No abstract is provided for this article.
Biochar, derived from unused biomass, is widely considered for its potential to deal with climate change problems. Global interest in biochar is attributed to its ability to sequester carbon in soil and to remediate aquatic environment from water pollution. As soil conditioner and/or adsorbent, biochar offers opportunity through a circular economy (CE) paradigm. While energy transition continues, progress toward low-emissions materials accelerates their advance towards net-zero emissions. However, none of existing works addresses CE-based biochar management to achieve carbon neutrality. To reflect its novelty, this work provides a critical overview of challenges and opportunities for biochar to promote CE and carbon neutrality. This article also offers seminal perspectives about strengthening biomass management through CE and resource recovery paradigms, while exploring how the unused biomass can promote net zero emissions in its applications. By consolidating scattered knowledge in the body of literature into one place, this work uncovers new research directions to close the loops by implementing the circularity of biomass resources in various fields. It is conclusive from a literature survey of 113 articles (2003–2023) that biomass conversion into biochar can promote net zero emissions and CE in the framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Depending on their physico-chemical properties, biochar can become a suitable feedstock for CE. Biochar application as soil enrichment offsets 12% of CO2 emissions by land use annually. Adding biochar to soil can improve its health and agricultural productivity, while minimizing about 1/8 of CO2 emissions. Biochar can also sequester CO2 in the long-term and prevent the release of carbon back into the atmosphere after its decomposition. This practice could sequester 2.5 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 annually. With the global biochar market reaching USD 368.85 million by 2028, this work facilitates biochar with its versatile characteristics to promote carbon neutrality and CE applications.
Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) has been studied as one of the most amazing development in energy production that could work directly with hydrocarbon fuel without reforming procedure. This study was conducted to analyse the micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cell (MT-SOFC) in terms of its performance by utilising methane as the fuel, subsequently compared with hydrogen. MT-SOFC that was investigated in this work consisted of thin cathode layer, coated onto co-extruded anode/electrolyte dual-layer hollow fibre (HF); in which its anode was made of nickel (Ni), coupled with cerium-gadolinium oxide (CGO) as an electrolyte, whereas the cathode was lanthanum strontium cobalt ferrite (LSCF) and CGO. The physical analyses carried out were three-point bending test and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis was further conducted to examine the carbon deposition in HFs. In evaluating the performance of HFs, current-voltage (IV) measurement, as well as impedance analysis of various temperatures range from 500 °C to 700 °C were performed. Based on the results, the OCV, maximum power density and ohmic ASR of MT-SOFC exposed to methane fuel, were at 0.79 V, 0.22 W cm−2 and 0.31 Ω cm2; compared to the other that was exposed to hydrogen fuel, recorded at 0.89 V, 0.67 W cm−2 and 0.19 Ω cm2 respectively. This indicates that there was a significant reduction in cell performance when methane was used as the fuel, due to the carbon deposition as proven by SEM, three-point bending and XRD.
Low-cost green ceramic hollow fiber membranes (CHFM) were successfully designed and fabricated from the industrial waste ash, palm oil fuel ash (POFA) via phase inversion-based extrusion/sintering techniques for water filtration application. The extrusion process parameters such as suspension viscosity, air gap distance, and bore fluid flow rate were systematically explored to produce the membrane with desired morphology. A high suspension viscosity would result in a small macro-voids structure. Moreover, a high air gap distance would induce fiber with long macro-voids structure, while a low bore fluid flow rate would lead to the formation of distorted lumen structure. The effect of sintering temperature toward CHFM was also studied and characterized. An increase in the sintering temperature improved the membrane bending strength, but also afflicted the flux performance due to lower porosity and higher tortuosity. The developed membranes achieved excellent bending strengths of >75 MPa at lower sintering temperatures than the alternative ceramic counterparts, due to the formation of the eutectic liquid during sintering. The relatively low sintering temperature of POFA-derived CHFMs could reduce the energy consumption and sintering duration, which could be more economically attractive than their ceramic counterparts, thus benefiting industrial users.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Palm oil fuel ash (POFA), an abundantly generated waste by-product of oil palm industry has been introduced as a raw material in this study for itsprolific utilization and to cope with its environment threats.Due to its silica rich carbon-based composition, it has been used for the first time to produce both silica and few layer POFA derived porous graphene flakes (PDPGF) in a single step viachemical activation method.X-ray diffractometryanalysis revealed broad peaks for silica and PDPG at diffraction angle of 22˚and 26˚ respectively.Scanning electron microscopyrevealed the surface morphology with little agglomeration and flaky nature of graphene sheets. From high-resolution transmission electron microscopy,it was confirmed that there are 7 to 8 layers of graphene with interlayer spacing of 0.339 nm.Electron dispersive spectroscopyconfirmed the presence of siliconand carbon (>98 wt%). Both silica and PDPGF give yields of80% and20% respectively.
Membrane distillation (MD) has received increasing attention as an alternative membrane-based separation technology for conventional water treatment technologies due to several promising features such as low-pressure operation and excellent separation performance. However, its commercialization progress has been sluggish resulting from low flux performance, high energy consumption attributed to low energy efficiency, as well as membrane wetting and fouling. To date, different strategies have been established to mitigate these critical issues in order to augment the MD performance. This contribution provides a comprehensive review on the contemporary membrane development to address these three thorny issues. The state-of-the-art membrane innovations such as high-flux membranes, self-heating membranes, and omniphobic membranes are extensively discussed. Lastly, this review is wrapped up with the current research limitations and the future perspectives of these membrane innovations.
A high-performance, microtubular solid oxide fuel cell is developed using an improved electrolyte/anode dual-layer hollow fiber fabricated via a novel coextrusion and co-sintering technique. The technique allows control over the porosity of the anode, resulting in an increase in the power output to almost double what has been previously reported.
Rapid industrialization, particularly textile/dyeing, causes substantial surface water contamination by various dyes and pigments globally. Bangladesh’s export-oriented textile industry has grown dramatically in recent decades, causing significant pollution of nearby water bodies. In this work, nano-zinc oxide was synthesized by a precipitation method with PEG 400 and characterized using SEM, XRD and FTIR techniques and found to be fiber-like, perfectly wurtzite and pure. The nano-ZnO was applied to remove acid blue 92, an ionic dye, from aqueous solution to investigate it as an adsorbent. The effects of pH, adsorbent dosage, AB92 concentration and contact time on adsorption process were investigated for optimization. According to the correlation coefficients ( R 2 ) and the fitting of Redlich-Peterson model, the adsorption process followed Langmuir isotherm at lower temperature and Freundlich isotherm at higher temperature with Temkin model. The adsorption process was found to be endothermic and spontaneous. For adsorption thermodynamics, ΔH was found to be +20.32 kJmol -1 , and ΔG was varied from -1.86 to -3.84 kJmol -1 as the temperature increased from 291 to 317 K. The adsorption kinetics exhibited pseudo second order. The Temkin isotherm and Elovich kinetic model suggested that the process to be chemisorption. The nano-ZnO showed tremendous re-usability as an adsorbent for the removal of AB92. The results are suggesting for designing nano-ZnO-based methods to remove organic pollutants efficiently from industrial effluents for ecological and sustainable development. The mechanisms of nano-ZnO fiber formation and anionic dye adsorption on nano-ZnO are also discussed.
