Browsing by Author "Ping, Qingyun"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Advancing Microbial Desalination Cell towards Practical Applications
    Ping, Qingyun (Virginia Tech, 2016-11-03)
    Conventional desalination plant, municipal water supply and wastewater treatment system are among the most electricity-intensive facilities. Microbial Desalination Cell (MDC) has emerged as a promising technique to capture the chemical energy stored in wastewater directly for desalination, which has the potential to solve the high energy consumption issue in desalination industry as well as wastewater treatment system. The MDC is composed of two critical components, the electrodes (anode and cathode), and the ion-exchange membranes separating the two electrodes which drive anions migrate towards the anode, and cations migrate towards the cathode. The multiple components allow us to manipulate the configuration to achieve most efficient desalination performance. By coupling with Donnan Dialysis or Microbial Fuel Cell, the device can effectively achieve boron removal which has been a critical issue in desalination plants. The uncertainty of water quality of the final desalinated water caused by contaminant back diffusion from the wastewater side can be theoretically explained by two mechanisms, Donnan exchange and molecule transport which are controlled by bioelectricity and concentration gradient. Scaling and fouling is also a factor needs to be taken into consideration when operating the MDC system in real world. With mathematical modeling, we can provide insight to bridge the gap between lab-scale experiments and industrial applications. This study is expected to provide guidance to enhance the efficiency as well as the reliability and controllability of MDC for desalination.
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    Bioelectricity inhibits back diffusion from the anolyte into the desalinated stream in microbial desalination cells
    Ping, Qingyun; Porat, Oded; Dosoretz, Carlos G.; He, Zhen (Pergamon-Elsevier, 2016-01-01)
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    Enhanced boron removal by electricity generation in a microbial fuel cell
    Ping, Qingyun; Abu-Reesh, Ibrahim M.; He, Zhen (Elsevier, 2016-11-15)
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    Mathematical modeling based evaluation and simulation of boron removal in bioelectrochemical systems
    Ping, Qingyun; Abu-Reesh, Ibrahim M.; He, Zhen (Elsevier, 2016-11-01)
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    A Review of Modeling Bioelectrochemical Systems: Engineering and Statistical Aspects
    Luo, Shuai; Sun, Hongyue; Ping, Qingyun; Jin, Ran; He, Zhen (MDPI, 2016-02-18)
    Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) are promising technologies to convert organic compounds in wastewater to electrical energy through a series of complex physical-chemical, biological and electrochemical processes. Representative BES such as microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have been studied and advanced for energy recovery. Substantial experimental and modeling efforts have been made for investigating the processes involved in electricity generation toward the improvement of the BES performance for practical applications. However, there are many parameters that will potentially affect these processes, thereby making the optimization of system performance hard to be achieved. Mathematical models, including engineering models and statistical models, are powerful tools to help understand the interactions among the parameters in BES and perform optimization of BES configuration/operation. This review paper aims to introduce and discuss the recent developments of BES modeling from engineering and statistical aspects, including analysis on the model structure, description of application cases and sensitivity analysis of various parameters. It is expected to serves as a compass for integrating the engineering and statistical modeling strategies to improve model accuracy for BES development.