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ChemEngineering
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Selected Papers from ICEER 2017: 2017 the 4th International Conference...
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Selected Papers from ICEER 2017: 2017 the 4th International Conference on Energy and Environment Research

A special issue of ChemEngineering (ISSN 2305-7084).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2017) | Viewed by 18215

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Nídia Caetano

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), Porto, Portugal
Interests: biodiesel; bioethanol; biorefinery; energy storage systems; microalgae biorefineries; sustainable energy systems; waste valorization; wastewater treatment; waste-to-energy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Chemical Process Engineering and Forest Products Research Centre, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
Interests: environmental catalysis and multiphase reactors; computational modeling; advanced oxidation processes (AOPs); advanced biological treatments; emerging chemical and biological contaminants; VOCs decontamination; impact of contaminants on human health; water reuse and circular economy; bioenergy recovery; recycling/valorization and waste management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The current state of development of nations is based on energy consumption, and developing countries naturally aspire to reach a state of development, which, by actual standards, demands huge amounts of energy. Not only is fossil-derived energy becoming scarce (in order to fulfil these needs), but also the related environmental impacts are the basis for climatic changes. This has pushed scientists and decision makers towards the development and implementation of renewable energy systems, as well as of more efficient energy systems.

Thus, attention has been directed to solve problems, such as the development of systems for the storage of surplus renewable energy, produced for later use, or its immediate use in the production of energy carriers, such as hydrogen or methane, or even the production of cleaner fuels for transportation in modern cities. On the other hand, the problems associated with environmental contamination due to waste and wastewater generation call for the valorization of wastes through the production of biofuels, valuables, and/or energy, through a biorefinery concept, and for the biological and chemical treatment of wastewater. The use of life cycle assessment tools allows one to better plan these systems.

The Paris Agreement, achieved in December 2015 by several countries, has set new and tighter targets for sustainable development, leaving each country the responsibility and the freedom to draw up their plans and to achieve them. Now is the time to explore emerging technologies and concepts in a collaborative way, bringing together engineers, researchers, and professionals from different areas.

This Special Issue, therefore, aims to contribute to the Sustainable Energy agenda through advanced scientific and multi-disciplinary knowledge, combined to improve renewable energy availability and control environmental pollution. We, therefore, invite papers on innovative technical developments, reviews, case studies, analytical, as well as assessments, from different disciplines, which are relevant to renewable and cleaner energy, and to environmental remediation and pollution control.

Dr. Nídia Caetano
Dr. Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. ChemEngineering is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Energy and Environmental Engineering

  • Bioenergy engineering technology
  • Pollution control and waste treatment
  • Environmental bioprocesses
  • Clean energy and chemical engineering technology
  • Life cycle assessment

Materials Engineering

  • Materials synthesis and characterization
  • Biomaterials
  • Nanomaterials

Process Engineering

  • Downstream processing design and analysis
  • Chemical and catalytic reaction engineering
  • Transport phenomena such as fluid dynamics, heat transfer and mass transfer
  • Separation and purification engineering
  • Process systems optimization

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 4064 KiB  
Article
Test of Two Phase Change Materials for Thermal Energy Storage: Determination of the Global Heat Transfer Coefficient
by Luís Esteves, Ana Magalhães, Victor Ferreira and Carlos Pinho
ChemEngineering 2018, 2(1), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/chemengineering2010010 - 09 Mar 2018
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3812
Abstract
Laboratory scale experiments on the behaviour of two phase change materials, a salt and a paraffin, during fusion and solidification cycling processes, were accomplished. To do this, a system using thermal oil as the heat transfer carrier was used and the phase change [...] Read more.
Laboratory scale experiments on the behaviour of two phase change materials, a salt and a paraffin, during fusion and solidification cycling processes, were accomplished. To do this, a system using thermal oil as the heat transfer carrier was used and the phase change material being tested operated in a fusion and solidification cycle. The heat transfer oil transferred heat to the phase change material during the fusion step and carried heat away from the change phase material during the solidification step. The influence of the mass flow rate of the heat transfer fluid, as well as of its temperature, in the response of the phase change material, was studied. Axial and radial temperature profiles inside the phase change materials were obtained during the experiments and subsequently analysed. From these temperature profiles and through an adequate mathematical treatment, global heat transfer coefficients between the heat transfer oil and the phase change material were determined, as well as average heat transfer coefficients for the phase change materials. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICEER 2017: 2017 the 4th International Conference on Energy and Environment Research)
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14 pages, 1418 KiB  
Article
Effect of Noble Metals (Ag, Pd, Pt) Loading over the Efficiency of TiO2 during Photocatalytic Ozonation on the Toxicity of Parabens
by João F. Gomes, Ana Lopes, Katarzyna Bednarczyk, Marta Gmurek, Marek Stelmachowski, Adriana Zaleska-Medynska, M. Emília Quinta-Ferreira, Raquel Costa, Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira and Rui C. Martins
ChemEngineering 2018, 2(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/chemengineering2010004 - 09 Jan 2018
Cited by 44 | Viewed by 5911
Abstract
The conventional wastewater treatments are inadequate for emerging contaminants detoxification. Photocatalytic ozonation with suitable catalyst can be considered as a suitable solution on the removal of these compounds. The aim of this study was to verify the effect of Ag, Pd and Pt [...] Read more.
The conventional wastewater treatments are inadequate for emerging contaminants detoxification. Photocatalytic ozonation with suitable catalyst can be considered as a suitable solution on the removal of these compounds. The aim of this study was to verify the effect of Ag, Pd and Pt with different loadings (0.1, 0.5 and 1% wt %) onto TiO2 surface for the degradation of a mixture of parabens (methyl, ethyl, propyl, butyl and benzyl) through photocatalytic ozonation. Chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC) was also analyzed after treatments, as well as the effect of the treatment on the samples toxicity over different species, including bacteria, clams and plants. The effect of metal loading on the parabens degradation; COD and TOC removal is very dependent upon the type of noble metal used. This can be related with the different pathways influenced by the metal load. On the one hand, it can be related with the reduction of electron–hole recombination phenomenon, and, on the other hand, the trapping of electrons by the metals reduces the amount of ozonide and hydroxyl radicals produced. In terms of toxicity, apparently the best results were achieved with the intermediate noble metal load. However, the effect of noble metal load must be analyzed case to case. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICEER 2017: 2017 the 4th International Conference on Energy and Environment Research)
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14 pages, 1248 KiB  
Article
Effectiveness and Temporal Variation of a Full-Scale Horizontal Constructed Wetland in Reducing Nitrogen and Phosphorus from Domestic Wastewater
by Conceição Mesquita, António Albuquerque, Leonor Amaral and Regina Nogueira
ChemEngineering 2018, 2(1), 3; https://doi.org/10.3390/chemengineering2010003 - 05 Jan 2018
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4051
Abstract
Cultural eutrophication stimulated by anthropogenic-derived nutrients represents one of most widespread water quality problems worldwide. Constructed wetlands (CWs) have emerged as an aesthetic, sustainable form of wastewater treatment, but, although they have shown adequate levels of organic matter removal in wastewaters, the effectiveness [...] Read more.
Cultural eutrophication stimulated by anthropogenic-derived nutrients represents one of most widespread water quality problems worldwide. Constructed wetlands (CWs) have emerged as an aesthetic, sustainable form of wastewater treatment, but, although they have shown adequate levels of organic matter removal in wastewaters, the effectiveness of nutrient removal has been less successful. An eleven-month monitoring program was undertaken in a horizontal subsurface flow CW (HSSF-CW) treating domestic wastewater from a village in Centre Region of Portugal, to evaluate the influence of climatic conditions (Continental-Mediterranean Climate region) and seasonal variations on removal. This CW uses gravel and sand as substrate and Phragmites australis as wetland plants. Samples were collected at the inlet and outlet from wetland bed and analyzed for pH, TN, Org-N, NH4+-N, NOx-N, TP and DP. The removal efficiencies (RE) of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds were relatively poor, but the results allow us to conclude that season had a significant (p < 0.05) effect on the RE of TN, NH4+-N, NOx-N, TP and DP, with higher values in warmest period (10.4%, 10.4%, 3.4%, 27.5% and 26.1%, respectively) than in coldest period (0%, −7.7%, −9.8%, 12.9% and 0%, respectively). Although lower hydraulic loading rate (HLR) generally resulted in better RE of all N and P compounds analyzed, no significant linear relationship was observed between these two variables. TN and NH4+-N concentrations in the effluent tend to significantly (p < 0.05) decrease with increasing respective incoming mass load rates for whole monitoring period and during spring–summer period, while the correlation between outlet TP concentrations and the inlet loading rate are not significant. The results indicate that the system is not effective for removal of nutrients, probably because it operated on overload and with a low hydraulic retention time (HRT) (average = 2.4 days). The results also showed that the RE of N and P followed seasonal trends, with higher values during spring–summer period. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICEER 2017: 2017 the 4th International Conference on Energy and Environment Research)
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2560 KiB  
Article
Mitigation of Cr(VI) Aqueous Pollution by the Reuse of Iron-Contaminated Water Treatment Residues
by Marius Gheju and Ionel Balcu
ChemEngineering 2017, 1(2), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/chemengineering1020009 - 11 Oct 2017
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3631
Abstract
Reducing the levels of heavy metals in wastewaters below the permissible limits is imperative before they are discharged into the environment. At the same time, water treatment technologies should be not only efficient, but also affordable. In accordance with these principles, this study [...] Read more.
Reducing the levels of heavy metals in wastewaters below the permissible limits is imperative before they are discharged into the environment. At the same time, water treatment technologies should be not only efficient, but also affordable. In accordance with these principles, this study assessed the possibility of recovering iron-contaminated residues, resulting from the treatment of synthetic acid mine drainage, for the subsequent remediation of Cr(VI) polluted aqueous solutions. Bentonite, an inexpensive and available natural material, was used as an adsorbent for the removal of Fe(II) from synthetic acid mine drainage (AMD). Then, Fe(II)-contaminated bentonite, the residue generated during the treatment of AMD, was recovered and activated with sodium borohydride in order to convert the adsorbed Fe(II) to Fe(0). Subsequently, the Fe(0)-containing bentonite (Be-Fe(0)) was further used for the treatment of Cr(VI) contaminated aqueous solutions. Reactive materials investigated in this work were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive angle X-ray spectrometry (SEM-EDX), X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), point of zero charge, and image photographs. The effect of several important parameters (pH, temperature, metal concentration, and ionic strength) on both treatment processes was investigated and discussed. It was shown that the efficiency of Cr(VI) removal with Be-Fe(0) was much higher than with bentonite. On the basis of the present study it can be concluded that residues generated during the treatment of AMD with bentonite can be used as a cheap precursor for the production an Fe(0)-based reagent, with good Cr(VI) removal potential. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICEER 2017: 2017 the 4th International Conference on Energy and Environment Research)
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