The assemblies of tetrahedral linker tetrakis[4-(carboxyphenyl)oxamethyl]methane acid (H(4)L) with ZnCl(2) and CdBr(2) yield two noncentrosymmetric, NLO-active coordination polymers [Zn(4)(L(2))(H(2)O)(3)(DMA)].2H(2)O (1) and [Cd(2)L(DMA)(2)(H(2)O)(2)] (2), respectively. 1 has an unprecedented 2-fold interpenetrating sxa topology with ferroelectric properties, while 2 has a 7-fold interpenetrat...

The U.S.A is moving toward energy independence; a distant memory are the long lines for gasoline of the 1970s and fading is the promise of competitive biofuels from Escherichia coli (Liu and Khosla, 2010; Steen et al., 2010). The reason is cheap methane. Global amounts of shale gas total 7300 trillion cubic feet (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2013) and its major constituent is methane...

Methane was generated from cotton waste, while considering its pollution in textile industries. Cotton waste includes solid content and is rich in cellulose having a moisture content of 8.8%. It is difficult to form slurry as the waste float on water and hence an experimental set up has been made like a batch type digester and experiments were conducted with a different proposition of water wit...

Two fluidized bed membrane reactor concepts for hydrogen production via autothermal reforming of methane with integrated CO2 capture are proposed. Ultrapure hydrogen is obtained via hydrogen perm-selective Pd-based membranes, while the required reaction energy is supplied by oxidizing part of the CH4 in situ in the methane combustion configuration or by combusting part of the permeated H2 in th...

Degradation of brewery spent grain as a novel test substrate was explored in routine biochemical methane potential assays (BMP) using three different inocula. Significant differences in the initial biogas production rates from spent grain, methane yield coefficients and final spent grain degradation were observed between inocula. Initial and developed communities degrading novel substrate showe...

A model for cometabolism is verified experimentally for a defined methanotrophic mixed culture. The model includes the effects of cell growth, endogenous cell decay, product toxicity, and competitive inhibition with the assumption that cometabolic transformation rates are enhanced by reducing power obtained from oxidation of growth substrates. A theoretical transformation yield is used to quant...

Biogas yield of mixtures of cattle slurry and cheese whey, rates of production of methane, removal efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) were investigated at 35 °C. Stable biogas production of 621 l/kg volatile solids at a hydraulic retention time of 42 days in a mixture containing 50% slurry and whey was obtained. The concentration of methane in the bi...

Working at thermophilic conditions instead of mesophilic, and also the addition of a co-substrate, are both the ways to intend to improve the anaerobic digestion of the source-collected organic fraction of municipal solid wastes (SC-OFMSW). Addition of sewage treatment plant fat, oil and grease wastes (STP-FOGW), that are nowadays sent to landfill, would represent an opportunity to recover a wa...

Experiments on the interaction of intense, ultrafast pulses with large van der Waals bonded clusters have shown that these clusters can explode with substantial kinetic energy and that the explosion of deuterium clusters can drive nuclear fusion reactions. Producing explosions in deuterated methane clusters with a 100 fs, 100 TW laser pulse, it is found that deuterium ions are accelerated to su...

Laboratory experiments supported by full-scale operational observations have been utilized to assess the possible yield of methane-rich biogas via decomposition of COD and volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from organic matter trapped and settled in a municipal wastewater treatment plant. The impact of operational conditions (mainly solids' retention time) on VFAs and methane-rich gas generation was e...