The technique that employs flash freezing and environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) was utilised for detailed investigation of the fouling materials in a membrane bioreactor (MBR). The method involves the flash freezing of a wet sample in liquid nitrogen for 10s to preserve its structure for direct ESEM observation with a high image resolution. ESEM images show that the sludge cake ...

A novel cation exchange fiber supported solid membrane was developed for transport of cobalt, manganese and nickel metal ions. Fiber supported solid membrane was prepared by chemically modifying the cellulose fibers with citric acid. In the fiber supported solid membrane, the diffusion by capillary action by keeping the liquid phase in the porous solid fiber and ion exchange mechanism were used...

Membrane distillation (MD) has the high potential to circumvent conventional desalination limitations in treating highly saline brines. However, performance of MD is limited by its low thermal efficiencyand temperature polarization (TP) effect. Consequently, driving force decreases when heat loss increases.In this study, we propose minimize TP through localized heating where thin feed channel w...

We develop an efficient simulation scheme to study a model suspension of equally sized colloidal hard spheres and nonadsorbing ideal polymer coils, both in bulk and adsorbed against a planar hard wall. The many-body character of the polymer-mediated effective interactions between the colloids yields a bulk phase diagram and adsorption phenomena that differ substantially from those found for pai...

The behavior at the liquid meniscus under the application of a high voltage 4 10Vp-p , high frequency 10 kHz alternating current ac signal is shown to depend very sensitively on the liquid conductivity and the applied frequency. For pure ethanol, after resonance effects become unimportant, the meniscus oscillates and then changes to a growing conical mode with increasing frequency. For ionic-li...

Monte Carlo simulations of spin models for liquid crystal bulk systems are described. A concise description of second rank Lebwohl-Lasher models of various dimensionality and of models containing in addition interactions of first and fourth rank is provided. Biaxial lattice models are also briefly discussed.

Hard models for particle interactions have played a crucial role in the understanding of the structure of condensed matter. In particular, they help to explain the formation of oriented phases in liquids made of anisotropic molecules or colloidal particles and continue to be of great interest in the formulation of theories for liquids in bulk, near interfaces and in biophysical environments. Ha...

Here, we successfully welded two bulk metallic glass (BMG) materials, Zr51Ti5Ni10Cu25Al9 and Zr50.7Cu28Ni9Al12.3 (at. %), using a liquid-solid joining process. An atomic-scale metallurgical bonding between two BMGs can be achieved. The interface has a transition layer of ~50 μm thick. The liquid-solid joining of BMGs can shed more insights on overcoming their size limitation resulting from thei...

Because of strong hydrogen bonding in liquid water, intermolecular interactions between water molecules are highly delocalized. Previous two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy experiments have indicated that this delocalization smears out the structural heterogeneity of neat H2O. Here we report on a systematic investigation of the ultrafast vibrational relaxation of bulk and interfacial water us...