Treatment of Synthetic Olefin Plant Wastewater at Various Salt Concentrations in a Membrane Bioreactor

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of salt concentration on performance of a membrane bioreactor (MBR) for treating an olefin plant wastewater. For this purpose, a lab‐scale submerged MBR with a flat‐sheet ultrafiltration membrane was used for treatment of synthetic wastewater according to oxidation and neutralization unit of olefin plant. The synthetic wastewater was adjusted to have 500 mg/L chemical oxygen demand (COD). Trials on different concentrations of sodium sulfate (Na₂SO₄) (0–20 000 ppm) in the feed were conducted under aerobic conditions in the MBR. The results showed that increasing the salt concentrations causes an increase in the effluent COD, phenol, and oil concentrations. These results are due to reduction of the membrane filtration efficiency and also decline in the microbial activity that it is indicated by decreasing the sOUR in MBR. But in all the trials, the effluent COD and oil concentration was well within the local discharge limit of 100 and 10 mg/L, respectively. These results indicate that the MBR system is highly efficient for treating the olefin plant wastewater, and although high salt concentrations decreased organic contaminant removal rates in the MBR, the effluent still met the discharge limits for treating the olefin plant wastewater.     

Site response of heterogeneous natural deposits to harmonic excitation applied to more than 100 case histories

Variation of shear-wave propagation velocity (SWV) with depth was studied by analyzing more than one hundred actual SWV profiles. Linear, power, and hyperbolic variation schemes were investigated to find the most representative form for naturally occurred alluvial deposits. It was found that hyperbolic (asymptotic) variation dominates the majority of cases and it can be reliably implemented in analytical or analytical-numerical procedures. Site response analyses for a one-layer heterogeneous stratum were conducted to find an equivalent homogeneous alternative which simplifies the analysis procedure but does not compromise the accuracy of the resonance and amplification responses. Harmonic average, arithmetic average and mid-value equivalents are chosen from the literature for investigation. Furthermore, full and partial depth averaging schemes were evaluated and compared in order to verify the validity of current practices which rely upon averaging shallow depths, viz., the first 30 m of the strata. Engineering bedrock concept was discussed and the results were compared.     

A note on the surface motion of a semi-cylindrical canyon for incident cylindrical SH waves radiated by a finite fault

The plane-wave assumption for incident SH waves can be a good approximation for cylindrical and spherical waves radiated from finite sources, even when the source is as close as twice the size of the inhomogeneity, and when the source and the inhomogeneity are described within the same coordinate system. However, in a more general setting, and when the fault’s radiation pattern must be considered, the plane-wave approximation may not yield satisfactory answers for arbitrary orientation of the fault. Jalali et al. (2015) demonstrated this for a semi-cylindrical, sedimentary valley, and in this study we extend their results to a case in which the semi-circular, sedimentary valley is replaced by a canyon. We describe the effects of incident cylindrical waves on the amplitudes of surface motion in and near the semi-cylindrical canyon when the causative faults are at different distances and have different curvatures and orientations.     

Classification of natural flow regimes in Iran to support environmental flow management

Abstract

Development of environmental flow standards at the regional scale has been proposed as a means to manage the influence of hydrological alterations on riverine ecosystems in view of the rapid pace of global water resources management. Flow regime classification forms a critical part in such environmental flow assessments. We present a national-scale classification of hydrological regimes for Iran based on a set of hydrological metrics. It describes ecologically relevant characteristics of the natural hydrological regime derived from 15- to 47-year-long records of daily mean discharge data for 539 streamgauges within a 47-year period. The classification was undertaken using a fuzzy partitional method within Bayesian mixture modelling. The analysis resulted in 12 classes of distinctive flow regime types that differ in various hydrological aspects. This classification is being used for further research in regional-scale environmental flow studies in Iran.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis     

Inelastic seismic demand estimation of wood-frame houses subjected to mainshock-aftershock sequences

An active aftershock sequence, triggered by a large mainshock, can cause major destruction to urban cities. It is important to quantify the aftershock effects in terms of nonlinear responses of realistic structural models. For this purpose, this study investigates the aftershock effects on seismic fragility of conventional wood-frame houses in south-western British Columbia, Canada, using an extensive set of real mainshock-aftershock earthquake records. For inelastic seismic demand estimation, cloud analysis and incremental dynamic analysis are considered. A series of nonlinear dynamic analyses are carried out by considering different seismic input cases and different analysis approaches. The analysis results indicate that consideration of aftershocks leads to 5–20 % increase of the median inelastic seismic demand curves when a moderate degree of structural response is induced. The findings of this investigation facilitate the extension of the existing approaches for inelastic seismic demand estimation to incorporate the aftershock effects.     

Stability of the time‐domain analysis method including a frequency‐dependent soil–foundation system

A number of methods have been proposed that utilize the time‐domain transformations of frequency‐dependent dynamic impedance functions to perform a time‐history analysis. Though these methods have been available in literature for a number of years, the methods exhibit stability issues depending on how the model parameters are calibrated. In this study, a novel method is proposed with which the stability of a numerical integration scheme combined with time‐domain representation of a frequency‐dependent dynamic impedance function can be evaluated. The method is verified with three independent recursive parameter models. The proposed method is expected to be a useful tool in evaluating the potential stability issue of a time‐domain analysis before running a full‐fledged nonlinear time‐domain analysis of a soil–structure system in which the dynamic impedance of a soil–foundation system is represented with a recursive parameter model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Examination of chloritization of biotite as a tool for reconstructing the physicochemical parameters of mineralization and associated alteration in the Zafarghand porphyry copper system,Ardestan, Central Iran: mineral-chemistry and stable isotope analyses

Mineralogy and Petrology - The chloritization of biotite and stable isotopes of silicate have been studied for the Zafarghand porphyry copper deposit, Ardestan, Iran. The studied area, in the...     

3D Gravity Inversion using Tikhonov Regularization

Subsalt exploration for oil and gas is attractive in regions where 3D seismic depth-migration to recover the geometry of a salt base is difficult. Additional information to reduce the ambiguity in seismic images would be beneficial. Gravity data often serve these purposes in the petroleum industry. In this paper, the authors present an algorithm for a gravity inversion based on Tikhonov regularization and an automatically regularized solution process. They examined the 3D Euler deconvolution to extract the best anomaly source depth as a priori information to invert the gravity data and provided a synthetic example. Finally, they applied the gravity inversion to recently obtained gravity data from the Bandar Charak (Hormozgan, Iran) to identify its subsurface density structure. Their model showed the 3D shape of salt dome in this region.     

Assessing the Performance of Independent Component Analysis in Remote Sensing Data Processing

Independent component analysis (ICA) is a novel method to be considered as a powerful type of analysis in the process of source signal separation. Based on the capabilities of this particular analysis, there will be a hypothesis of applying ICA in the image processing of remote sensing data. This paper aims to introduce the ability of ICA in contrasting and highlighting some area with potential of mineralization. Considering and applying ICA transformation on the ETM⁺ image of southern Masule, Iran has resulted in finding some favorable points for further investigation. Moreover, sampling program on the indicated area has led to identify some huge, unexpected lithology and dikes. ICA analysis is a robust method even in remote sensing data processing with the high speed and capabilities in separating source signals from noise.     

Accumulation of heavy metals in soil and uptake by plant species with phytoremediation potential

Contamination of heavy metals represents one of the most pressing threats to water and soil resources, as well as human health. Phytoremediation can be potentially used to remediate metal contaminated sites. In this study, concentrations of copper, zinc, iron, and magnesium accumulated by native plant species were determined in field conditions of Hame Kasi iron and copper mine in the central part of Iran in Hamadan province. The results showed that metal accumulation by plants differed among species and tissue bodies. Species grown in substrata with elevated metals contained significantly higher metals in plants. Metals accumulated by plants were mostly distributed in root tissues, suggesting that an exclusion strategy for metal tolerance exists widely amongst them. The mentioned species could accumulate relatively higher metal concentrations far above the toxic concentration in the plant shoots. With high translocation factor, metal concentration ratio of plant shoots to roots indicates internal detoxification metal tolerance mechanism; thus, they have potential for phytoextraction. The factors affecting metal accumulation by plant species including metal concentrations, pH, electrical conductivity, and nutrient status in substrata were measured. Mostly, concentrations of zinc and copper in both aboveground and underground tissues of the plants were significantly, positively related to their total in substrata, while iron, zinc, and copper were negatively correlated to soil phosphorus.