Simultaneous sulfide and acetate oxidation under denitrifying conditions using an inverse fluidized bed reactor

BACKGROUND: Simultaneous removal of sulfur, nitrogen and carbon compounds from wastewaters is a commercially important biological process. The objective was to evaluate the influence of the CH₃COO^?/NO₃^? molar ratio on the sulfide oxidation process using an inverse fluidized bed reactor (IFBR). RESULTS: Three molar ratios of CH₃COO^?/NO₃^? (0.85, 0.72 and 0.62) with a constant S^2?/NO₃^? molar ratio of 0.13 were evaluated. At a CH₃COO^?/NO₃^? molar ratio of 0.85, the nitrate, acetate and sulfide removal efficiencies were approximately 100%. The N₂ yield (g N₂ g^?1 NO₃^?‐N consumed) was 0.81. Acetate was mineralized, resulting in a yield of 0.65 g inorganic‐C g^?1 CH₃COO^?‐C consumed. Sulfide was partially oxidized to S⁰, and 71% of the S^2? consumed was recovered as elemental sulfur by a settler installed in the IFBR. At a CH₃COO^?/NO₃^? molar ratio of 0.72, the efficiencies of nitrate, acetate and sulfide consumption were of 100%, with N₂ and inorganic‐C yields of 0.84 and 0.69, respectively. The sulfide was recovered as sulfate instead of S⁰, with a yield of 0.92 g SO₄^2?‐S g^?1 S^2? consumed. CONCLUSIONS: The CH₃COO^?/NO₃^? molar ratio was shown to be an important parameter that can be used to control the fate of sulfide oxidation to either S⁰ or sulfate. In this study, the potential of denitrification for the simultaneous removal of organic matter, sulfide and nitrate from wastewaters was demonstrated, obtaining CO₂, S⁰ and N₂ as the major end products. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

Nanocrystalline TiO2 photosensitized with natural polymers with enhanced efficiency from 400 to 600 nm

TiO₂ sensitization for solar applications requires not only efficient but also stable and inexpensive sensitizers. Different condensed tannins extracted from bark wastes of tropical wood trees were studied as possible sensitizers of TiO₂. These natural polymers adhere strongly to the TiO₂ even from aqueous solutions. Absorption spectra are presented for 1 mM aqueous sensitizing solutions prepared with lyophilized condensed tannins which absorb light in the visible range. Spectral photocurrent measurements and I–V characterization show that no bias is required for electron injection to the TiO₂ from all studied condensed tannins. Incident photon to current efficiency (IPCE) analysis indicates that surface complexation originates absorption bands with different electron injection efficiencies. These play a dominant role in determining IPCE spectral shape. We propose that surface modification by the sensitizer changes the surface trap density, thereby decreasing recombination losses.     

Cycle detection using a stack

We present an algorithm for detecting periodicity in sequences produced by repeated application of a given function. Our algorithm uses logarithmic memory with high probability, runs in linear time, and is guaranteed to stop within the second loop through the cycle. We also present a partitioning technique that offers a time/memory tradeoff. Our algorithm is especially well suited for sequences where the cycle length is typically small compared to the length of the acyclic prefix.     

Trends in Hydrological Parameters of a Southern Brazilian Watershed and its Relation to Human Induced Changes

The Piracicaba river basin is a subtropical watershed located in the southeastern region of Brazil. With an area of 12 400 km², the basin is a typical example of new landscape resulting from development in tropical and sub-tropical regions: establishment of intensive industrial and agricultural processes were followed by significant population growth and water management. This scenario has led to significant increase in water demand and decrease in water quality. The main objective of this study is the detection of changes in the patterns of flow and precipitation in the basin, and its possible relation to man-induced changes. Statistical analyses were performed on records of precipitation, evapotranspiration and streamflow, from 1947 to 1991. Precipitation and evapotranspiration totals showed significant increasing trends for the entire basin. From eight streamflow gauge stations, half showed significant decreasing trend. The most probable cause of such trends is the export of water from the basin to the metropolitan region of São Paulo city.     

A unified approach to superresolution and multichannel blind deconvolution.

This paper presents a new approach to the blind deconvolution and superresolution problem of multiple degraded low-resolution frames of the original scene. We do not assume any prior information about the shape of degradation blurs. The proposed approach consists of building a regularized energy function and minimizing it with respect to the original image and blurs, where regularization is carried out in both the image and blur domains. The image regularization based on variational principles maintains stable performance under severe noise corruption. The blur regularization guarantees consistency of the solution by exploiting differences among the acquired low-resolution images. Several experiments on synthetic and real data illustrate the robustness and utilization of the proposed technique in real applications.     

Innovation assessment in traditional industries. A proposal of aesthetic innovation indicators

Innovative activities are fundamental to the competitiveness strategies of the firms in a globalized market. Their assessment, using indicators such as those utilized in the Community Innovation Survey (CIS), shows significant sectoral dispersion. Traditional industries are in a weak position because the innovation they are involved in is mainly aesthetic, which is not really addressed in innovation surveys. In this work, we review the various criticisms levelled at existing indicators and propose some new indicators that would capture the types of innovations that are conducted by the traditional industries. This work is based on a study of the features of traditional industries and the concept of aesthetic novelty. The proposed indicators are tested in the Spanish footwear industry.     

Targeting optimum resource allocation using reverse problem formulations and property clustering techniques

Decoupling the constitutive equations from the balance and constraint equations allows for reformulating a conventional forward problem into two reverse problems. The first reverse problem is the reverse of a simulation problem, where the process model is solved in terms of the constitutive (synthesis/design) variables instead of the process variables, thus providing the synthesis/design targets. The second reverse problem (reverse property prediction) solves the constitutive equations to identify unit operations, operating conditions and/or products by matching the synthesis/design targets. Visualization of the problem is achieved by employing recently developed property clustering techniques, which allows a high-dimensional problem to be visualized in two or three dimensions. The clusters by definition satisfy intra-stream and inter-stream conservation through linear “mixing” rules, which allows for the development of consistent additive rules along with their ternary representation.