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    Cold Water Detergency of Triacylglycerol Semisolid Soils: The Effect of Salinity, Alcohol Type, and Surfactant Systems
    (2019-09-01)
    Phaodee, Parichat
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    Sabatini, David A.
    Cold water detergency of triacylglycerol semisolid soils is much more challenging than liquid vegetable oils due to poorer interaction between surfactants and semisolid soil. This research seeks to improve the removal efficiency of semisolid soils below their melting points using surfactant-based formulations containing different alcohol additives. To this end, cold water detergency of solid coconut oil and solid palm kernel oil was investigated in various surfactant/alcohol systems, including single anionic extended surfactants, single nonionic alcohol ethoxylate surfactants, and a mixture of anionic surfactants. A series of alcohols (2-butanol, 1-hexanol, 1-heptanol, 1-octanol, 1-nonanol, and 1-decanol) were added to the surfactant formulations to investigate cold water detergency improvement. While cold water detergency using surfactants alone was poor, it was considerably improved when optimum salinity (S*) and 1-heptanol, 1-octanol, or 1-nonanol were introduced to the studied surfactant formulations. The maximum detergency of solid coconut oil exceeded 90% removal in the 0.1 w/v% C<inf>14-15</inf>-8PO-SO<inf>4</inf>Na/0.2 w/v% 1-octanol/4 w/v% NaCl system (a final optimized surfactant system) at a washing temperature of 10°C versus 22.9 ± 2.2% in the surfactant alone (not at optimum salinity and no additive). Further analysis showed that improved cold water detergency using surfactant/intermediate-chain alcohols/NaCl could be correlated with high wettability (low contact angle) as well as favorable surfactant system-soil interaction as observed by lower interfacial tension values. In contrast, the improved cold water detergency was observed to be independent of dispersion stability. This work thus demonstrates that surfactant system design, including additives, can improve cold water detergency of semisolid soils and should be further explored in future research.
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    Life Cycle Assessment of Spent Sulfuric Acid from Lead-acid Traction Battery in Thailand
    (2019-01-01)
    Intang, K.
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    Khaodhiar, S.
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    Recently, especially from 2015 to 2017, Thailand produced waste of lead-acid batteries (LABs) around 11,000 tons/year on an average which traction battery accounted for around 44% or 4,800 tons/year. It was estimated that 16% of spent LABs was considered as improper management. According to literature reviews, 22% by weight of LABs is an electrolyte which is sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid used in the battery is a strong acid with pH lower than 2. A leakage of sulfuric acid during disassembling or battery cell transportation can lead to environmental impact and ecotoxicity. A primary goal of this study is to assess the environmental impact of spent sulfuric acid from expired traction battery with and without treatment before discharge. A material flow analysis illustrated a quantity of traction battery used to calculate the amount of spent sulfuric acid. The highest total amount of spent sulfuric acid (which was 1,808 tons/year from 1,299 tons/year of traction batteries and 509 tons/year of improper management) was found in 2016. These most massive quantities were used to evaluate the impact on each scenario. The result showed that directly discharged spent sulfuric acid caused higher environmental impact load than treated one. Spent sulfuric acid played a significant role in the impact potentials. Marine aquatic ecotoxicity had the greatest impact compared to the other categories. The assessment of scenario comparison assured that pH adjustment of spent sulfuric acid was able to alleviate environmental impacts for expired battery management.
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    Phase stability, fuel properties, and diesel engine performance of palm-oil-based microemulsion biofuels
    (2023-05-01) ;
    Morawan, Nattaya
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    Charoensaeng, Ampira
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    Khaodhiar, Sutha
    Microemulsification and blending are two viscosity-modifying techniques of vegetable oils for direct use with diesel engine. In this study, alcohol blends are mixtures of ethanol, diesel, and palm-oil biodiesel while microemulsion biofuels are thermodynamically stable, clear, and single-phase mixtures of diesel, palm oil, and ethanol stabilized by surfactants and cosurfactants. Although there are many studies on biofuels lately, there is limited research on using biodiesel as a surfactant in microemulsion formulations and applied on engine performance at different engine loads. Therefore, the objectives are to investigate phase stability and fuel properties of formulated biofuels (various blends and microemulsions), to determine the engine performance at different engine loads (no load, and from 0.5 to 2.0 kW), and to estimate laboratory-scale cost of the selected biofuels compared to diesel and biodiesel. The results showed that phase stability and fuel properties of selected microemulsion biofuels are comparable to diesel and biodiesel. These microemulsion biofuels can be applied to the diesel engine at different loads while diesel-ethanol blends and palm-oil-biodiesel-ethanol blends cannot be. It was found that the energy efficiencies of the system using microemulsion biofuels were slightly lower than the average energy efficiency of diesel engine. From this study, it can be summarized that microemulsion biofuels can be formulated using palm-oil biodiesel (palm-oil methyl ester) as a bio-based surfactant and they can be considered as environmentally-friendly alternatives to diesel and biodiesel. However, cost considerations showed that the raw materials should be locally available to reduce additional costs of microemulsion biofuels.
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    Assessment and classification of different ashes from waste incinerators in Thailand
    (2024-12-01)
    Muthuraja, Raji
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    Pombhejara, Chatpong Na
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    Ganesan, Sunantha
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    Morawan, Nattaya
    Rapid urbanisation and a growing population have led to a huge production of solid waste worldwide. To mitigate solid wastes, Thailand adapts incineration. As a consequence, a variety of fly ashes being produced in large quantities. Fly ash management is therefore a risk for the future. A comparison of the chemical and physical properties of five sources of ashes from the waste incinerators in three regions in Thailand, namely MFA1, MFA2, IFA, and fly ash that used in a ready-mixed concrete plant, CFA1 and CFA2 was conducted. Additionally, bottom ashes, MBA1, MBA2 and IBA were also characterized similarly. The analysis showed that coal fly ash from ready mixed concrete plant of CFA1 and CFA2 were classified under class F and C, respectively. The heavy metal analysis showed that fly ash from MFA1 and IFA has high amount of Zn (7,523 mg/kg and 28,315 mg/kg), followed by MFA1 has high amount of cadmium (127 mg/kg) and MFA1 and IFA showed high concentration of lead (1,955 mg/kg and 1,425 mg/kg). The present study show that fly ash often contains heavy metals, dioxins, and other hazardous substances, highlighting the need for detailed analysis to determine proper handling and disposal methods. Advanced classification systems, which may include parameters such as leaching behavior, particle size distribution, and contaminant concentrations, are essential for categorizing fly ash into appropriate management pathways, such as landfilling, resource recovery, or reuse in construction materials.
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    Optimized Microemulsion Systems for Detergency of Vegetable Oils at Low Surfactant Concentration and Bath Temperature
    (2017-07-01) ;
    Sabatini, David A.
    Triglycerides and vegetable oils are amongst the most difficult oils to remove from fabrics due to their highly hydrophobic nature; this is all the more challenging as cold water detergency is pursued in the interest of energy efficiency. Recently, extended surfactants have produced very encouraging detergency performance at ambient temperature, especially at low surfactant concentration. However, the salinity requirement for extended surfactants was excessive (4–14%) and there is limited research on extended-surfactant-based microemulsions for cold water detergency (below 25 °C). Therefore, extended-surfactant-based microemulsions are introduced in this study for cold temperature detergency of vegetable oils with promising salinity and surfactant concentration. The overall goal of this study is to explore the optimized microemulsion formulations with low surfactant and salt concentration using extended surfactant for canola oil detergency at both 25 and 10 °C. It was found that microemulsion systems achieved good performances (higher than those of commercial detergents) corresponding to IFT value 0.1–1 mN/m with the surfactant concentration as low as 10 ppm and 4% NaCl at 25 °C, and as low as 250 ppm and 0.1% (1000 ppm) NaCl at 10 °C. In addition, microemulsion systems were investigated with a different salt (CaCl<inf>2</inf>, or water hardness, versus NaCl) at 10 °C, demonstrating that 0.025% CaCl<inf>2</inf> (250 ppm) can produce good detergency; this is in the hardness range of natural water. These results provide qualitative guidance for microemulsion formulations of vegetable oil detergency and for future design of energy-efficient microemulsion systems.
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    Optimization of chemical precipitation for valuable metal recovery from spent lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide batteries
    (2026-05-01)
    Morawan, Nattaya
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    Kruthun, Orathai
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    Katers, John F.
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    This study investigated the optimized conditions for chemical precipitation to recover nickel manganese cobalt hydroxide (NiCoMn-OH) and lithium carbonate (Li<inf>2</inf>CO<inf>3</inf>) from spent lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (sLi-NMC) batteries. The research focused on establishing optimized conditions to maximize recovery efficiency and product purity. The process involved dismantling and incinerating the batteries to produce black powder, followed by acid leaching using H<inf>2</inf>SO<inf>4</inf> and H<inf>2</inf>O<inf>2</inf>, and a two-step precipitation to recover NiCoMn-OH and Li<inf>2</inf>CO<inf>3</inf>. Results indicated that the optimized incineration conditions for efficient black powder production were 600 °C for 30 min. During the leaching process, the optimized extraction of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese was achieved using 1 M H<inf>2</inf>SO<inf>4</inf> with 2% H<inf>2</inf>O<inf>2</inf> at a liquid-to-solid ratio of 30:1 mL/g. In the first precipitation stage, the optimized conditions for co-precipitating the solid NiCoMn-OH using saturated NaOH were identified as pH 10, 25 °C, and a contact time of 90 min. The results showed that nickel, manganese, and cobalt were precipitated at 92.04%, 90.35%, and 86.78%, respectively (a purity of 98.67%). Finally, lithium was successfully recovered as Li<inf>2</inf>CO<inf>3</inf> using saturated Na<inf>2</inf>CO<inf>3</inf>, at pH 12, 100 °C, and a contact time of 120 min up to 96.51% (a purity of 98.98%). Ultimately, the optimized conditions obtained from this study can provide valuable data for waste management and serve as a comparative baseline for environmental impact assessment of conventional metal recovery, enabling direct comparisons with optimized alternative methods in future research.