scholarly journals Volatile Fatty Acid Production from Organic Waste with the Emphasis on Membrane-Based Recovery

Fermentation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Prawat Sukphun ◽  
Sureewan Sittijunda ◽  
Alissara Reungsang

In recent years, interest in the biorefinery concept has emerged in the utilization of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) produced by acidogenic fermentation as precursors for various biotechnological processes. This has attracted substantial attention to VFA production from low-cost substrates such as organic waste and membrane based VFA recovery techniques to achieve cost-effective and environmentally friendly processes. However, there are few reviews which emphasize the acidogenic fermentation of organic waste into VFAs, and VFA recovery. Therefore, this article comprehensively summarizes VFA production, the factors affecting VFA production, and VFA recovery strategies using membrane-based techniques. Additionally, the outlook for future research on VFA production is discussed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Colleen M. Boland ◽  
Chris E. Hogan ◽  
Marilyn F. Johnson

SYNOPSIS Mandatory existence disclosure rules require an organization to disclose a policy's existence, but not its content. We examine policy adoption frequencies in the year immediately after the IRS required mandatory existence disclosure by nonprofits of various governance policies. We also examine adoption frequencies in the year of the subsequent change from mandatory existence disclosure to a disclose-and-explain regime that required supplemental disclosures about the content and implementation of conflict of interest policies. Our results suggest that in areas where there is unclear regulatory authority, mandatory existence disclosure is an effective and low cost regulatory device for encouraging the adoption of policies desired by regulators, provided those policies are cost-effective for regulated firms to implement. In addition, we find that disclose-and-explain regulatory regimes provide stronger incentives for policy adoption than do mandatory existence disclosure regimes and also discourage “check the box” behavior. Future research should examine the impact of mandatory existence disclosure rules in the year that the regulation is implemented. Data Availability: Data are available from sources cited in the text.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (16) ◽  
pp. 4936
Author(s):  
Ahmed Tawfik ◽  
Shou-Qing Ni ◽  
Hanem. M. Awad ◽  
Sherif Ismail ◽  
Vinay Kumar Tyagi ◽  
...  

Gelatin production is the most industry polluting process where huge amounts of raw organic materials and chemicals (HCl, NaOH, Ca2+) are utilized in the manufacturing accompanied by voluminous quantities of end-pipe effluent. The gelatinous wastewater (GWW) contains a large fraction of protein and lipids with biodegradability (BOD/COD ratio) exceeding 0.6. Thus, it represents a promising low-cost substrate for the generation of biofuels, i.e., H2 and CH4, by the anaerobic digestion process. This review comprehensively describes the anaerobic technologies employed for simultaneous treatment and energy recovery from GWW. The emphasis was afforded on factors affecting the biofuels productivity from anaerobic digestion of GWW, i.e., protein concentration, organic loading rate (OLR), hydraulic retention time (HRT), the substrate to inoculum (S0/X0) ratio, type of mixed culture anaerobes, carbohydrates concentration, volatile fatty acids (VFAs), ammonia and alkalinity/VFA ratio, and reactor configurations. Economic values and future perspectives that require more attention are also outlined to facilitate further advancement and achieve practicality in this domain.


Author(s):  
Monty McNair ◽  
Caroline Howard ◽  
Indira Guzman ◽  
Paul Watkin

Since the dawn of humanity, creativity has been critical to surmounting the challenges of life. Innovation is particularly essential to survival on every level from an individual solving his/her problems to a world dependent on adaptive approaches to cope with rapidly expanding populations and enormous international tensions. Currently, information systems programs are not fostering the creativity needed to sustain the innovation required to compete in the 21st century marketplace. Educators and researchers need to better understand the effects of creativity training on creative performance to best design programs that meet the needs of information systems personnel and their employers. The results of this study provide evidence that it would be valuable for organizations to experiment with creativity tutorials and recommend that future research be conducted using larger samples of individuals with low levels of creativity. Because the costs of informing people about creativity are low and creativity tutorials can be designed to be easily administered and completed, the authors recommend that a low-cost tutorial would be a cost effective and beneficial strategy for organizations to employ with information systems personnel, especially those who assess themselves as low in creativity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Peydayesh ◽  
Mojgan Isanejad ◽  
Toraj Mohammadi ◽  
Seyed Mohammad Reza Seyed Jafari

AbstractMethylene blue (MB) removal using eco-friendly, cost-effective, and freely available Urtica was investigated. The morphology of the adsorbent surface and the nature of the possible Urtica and MB interactions were examined using SEM analysis and the FTIR technique, respectively. Various factors affecting MB adsorption such as adsorption time, initial MB concentration, temperature, and solution pH were investigated. The adsorption process was analysed using different kinetic models and isotherms. The results showed that the MB adsorption kinetic follows a pseudo-second-order kinetic model and the isotherm data fit the Langmuir isotherm well. Thermodynamic parameters, such as ΔG°, ΔH°, and ΔS°, were also evaluated, and the results indicated that the adsorption process is endothermic and spontaneous in nature. The MB adsorption capacity of Urtica was found to be as high as 101.01 mg g


2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 996-1013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Pisaniello

In Australia and other countries, small private dams in agricultural catchments pose both disastrous individual and cumulative dam failure flood threats to downstream communities; threats that can be exacerbated by increased rainfall intensities caused by climate change. This paper addresses the need for a low cost, scientifically acceptable mechanism and policy guidance to help dam owners and governments better understand and manage these risks and assure community safety. To this end an innovative, cost-effective farm dam flood safety review/design tool is developed and tested in Australia, including hydrology-diverse Tasmania, to complement best practice dam safety assurance policy. The tool's development involved generating complex catchment data to represent hydrologically homogenous regions using best practice water engineering methods, to derive simple regionalised dam flood capability prediction relationships of acceptable accuracy. Results demonstrate the tool's successful development and potential transferability to different hydrological regions; how the relationships can be refined by future research and potentially made to account for climate change; and how the tool can be applied within a best practice dam safety assurance policy which includes additional farmer-friendly elements. The findings are potentially transferable to any region to assure communities that cumulative safety threats posed by rural catchment dams are minimised.


Author(s):  
Monty McNair ◽  
Caroline Howard ◽  
Indira Guzman ◽  
Paul Watkin

Since the dawn of humanity, creativity has been critical to surmounting the challenges of life. Innovation is particularly essential to survival on every level from an individual solving his/her problems to a world dependent on adaptive approaches to cope with rapidly expanding populations and enormous international tensions. Currently, information systems programs are not fostering the creativity needed to sustain the innovation required to compete in the 21st century marketplace. Educators and researchers need to better understand the effects of creativity training on creative performance to best design programs that meet the needs of information systems personnel and their employers. The results of this study provide evidence that it would be valuable for organizations to experiment with creativity tutorials and recommend that future research be conducted using larger samples of individuals with low levels of creativity. Because the costs of informing people about creativity are low and creativity tutorials can be designed to be easily administered and completed, the authors recommend that a low-cost tutorial would be a cost effective and beneficial strategy for organizations to employ with information systems personnel, especially those who assess themselves as low in creativity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 297-301
Author(s):  
Valerie M. K. Werner ◽  
Daniel Strömsdörfer ◽  
Viet Nga Bui ◽  
Niklas von Wittenburg ◽  
Markus Eblenkamp

AbstractThe design of Smart Biomedical Devices will be a defining element of future research in the context of intelligent medical devices for the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). A prerequisite for serving the disposable market is the use of cost-effective electronic components and the highest reliability of the developed products in terms of biocompatibility and bioprotection. In the study, resistors, capacitors, and light-emitting diodes, different in their materials and construction forms, were examined. The selected types represented electronic components as they are commonly installed on electronic system from the segment of low-cost standard components. These were subjected to steam sterilization with up to 50 cycles, gamma sterilization, and a CCK-8 assay to test in vitro cytotoxicity. Functional failure could not be determined for any component. Gamma sterilization did not result in significant changes in resistance values, but in capacitors with barium titanate as dielectric. Non-cytotoxic electronic components could be identified. The results show that certain electronic standard components are suitable for disposable Smart Biomedical Devices.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 277-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Gunn ◽  
Jared Slobodan ◽  
Cheyenne Kamran ◽  
Justin Tzou ◽  
David Broemeling ◽  
...  

The use of molecular techniques to inform diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment design will play an important role in the future of medicine. Each new test, however, represents a new cost to the health care system, and significant effort is required to move new techniques to the clinical setting in the most cost-effective and efficient manner. Consequently, there is a compelling need for technological improvements that will facilitate clinical application of novel assays, by reducing cost and complexity in implementation. This is particularly important in cancer pathology. Here, we present a novel applicator technology that enables staining of individual biopsies in a tissue microarray (TMA) to provide low-cost, multiplexed biomarker testing at the level of intact tissue. The applicator is designed to deliver tens of nanoliters of aqueous reagent to arrayed tissue biopsies kept under a layer of oil-based Liquid Coverslip without contacting the biopsies. A pin consisting of concentric stainless steel electrodes separated by a hydrophobic insulator provides a balance between hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity to hold a reagent droplet on the tip of the pin, whereas a small electrical current passed through the droplet spanning the electrodes is used for drop sensing. This design is more amenable to repeatable manufacturing than a previous prototype, which in initial testing demonstrated successful immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization staining of individual biopsies in a TMA, but was difficult to produce. This new design was tested to investigate the factors affecting its operation, in terms of the volume of reagent picked up and its ability to successfully deliver reagent to the biopsies.


Fermentation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 263
Author(s):  
Kinanthi Mondylaksita ◽  
Jorge A. Ferreira ◽  
Wiratni Budhijanto ◽  
Claes Niklasson ◽  
Mohammad J. Taherzadeh ◽  
...  

The glucan-rich fraction, hemicellulosic compounds-rich fraction, and a mixture of both fractions obtained from organosolv pretreatment of oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) were used as substrates to produce volatile fatty acids (VFAs) in acidogenic fermentation. In this study, the effects of medium adjustment (carbon to nitrogen ratio and trace elements supplementation) and methanogenesis inhibition (through the addition of 2-bromoethanesulfonate or by heat shock) to enhance VFAs yield were investigated. The highest VFA yield was 0.50 ± 0.00 g VFAs/g volatile solid (VS), which was obtained when methanogens were inhibited by heat shock and cultivated in a mixture of glucan-rich and hemicellulosic compounds-rich fractions. Under these conditions, the fermentation produced acetic acid as the only VFA. Based on the results, the mass balance of the whole process (from pretreatment and fermentation) showed the possibility to obtain 30.4 kg acetic acid and 20.3 kg lignin with a 70% purity from 100 kg OPEFB.


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