Adib Kalantar Mehrjerdi

Dry fermentation of manure with straw in continuous plug flow reactor: Reactor development and process stability at different loading rates

In this work, a plug flow reactor was developed for continuous dry digestion processes and its efficiency was investigated using untreated manure bedded with straw at 22% total solids content. This newly developed reactor worked successfully for 230days at increasing organic loading rates of 2.8, 4.2 and 6gVS/L/d and retention times of 60, 40 and 28days, respectively. Organic loading rates up to 4.2gVS/L/d gave a better process stability, with methane yields up to 0.163LCH4/gVSadded/d which is 56% of the theoretical yield. Further increase of organic loading rate to 6gVS/L/d caused process instability with lower volatile solid removal efficiency and cellulose degradation.

Glass Fibres Recovered by Microwave Pyrolysis as a Reinforcement for Polypropylene

Glass fibre composites were recycled by microwave pyrolysis. The glass fibres recovered were evaluated as a reinforcement agent for polypropylene (PP). Samples were prepared with a micro-compounder and the resulting compounds were evaluated with tensile testing, flexural testing, Charpy impact testing and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The adhesion between fibre and glass was relatively poor, and an attempt was made to improve it. Various coupling agents were evaluated, in addition to the use of maleic anhydride-grafted PP (MA-PP). Tests showed that MA-PP had a relatively strong effect on the mechanical properties.