Master of Science in Chemical Engineering, Cleveland State University, 2016, Washkewicz College of Engineering

Separation processes comprise a large portion of the activity in the chemical and petrochemical industries. For the chemical, petroleum refining, and materials processing industries as a group, separation processes are considered to be critical. Almost all the applications of chemical industries involves mixtures, so innovation in separation technology not only enhances productivity and global competitiveness of U.S. industries, but is also critical for achieving the industrial energy and waste reduction goals. Traditionally, air separation to produce nitrogen and oxygen and to separate nitrogen from methane was practiced by cryogenic distillation, which involved expensive high pressure units and large requirement of energy. The separation of nitrogen from methane is becoming increasingly important for upgrading LGF (Landfill gas), coal gas, and natural gas. Natural gases contain significant amounts of nitrogen. From the environmental perspective, Methane is the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas responsible for global warming with more than 10 % of total greenhouse gas emissions. Adsorption separation techniques are used widely among other separation processes as they tend to utilize fewer resources and are highly energy efficient. By considering the advantages of adsorption processes over other separation processes, it is of great interest to characterize the adsorption properties of microporous and nanoporous solid materials for their potential use as an alternative to the conventional catalytic separation process, and storage applications. Despite the advantages of using adsorption for methane upgrading, methane-nitrogen separation has been found particularly difficult because of the lack of satisfactory adsorbent. The equilibrium selectivity favors methane over nitrogen (or high methane/nitrogen selectivity) for all known adsorbents. Therefore, it is one of the objective of this study to check the potential application of silicalite adsorbent in natural g (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Orhan Talu PhD (Committee Chair); Dhananjai Shah PhD (Committee Member); Jorge Gatica PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Chemical Engineering

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 1999, Engineering : Environmental Engineering

Increasing regulatory pressure for VOC emissions reduction has accelerated the development of more cost effective VOC air pollution control (APC) technologies. Biofiltration is a viable technology to fill this role, for the purification of air streams polluted with biodegradable VOCs. In the biofilter, these pollutants diffuse from the air stream into a stationary mass of moist biological film, where they are oxidized by enzymatic catalysis at ambient pressures and temperatures. Properly operated, this natural, biological mineralization process will produce only benign by-products, such as inorganic salts, carbon dioxide, and water, with some additional biomass. Although research into the science and development of the technology of biofiltration has been performed for over fifteen years, biofiltration remains not widely accepted as a proven technology for VOC APC. This perception is especially true for applications treating high influent VOC concentrations and requiring high VOC removal efficiencies. This research was undertaken to develop a new, cost effective biofiltration technology which can reliably treat air streams polluted with high VOC concentrations and achieve very high removal (elimination) efficiencies. Investigations were made to evaluate different biological attachment media, in order to identify the medium most suited to such an application. Using this medium, a reliable biofiltration technology was developed and extensively tested, which can achieve the goal of reliably treating high concentrations of VOCs at high loadings with high removal efficiency. Techniques for the management and control of the accumulating by-product biomass were developed. Procedures are presented for the calculation of VOC solubility and biological kinetic parameters, at the biofiltration operating temperature. A procedure for estimating the upper limit for biofiltration for the influent air VOC concentrations is presented. A simple, explicit biofilter design equation was (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Makram Suidan (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, English

Medieval English authors often regard aspects of the legal system to be in conflict with an endemic cultural practice, maintenance. Simply put, maintenance was the payment of a form of salary to a high-level servant by a lord. The salary this servant (or affine) might receive could consist of cash-payments, gifts, or access to lucrative official positions, including the proxy enjoyment of some portion of the lord's judicial rights. Obviously, the mutual ties of aid and loyalty between a lord and an affine threatened impartial justice at every level, and medieval authors strove both to bring its abuses to light, and to offer alternatives. Each of my chapters sheds light on how late fourteenth-century authors articulated the relationship between different legal institutions and maintenance. I begin by showing how the events in one of the more obscure Canterbury Tales, the Tale of Melibee, resemble a popular out-of-court settlement practice called accord. Chaucer blamed corrupt accords on maintenance. In Piers Plowman, William Langland lamented the damage that maintenance could do to legal process, even in high courts such as the Council and Court of Chancery, a concern that I also examine. John Gower spends a considerable amount of time writing about the legal profession, especially lawyers and other legal officials. I claim that Gower argues that if the king allowed maintenance and other personal considerations to influence his judgement, then legal officials would do the same; moreover, legal officials tarnish the king's reputation since they receive their legal powers by delegation from the king. Finally, I explore Thomas Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes as presenting a solution to the problem of legal personnel's attraction to maintenance. I argue that while Hoccleve's explicit goal for the work is to have his annuity paid regularly for his work in the Office of the Privy Seal, he bases his right to advise the prince on his experience as a bureaucrat in a royal lega (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Green (Advisor) Subjects: