Removal of Heavy Metals from Synthetic Mixture as well as Pharmaceutical Sample Via Cation Exchange Resin Modified with Rhodamine B: Its Thermodynamic and Kinetic Studies

A new sorbent was prepared by loading rhodamine B on Amberlite IR‐120. Various physico‐chemical parameters such as effects of adsorbate concentration, contact time, pH, and temperature on the sorption of the dye have been studied. Thermodynamic parameters (ΔH° and ΔS°) were also evaluated for the sorption of dye. Kinetic studies revealed that the sorption of the dye was best fit for pseudo‐second‐order kinetic. The metal ion uptake in different solvent systems has been explored through column studies. On the basis of distribution coefficient (K_d), some heavy metal ions of analytical interest from binary mixtures have been separated. The limit of detection (LOD) for the Ni²⁺ and Fe³⁺ metal ions was 0.81 and 0.60 µg L^?1, and the limit of quantification (LOQ) was found to be 2.72 and 2.0 µg L^?1. This sorbent has also been successfully applied in the analysis of multivitamin formulation. The applicability of the modified resin in the separation of heavy metals constituting real and synthetic samples has been explored.     

Shocks in multicomponent cylindrical and spherical Lorentzian plasmas

Nonlinear cylindrical and spherical ion acoustic shocks have been studied in unmagnetized dissipative non-Maxwellian electron-positron-ion (e-p-i) plasmas. Modified Korteweg-de Vries Burgers (mKdVB) has been derived by using reductive perturbation method. Two level finite difference scheme is used with the help of Runge Kutta method to simulate the mKdVB. It is noticed that positron concentration, spectral indices of electrons and positrons, kinematic viscosity of ions significantly modifies the strength of shocks in cylindrical and spherical geometries.     

Water balance of the Sudanese savannah woodland region

Abstract

The annual water balance for 39 grid cells covering the savannah woodland region of Sudan (10–16°N; 21–36°E) was determined and regional maps produced. Long-term (1961–1990) mean monthly climate data, National Forest Inventory data and Harmonized World Soil Database data for arenosols and vertisols, the two dominant soil types in the region, were used. Model validation was performed using daily data from a site in one of the grid cells and inter-annual (1961–1990) variation examined for another grid cell. Rainfall varied from 147 to 732 mm and only exceeded evapotranspiration for 18 of the grid cells, resulting in a small increase in soil moisture and runoff. Evapotranspiration accounted for, on average, 96% of rainfall and there was little difference between soil types. Drainage only occurred from AR soils and for four of the grid cells. Runoff varied from 0 to 89 mm for arenosols and from 0 to 109 mm for vertisols. The study provided useful insights into the spatial variability in water balance components across the region.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis; Associate editor D. Gerten     

Noether gauge symmetry approach in f(R) gravity

We discuss the f(R) gravity model in which the origin of dark energy is identified as a modification of gravity. The Noether symmetry with gauge term is investigated for the f(R) cosmological model. By utilization of the Noether Gauge Symmetry (NGS) approach, we obtain two exact forms f(R) for which such symmetries exist. Further it is shown that these forms of f(R) are stable.     

Analysis of earthquake-triggered failure mechanisms of slopes and sliding surfaces

Earthquake-induced landslides along the Dujiangyan-Yingxiu highway after the Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 were investigated. It was found that: (1) slopes were shattered and damaged during the earthquake and open tension cracks formed on the tops of the slopes; (2) the upper parts of slopes collapsed and slid, while the lower parts remained basically intact, indicating that the upper parts of slopes would be damaged more heavily than the lower parts during an earthquake.     

Why the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Euler</Emphasis> scheme in particle tracking is not enough: the shallow-sea pycnocline test case

During the last decades, the Euler scheme was the common “workhorse” in particle tracking, although it is the lowest-order approximation of the underlying stochastic differential equation. To convince the modelling community of the need for better methods, we have constructed a new test case that will show the shortcomings of the Euler scheme. We use an idealised shallow-water diffusivity profile that mimics the presence of a sharp pycnocline and thus a quasi-impermeable barrier to vertical diffusion. In this context, we study the transport of passive particles with or without negative buoyancy. A semi-analytic solutions is used to assess the performance of various numerical particle-tracking schemes (first- and second-order accuracy), to treat the variations in the diffusivity profile properly. We show that the commonly used Euler scheme exhibits a poor performance and that widely used particle-tracking codes shall be updated to either the Milstein scheme or second-order schemes. It is further seen that the order of convergence is not the only relevant factor, the absolute value of the error also is.     

Ionic Liquid Modified Resin for the Adsorptive Removal of Dibutyl Phthalate: Equilibrium,Kinetic, and Thermodynamic Studies

This study evaluated the adsorptive properties of dibutyl phthalate (DBP) on room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) modified XAD‐4 resin. The modified RTIL‐XAD 4 sorbent was characterized by FTIR. Effect of varying experimental conditions such as pH, contact time, temperature, shaking speed, concentrations, and interfering species were investigated by batch adsorption experiments. Adsorption was found to be most favorable at pH 6 within 30 min. Experimental data were evaluated in terms of kinetic, equilibrium, and thermodynamic modeling. Kinetics of the sorption was found to follow pseudo second order rate equation whereas Freundlich and D–R isotherms were the most suitable models to explain sorption phenomenon. Thermodynamically sorption was endothermic, irreversible, and spontaneous in nature.