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Wastewater from textile industry is considered one of the major environmental challenges due to the large volume of highly colored, polluted and toxic effluent. This study investigated the treatability of real textile wastewater by pilot-scale anoxic-aerobic Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) system without sludge wasting for operation period of 100 days. The proposed system was investigated under different Internal Recycle (IR) ratios and the impact of IR ratio on Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Total Nitrogen (TN) and Color removals were examined. Under IR ratios between anoxic and aerobic tanks of 0.0, 0.5 and 2.0, the respective average removal efficiency of TN was 20.9%,53.4% and 71.7%, whereas average color removal of 81%, 85% and 88%, respectively was noted. The results indicated that increase of recycle ratio from 0.5 to 2.0 enhanced TN removal to about 71% and color removal to above 85%. The IR between anoxic and aerobic tanks has a significant role in TN and color removal due its effect on the development of bacterial communities. On the other hand, the results indicate over 93% TOC removal, which was independent of IR ratio.

With the rising interest for sustainable power source and ecological security, anaerobic digestion of biogas technology has attracted considerable attention within the scientific researchers. This paper proposes a new research achievement on biogas production from Rice Mill Wastewater (RMW) with the utilization of anaerobic digester. An anaerobic digester is maintained with RMW and distillery anaerobic sludge at mesophilic temperature condition for 15 days as stabilization mode. After attaining stabilization stage, studies continued to examine the effect of Organic Loading Rate (OLR) and Hydraulic Retention Time (HRT) on the mesophilic anaerobic digestion of RMW. The OLR of the anaerobic reactor increased stepwise from 0.25 to 3.91 Kg COD/m3/dayand HRT ranged from 1 to 32.0 days. The total chemical oxygen demand (TCOD) utilized was higher than 75% and the CH4 percentage of the biogas was 62.00-63.00% for the OLRs studied. The efficient working volume of the digester is preserved as 25% of distillery anaerobic sludge and 75% of rice mill wastewater, loaded at Mesophilic temperature conditions for study purpose. By changing the conditions of OLR and HRT, biogas production, methane yield and percentage of COD reduction is examined. An anaerobic sludge is utilized as a seeding material to biodegrade the organic pollutants present in the wastewater. It will enhance the biological treatment of effluent with anaerobic sludge in a continuous mode of activity.The result showed that the proposed analysis obtains more biogas production with reduced COD when compared with existing approaches.

Recently, the exploration of new alternatives to common organic solvents in combination with non-conventional energy sources is a subject of intense research and development as tools for green extraction of plant-derived natural products. This paper deals with the use of low frequency ultrasound (100 W, 32 kHz) and pulsed electrical fields (0.86 kV cm-1, 13 Hz) to raise the efficiency of the extraction of selected plant species rich in valuable phenolic compounds.Four types of natural deep eutectic solvents were applied for the ultrasound-assisted extraction of silymarin from milk thistle among which a choline-chloride-based mixture with glycerol was proved to be the most promising one. Additionally, the usage of high ultrasound power significantly increased the concentration of sylimarin as compared to traditional ethanol extraction, generating rapidly for 10 min considerable temperature rise as a side effect under non-cooling conditions. The application of PEF as a pre-treatment for 0.8 s to the extraction allowed reducing the ethanol percentage in the ethanol/water mixtures giving comparable phenolic yields, without any, or very little, increase in temperature. As such, optimized power intensity in conjunction with appropriate solvent system provides a potential to improve the release of thermally unstable bioactive compounds under mild processing conditions.

Unicellular microalgal culture represents a new opportunity for producing significant biofuel quantities in the future along with other specialty products, due to several major advantages microalgae species present when compared to conventional crops, including much faster growth rates, cultivation in a variety of environments and photobioreactor systems, and almost 100% recycling of nutrients. In the current research, the scaling-up of the cultivation of Chlorella vulgaris microalgae to a 4 m3 pilot-plant photobioreactor is examined, compared to the performance of a 25 L automated laboratory bioreactor. Beyond the size and configuration, the main differences of the two bioreactors are the mode of operation, the illumination nature and depth, the temperature, and pH. Specifically, temperature and illumination are naturally varying from day to day and season to season into the pilot-plant photobioreactor that is set inside a greenhouse. The specific growth factor appears to be higher for microalgal cultivation in the laboratory bioreactor. It is also found that the growth kinetics is severely slowed down during the winter months. This is primarily due to the low temperatures and the poor illumination observed during winter.