1 1 4.64

7 -1 1 1 15.47

8 1 1 1 16.57

[2] Carbon nanofibers (CNF) are formed by decomposition of acetylene gas over nickel metal

catalyst in the presence or in the absence of hydrogen. It was established that the effects of
temperature and of C2H4 and H2 flow rates are important in determining the yield of the product CNF
(g/g nickel), its surface area (BET, m2/g) and its pore volume (cm3/g).

A full 23 factorial design experiments were carried out under the following low (-1) and high (+1)
conditions (ignore the central point):
Experimental results are displayed in the following table:

[a] Develop the models to predict the value of these response as function of the experimental
variables. Briefly discuss the meaning of the models. Apply Statgraphics to plot Pareto Chart and 3d
charts of these responses.

[b] Using your models, predict the value of the 3 responses under the following conditions:
Temperature of 6500C, C2H4 flowrate of 100 ml/min and hydrogen flowrate of 25 ml/min.

[c] Assume you have identified additional inportant variable. Describe how you can use the above
martix to perform a 24-1 fractional factorial design.

[3] From the ISI Web of Science database select a recent article (2011-2016) dealing with factorial
design. Write down the model found and critically analyze the topic, the methods, the results and
the conclusions of the paper (1.5 page maximum).

[4] For a given biological waste treatment facility, where phenol stream is being treated without
recycle, the following data is provided:

k = 0.80 g phenol/g VSS.d

KS = 0.15 mg phenol/L
Y = 0.45 g VSS/ g phenol

kd = 0.08 g VSS/g VSS. D

You have a stream containing 100 mg/liter phenol and the flow to the aeration tank is 100 m 3 per
day. Calculate the concentration of phenol and the concentration of the biomass at the reactor exit
if the hydraulic retention time () is 4 days. Determine the amount of oxygen (kg per day) required
by the system. Note that you have to assess the COD of phenol in order to answer the later question.

[5] Curves A and B in the following graph represent the Monod kinetics for two different bacteria
capable of degrading the same substrate S. You are to operate a continuous flow bioreactor without
recycle to degrade waste S that is inoculated with bacteria A and B. In the first experiment you use
high SRT (10 days) and in a second run you apply a low SRT (1.1 days). Which bacteria will be the
dominant in each experiment. Explain your answer.

[6] A waste treatment reactor of volume of 1000 liters (without recycle) receives a of 500
liter/day flow of waste containing 1800 mg/liter bsCOD. The bsCOD at the exit of the reactor is
10 mg/lit. The oxygen uptake in the system is 15 mg/liter per hour. Calculate the SRT, the rate
of oxygen consumption in the plant (kg/day), the VSS concentration at the exit of the reactor
and the yield of the process gVSS/gCOD removed.