The use of catalytic membranes as microstructured reactors without a separative function has proved effective. High catalytic activity is possible with minimal mass transport resistances if the reactant mixture is pushed to flow through the pores of a membrane that has been impregnated with catalyst. In this study, n-heptane (C₇H₁₆) was hydrocracked and hydro-isomerized within a plug-flow zeolitic catalytic membrane-packed bed reactor. The metallic cobalt (Co) precursor at 3 wt.% was loaded onto support mesoporous materials MCM-48 to synthesize heterogeneous catalysis. The prepared MCM-48 was characterized by utilizing characterization techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherms, and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area. The structural and textural characteristics of MCM-48 after encapsulation with Co were also investigated. The analyses were performed before and after metal loading. According to the results, the 3 wt.% Co/MCM-48 of metallic catalyst in a fixed bed membrane reactor (MR) appears to have an excellent catalytic activity of ~83% during converting C₇H₁₆ at 400 °C, whereas a maximum selectivity was approximately ~65% at 325 °C. According to our findings, the synthesized catalyst exhibits an acceptable selectivity to isomers with multiple branches, while making low aromatic components. In addition, a good catalytic stability was noticed for this catalyst over the reaction. Use of 3 wt.% Co/MCM-48 catalyst led to the highest isomerization selectivity as well as n-heptane conversion. Therefore, the heterogeneous catalysis MCM-48 is a promising option/ alternative for traditional hydrocracking and hydro-isomerization processes.

This work presents poly(terephthalic-co-glycerol-g-fumaric acid) (TGF) as a novel water-soluble polymeric nano-additive for the modification of a polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membrane. The TGF was harnessed as a pore former, aiming to improve the membrane surface porosity and hydrophilicity. Modified membranes were characterized to observe the influence of varying the TGF content on their hydrophilicity, porosity, morphological structure, and composition, as well as their entire performance. The results disclosed that porosity and hydrophilicity of the modified membrane prepared using 4 wt.% TGF content recorded an enhancement by 24% and 38%, respectively. Herein, the lower contact angle was mainly a reflection of the improved porosity, but not of the hydrophilic nature of water-soluble TGF. Furthermore, upon increasing the TGF content in the polymeric matrix, a more porous structure with longer finger-like micropores was formed. Moreover, a sponge-like layer clearly appeared near the bottom surface. Nevertheless, at optimum TGF content (4%), a clear enhancement in the water flux and BSA retention was witnessed by values of 298 LMH and 97%, respectively. These results demonstrate that the obtained permeation and separation behavior of the PES/TGF membrane could stand as a promising choice for water and wastewater treatment applications.

The present study provides and examines an experimental and CFD simulation to predict and accurately quantify the individual phase holdup. The experimental findings demonstrated that the increase of solid beads has a significant influence on the (U_mf), as comparatively small glass beads particles require a low (U_mf) value, which tends to increase as the diameter of the beads increases. Besides that, the expansion ratio is proportional to the velocity of the liquid. Even though, the relationship becomes inversely proportional to the diameter of the beads. The liquid holdup was found to increase with increasing liquid velocity, however, the solid holdup decreased. The Eulerian–Eulerian granular multiphase flow technique was used to predict the overall performance of the liquid–solid fluidized beds (LSFBs). There was a good agreement between the experimental results and the dynamic properties of liquid–solid flows obtained from the CFD simulation, which will facilitate future simulation studies of liquid–solid fluidized beds. This work has further improved the understanding and knowledge of CFD simulation of such a system at different parameters. Furthermore, understanding the hydrodynamics features within the two-phase fluidization bed, as well as knowing the specific features, is essential for good system design, enabling the systems to perform more effectively.

Conventional treatment methods such as chlorination and ozonation have been proven not to be effective in eliminating and degrading contaminants such as Bisphenol A (BPA) from wastewater. Hence, the degradation of BPA using a photocatalytic reactor has received a lot of attention recently. In this study, a model-based approach using a multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) coupled with back-propagation, as well as support vector machine regression coupled with cubic kernel function (CSVMR) and Gaussian process regression (EQGPR) coupled with exponential quadratic kernel function, were employed to model the relationship between the textural properties such as pore volume (V_p), pore diameter (V_d), crystallite size, and specific surface area (S_BET) of erbium- and iron-modified TiO₂ photocatalysts in degrading BPA. Parametric analysis revealed that effective degradation of the Bisphenol up to 90% could be achieved using photocatalysts having textural properties of 150 m²/g, 8 nm, 7 nm, and 0.36 cm³/g for S_BET, crystallite size, particle diameter, and pore volume, respectively. Fifteen architectures of the MPLNN models were tested to determine the best in terms of predictability of BPA degradation. The performance of each of the MLPNN models was measured using the coefficient of determination (R²) and root mean squared errors (RMSE). The MLPNN architecture comprised of 4 input layers, 14 hidden neurons, and 3 output layers displayed the best performance with R² of 0.902 and 0.996 for training and testing. The 4-14-3 MLPNN robustly predicted the BPA degradation with an R² of 0.921 and RMSE of 4.02, which is an indication that a nonlinear relationship exists between the textural properties of the modified TiO₂ and the degradation of the BPA. The CSVRM did not show impressive performance as indicated by the R² of 0.397. Therefore, appropriately modifying the textural properties of the TiO₂ will significantly influence the BPA degradability.

Fluidized bed reactors are essential in a wide range of industrial applications, encompassing processes such as Fischer–Tropsch synthesis and catalytic cracking. The optimization of performance and reduction in energy consumption in these reactors necessitate the use of efficient heat transfer mechanisms. The present work examines the considerable impact of tube end geometries, superficial gas velocity, and radial position on heat transfer coefficients within fluidized bed reactors. It was found that the tapered tube end configurations have been empirically proven to improve energy efficiency in fluidized bed reactors significantly. For example, at a superficial gas velocity of 0.4 m/s, the tapered end form’s local heat transfer coefficient (LHTC) demonstrated a significant 20% enhancement compared to the flat end shape. The results and findings of this work make a valuable contribution to the advancement of complex models, enhance the efficiency of fluidized bed reactor processes, and encourage further investigation into novel tube geometries.