Mohammad Reza Alavi Moghaddam

Amirkabir University of Technology | TUS · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Response surface methodology (RSM) is a powerful tool in designing the experiments and optimizing different environmental processes. However, when it comes to wastewater treatment and specifically dye-containing wastewater, two questions arise; “Is RSM being used correctly?” and “Are all capabilities of RSM being exploited properly?”. The current r...

Response surface methodology (RSM) has been applied to design experiments, analyze operative parameters, produce models, and optimize operational conditions in water and wastewater treatment processes. Although various aspects of RSM application in physicochemical wastewater treatment processes have been scrutinized, the biological processes are co...

The development of machine learning-based ensemble models for the prediction of complex processes with non-linear nature (such as adsorption) has been remarkably advanced over recent years. As a result, having an informative vision of these models' progression, appears to be critical for better understanding and using them in applications such as a...

Electrocoagulation (EC) can be an efficient alternative to existing water and wastewater treatment methods due to its eco-friendly nature, low footprint, and facile operation. However, the electrodes applied in the EC process suffer from passivation or fouling, an issue resulting from the buildup of poorly conducting materials on the electrode surf...

In this study, performance of a waterworks sludge (FCS: ferric chloride sludge) for the removal of acid red 119 (AR119) dye from aqueous solutions were investigated. For this purpose, response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize three operating variables of coagulation/flocculation process including initial pH, coagulant dosage and in...

Various derivatives of Hermia models (complete pore blocking, intermediate pore blocking, cake layer formation, and standard pore blocking) and different assessments of foulant characteristics have long been used to determine the membrane fouling mechanisms. Accordingly, this study aims to adapt Hermia models and their combination according to the...

This study has two major aims, first, to compare the electrocoagulation (EC) system for Ni²⁺ removal from aqueous solution using direct current (DC) versus alternating current (AC), and second, to optimize the process for each type of current. For this purpose, four variables of current density, initial nickel concentration, initial pH of the solut...

A novel Python-based open-source optimization framework, namely Pyomo (Python optimization modeling objects), alongside a conventional optimization method, RSM (response surface methodology), was utilized to determine the optimal operating conditions of an alternating current-powered electrocoagulation (ACPE) process for nickel removal. In this reg...

This study aims to evaluate energy and electrode consumption for Acid Red 18 (AR18) removal and the operating costs employing alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) in an electrocoagulation (EC) system. As the novelty of this study, the effects of AC/DC mode and electrode type were scrutinized through a series of designed experiments in a...

The main purpose of the present research was a comparative study of two functionalized sulfonated graphene oxide (SGO) for removal of selected pollutant (Azo-Cationic Basic Blue 41 dye) in aqueous solution. The two nano-adsorbents (GO/1,4-butane sultone (SGO1) and GO/1,3-propane sultone (SGO2)) were synthesized, and characterized by Scanning Electr...

For the first time, in this study, two novel glycogen-graphene oxide/halloysite nanotubes (GO-Gly/HNTs) and guar gum-graphene oxide/halloysite nanotubes (GO-GG/HNTs) nanocomposites were synthesized as the adsorbents for removal of Pb(II) from water, and the ionic liquid was used in the synthesis as a green solvent. According to the SEM, TEM, EDS, B...

This study aims to evaluate energy and electrode consumption for Acid Red 18 (AR18) removal and the operating costs employing alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) in an electrocoagulation (EC) system. As the novelty of this study, the effects of AC/DC mode and electrode type were scrutinized through a series of designed experiments in a...

In the present work, a direct Z-scheme composite photocatalyst, NH 2-MIL-101(Cr)@CuS, with high photodegradation efficiency of Rhodamine B (RhB) degradation in the visible light spectrum, is fabricated through a solvothermal method. It was found that the NH 2-MIL-101(Cr)@CuS composite with an appropriate amount of NH 2-MIL-101(Cr) exhibited high ca...

In the present research, electrocoagulation (EC) process was applied as a selected pretreatment to evaluate its effectiveness and operating cost regarding simultaneous calcium and turbidity removal in order to mitigate the scaling and colloidal fouling potential of reverse osmosis (RO) technology. The effects of the main parameters, namely, initial...

The main purposes of this study were to synthesize graphene oxide (GO) nanoadsorbent, investigate the adsorption of Basic Red 46 (BR46), evaluate the isotherms and kinetics of the adsorption process, and study the regeneration/reuse of the GO in four cycles by microwave irradiation. First, the GO was synthesized using Hummers' method. Second, the a...

Integrated industrial wastewater recycling has become an important issue in recent years especially in developing countries, which can be obtained by comprising three aspects of collection system, treatment processes, and reuse target, jointly called “functional group”. The main aim of this study is proposing a framework for creating industrial was...

This study aims to remove both nitrate and nitrite from wastewater as well as modeling and simultaneous optimizing the electrocoagulation/floatation (ECF) process with 3 responses, namely, the residual nitrate, the residual nitrite and the operating costs; so that all responses meet the standard limitations. For this purpose, 57 experiments designe...

This study focuses on the transport in porous media of graphene oxide nanoparticles (GONP) under conditions similar to those applied in the generation of in-situ reactive zones for groundwater remediation (i.e. GO concentration of few tens of mg/l, stable suspension in alkaline solution). The experimental tests evaluated the influence on GO transpo...

This study aims to investigate the effects of alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) for nitrate removal and its operating costs by using a continuous electrocoagulation (CEC) process. For this purpose, two series of 31 experiments, which were designed by response surface method (RSM), were carried out in both cases of the AC and the DC m...

The authors would like to inform the readers of the following correction: In page 774, section “2. RSM” the first sentence is not complete. The correct form is “Response surface methodology was developed and introduced by Box and Wilson in 1951”.

The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was used to predict dye (Reactive Blue 19) removal efficiency from aqueous solution using modified pomegranate residual based on 124 experimental sets. Three-layer ANN models with different neurons numbers at a hidden layer were developed. The optimum network yielded a network error of 0.0054 and 0.9606 for...

Electrocoagulation-flotation (ECF) is one of the newest treatment methods, which has been used successfully to remove different kinds of pollutants (Behbahani et al. 2013). ECF is a process which consists of three main parts: (1) Creating metallic hydroxide flocs within the solution by electro-dissolution of soluble anodes, (2) Formation of coagula...

Today, advanced treatment units are widely suggested for industrial wastewater reuse as a non-conventional water resource in the developing countries positioned in arid/semi-arid areas. However, the sustainability of these units still remains blur due to the lack of a proper framework and availability of the collected data or experiences. The prese...

Membrane fouling in sequencing batch membrane bioreactor (SBMBR) was studied with respect to batch filtration mode at the two hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 16 h (SBMBR1) and 48 h (SBMBR2). Investigating the characteristics of batch filtration phases illustrated different TMP (Transmembrane Pressure) changing trends at the two HRTs. In SBMBR1,...

This study aims to investigate the effect of the main parameters on the performance of a continuous flow electro-coagulation (EC) process for nitrate removal efficiency and its operating costs. For this purpose, the Taguchi experimental design with orthogonal array L27 (313) was applied to analyze the effects of selected parameters, namely initial...

In this research, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize five operating variables including initial pH, current, reaction time, initial hexavalent chromium concentration and dosage of polyaluminum chloride as a coagulant for the removal of hexavalent chromium and its relative operating cost by electrocoagulation process. Centra...

An experimental program was conducted to investigate vertical oil dispersion of surface oil spills under non-breaking regular waves. The variation in oil concentration caused by oil dispersion in a water column was studied to determine the vertical oil dispersion profile. The experiments were performed using different waves characteristics for diff...

In this study, the microwave regeneration method was applied to investigate the properties and adsorptive performance of functionalized carbon nanotubes (f-CNTs) in different cycles of regeneration/reuse. For this purpose, an organic and hazardous dye (Reactive Blue 19) was chosen as a widely used pollutant. N2 adsorption/desorption isotherms, scan...

In this work, the effect of cyclic anaerobic/aerobic conditions on the biodegradative capability of the mixed microbial culture for the azo dye Acid Red 18 was investigated in the sequencing batch reactors. For this purpose, five anaerobic/aerobic sequencing batch reactors were operated under the same operation conditions at different anaerobic/aer...

This study investigated the formation of aerobic granular sludge with the main objective of Acid Red 18 (AR18) biodegradation in an altering anaerobic-aerobic sequencing batch reactor. According to the obtained results, the cultivated granules showed a stable structure in the treatment of synthetic wastewater containing 50mg/L AR18, while no consid...

The main aim of present study was to enhance the adsorption capacity of Reactive Blue 19 (RB19) onto multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), pretreated in a multistep functionalization process. The functionalization procedure consisted of microwave irradiation followed by sonication in dilute H2SO4. The properties of MWCNTs were investigated by X-r...

In this research, the adsorption process of Reactive Blue 19 (RB19) as an anionic dye onto functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (f-MWCNTs) was studied. For this purpose, four parameters including agitation time, adsorbent dose, initial dye concentration, and pH were examined. N2 adsorption isotherms and Fourier transform infrared spectrosco...

An experimental program is organized to investigate the vertical oil dispersion of surface oil spills in a regular wave field. Various waves characteristics and different volumes of oil spills are tested to assess the oil concentration variations at two sampling stations. It is found that the oil concentration due to vertical oil dispersion follows...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the application of enhanced Fenton process (EFP) using zero-valent iron combined with ultrasonic irradiation for treatment of wastewater containing acid red 18 (AR18) by response surface methodology. According to the analysis of variance results, the model presents high R2-value of 98.2 and 98.3% for the...

The aim of this research is improvement of the Taguchi design optimization using artificial neural network (ANN) and genetic algorithm (GA) in Acid Orange 7, Acid Brown 14, and Acid Red 18 azo dyes removal by electrocoagulation. For this purpose, 27 tests were undertaken for investigation of five parameters including current density, reaction time,...

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the performance of combined biological/advanced oxidation process (AOP) system for treatment of wastewater containing high concentration (500 mg/L) of azo dye Acid Red 18 (AR18). Two alternating anaerobic-aerobic sequencing batch reactors (SBR1 and SBR2 without and with external feeding at the beginning...

This work investigated the influence of pre-anaerobic reaction time on aerobic granulation in sequencing batch reactors (SBRs). For this purpose, a purely aerobic SBR (R1) was operated as a reference, while two other reactors, namely R2 and R3, were running with anaerobic/aerobic reaction times of 85 min/265 min and 175 min/175 min, respectively. R...

The main aim of the present work was to study the overall performance and the fouling behavior of the integrated sequencing batch membrane bioreactor (SBMBR) treating synthetic dye-containing wastewater at different sludge retention times (SRTs) of 10, 40, and 160 days. For this reason, the removal efficiencies of color and chemical oxygen demand (...

The present work aimed to study the decolorization kinetics and characteristics of a selected azo dye under the influence of two key operational parameters including hydraulic retention time (HRT) and solid retention time (SRT). The decolorization efficiency and the two important criteria of k and normalized k (k/MLSS) were evaluated in lab-scale m...

In the first phase of this study, effects of different parameters, including initial pH, applied current density, reaction time and initial chromium concentrations on the chromium removal efficiency, were investigated in electrocoagulation process. The results showed that the maximum removal efficiency of 78.8% was achieved at pH 3, current density...

In this research, two sequencing batch reactors (R1 and R2) were operated with different feeding strategies to investigate the effects of elongated anaerobic feeding mode on the granulation process. For this purpose, R1 was operated in a short-feed strategy (5 min) as a reference, whereas an extended anaerobic feeding of 85 min was applied in R2. R...

The research aimed to apply the Taguchi method for techno-economical evaluation of Cr +6 removal using the electro-coagulation process with the aid of two different coagulants (FeCl 3 and PAC). Taguchi orthogonal array L27 (3 13) was applied for analyzing the effect of four variables including initial pH, reaction time, current density and coagulan...

In this research, response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize Reactive Blue 19 removal by activated carbon from pomegranate residual. A 24 full factorial central composite design (CCD) was applied to evaluate the effects of initial pH, adsorbent dose, initial dye concentration, and contact time on the dye removal efficiency.Methodolo...

Background In this research, response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize Reactive Blue 19 removal by activated carbon from pomegranate residual. A 24 full factorial central composite design (CCD) was applied to evaluate the effects of initial pH, adsorbent dose, initial dye concentration, and contact time on the dye removal efficienc...

The paper compares the electrocoagulation performance during the removal of Acid Brown 14, Acid Yellow 17, Acid Blue 113 and Acid Black 172 dyes from aqueous solutions. For this purpose, pH changes and effectiveness of main parameters including initial dye concentrations and current densities for the selected dyes were examined. In addition, efflue...

The main aim of this study is to evaluate the residents public awareness from water-polluted areas in Tehran city, in terms of water quality (in particular nitrate pollution), and to measure their different performance and approaches to this environmental problem. For this purpose, district 18 (Yaft Abad, southwest of Tehran) was selected as a case...

In this study, the adsorption of Reactive blue 19 onto pomegranate residual-based activated carbon (PRAC) was investigated in aqueous solution. The activated carbon prepared by phosphoric acid activation under air condition. PRAC was characterized for its surface chemistry by point of zero charge measurements, Scanning Electron Microscopy and nitro...

In this research, response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to model the effect of main operational variables including initial pH, initial phosphate concentration, current density and reaction time on phosphate removal by electrocoagulation. It was found that the decrease of initial pH and initial phosphate concentration, and the increase of...

The objective of this study was to combine coagulation and mechanically induced air flotation in order to determine the optimum operational condition for the removal of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs) from oily wastewater. A mixture of water, gas oil, and emulsifier was used to generate a stable emulsion as the simulated wastewater. Aluminum su...

In this research, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) models were applied for optimization of Reactive Blue 19 removal using combined electrocoagulation/coagulation process through Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO). By applying RSM, the effects of five independent parameters includi...

The application of a granular activated carbon-sequencing batch biofilm reactor (GAC-SBBR) for treatment of wastewater containing 1,000 mg/L Acid Red 18 (AR18) was investigated in this research. The treatment system consisted of a sequencing batch reactor equipped with moving GAC as biofilm support. Each treatment cycle consisted of two successive...

This paper utilizes a statistical approach, the response surface optimization methodology, to determine the optimum conditions for the Acid Black 172 dye removal efficiency from aqueous solution by electrocoagulation. The experimental parameters investigated were initial pH: 4--10; initial dye concentration: 0--600 mg/L; applied current: 0.5-3.5 A...

In this research, response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize and model Reactive Blue 19 (RB19) removal by activated carbon from pomegranate residual. A 24 full factorial central composite design (CCD) was applied to evaluate the effects of the four main independent parameters including initial pH, adsorbent dose, initial dye concent...

Two integrated anaerobic/aerobic fixed-bed sequencing batch biofilm reactor (FB-SBBR) were operated to evaluate decolorization and biodegradation of azo dye Acid Red 18 (AR18). Volcanic pumice stones and a type of plastic media made of polyethylene were used as packing media in FB-SBBR1 and FB-SBBR2, respectively. Decolorization of AR18 in both rea...

The aim of this study was to examine performance of pulp and paper sludge ash of Mazandaran wood and paper industries for removal of reactive blue 19 dye. Maximum dye removal efficiency (95%) occurred at a pH of 12. Maximum dye adsorption with increasing adsorbent dose reached 92.59% at 12 g/L of adsorbent dose. Q increased with an increasing of in...

The performance of one stage anaerobic/aerobic processes for the biological treatment of synthetic wastewaters containing Acid Red 18 was studied. In addition, a method for evaluating dye mineralization using lumped parameters was investigated. The selected initial dye concentrations were 0, 35, 70, 140, and 280 mg/L, in reactors R1 ∼ R5, respectiv...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the application of anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (An-SBR)/moving bed sequencing batch biofilm reactor (MB-SBBR) for treatment of wastewater containing Acid Red 18 (AR18). Based on statistical analysis, COD removal rate and anaerobic biomass concentration were increased with increasing initial AR18 c...

The mixtures of dried sewage sludge (DSS) and sewage sludge ash were studied for removal of acid red 119 (AR119) dye as a new, more environmental friendly, and low cost adsorbent. For this purpose, response surface methodology was applied to optimize the dye removal efficiency and turbidity of treated dye solutions as two individual responses. Resu...

The aim of present research was to investigate the performance of anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (An-SBR) for treatment of wastewater containing azo dye Acid Red 18 with the main focus on decolorization kinetic study. Three An-SBRs were operated with different initial dye concentrations of 100, 500 and 1000 mg/L. Up to 98% of the dye decoloriza...

In this research, sludge of Jalaliyeh water treatment plant in Tehran was used as an alternative coagulant for the removal of a specific type of acid dye (acid red 119 (AR119)). For this purpose, the effect of initial pH, coagulant dose and initial dye concentration on dye removal efficiency were investigated. Results showed that the dye removal ra...

The aim of this study is to employ the response surface methodology (RSM) for optimizing three operating variables of adsorption process for the removal of reactive blue 19 (RB19) dye using wood waste (WW) of Mazandaran wood and paper industries (MWPI). For the maximum dye removal efficiency (100%), optimum conditions were obtained at initial pH of...

The objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility of several different cyclic anaerobic/aerobic (An/A) conditions in sequencing batch reactor (SBR) system for treating of simulated dye (reactive blue19) wastewater. To achieve this goal, five identical SBR (SBR 1 to SBR 5) were used. The SBR1 was fully aerobic whole reaction time wherea...

The main objective of this study was to investigate the performance of a two stage anaerobic-aerobic biological system for treatment of synthetic wastewater containing high concentration of Acid Red 18 (AR18). For this purpose, an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (An-SBR) and aerobic moving bed sequencing batch biofilm reactor (MB-SBBR) were used...

The application of aerobic moving bed biofilm process as post-treatment of anaerobically degraded azo dye Acid Red 18 was investigated in this study. The main objective of this work was to enhance removal of anaerobically formed the dye aromatic metabolites. Three separate sequential treatment systems were operated with different initial dye concen...

Three types of treated pulp and paper sludge as adsorbents were compared for reactive blue 19 dye removal. Dye removal efficiency was obtained 99.4%, 69.1%, and 24.6% at a natural pH for adsorbents treated using ZnCl 2, HCl, and NaOH, respectively. With an increase of initial dye concentration, Q increased and reached maximum values of 47.7, 35.6,...

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of operational parameters on fluoride removal using electrocoagulation method. For this purpose, various operational parameters including initial pH, initial fluoride concentration, applied current, reaction time, electrode connection mode, anode material, electrolyte salt, electrolyte concentration, n...

In this research, response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to evaluate the effect of main operational variables including initial pH, initial fluoride concentration, current density and reaction time for the removal of fluoride and its relative operating costs by electrocoagulation. It was found that the effect of initial pH was negligible on...

In this research, the performance of Polyaluminium Chloride (PAC) and Polyaluminium Chloride sludge (PACS) as coagulants for acid red 119 (AR119) dye removal from aqueous solutions were compared. The sample of PACS was collected from "Baba Sheikh Ali" water treatment plant (Isfahan, Iran) where PAC is used as a coagulant in the coagulation/floccula...

This study presents a comparison between aluminum and iron plate electrodes on phosphate removal than aqueous solutions by electrocoagulation process. The effectiveness of main operational parameters such as initial pH, initial phosphate concentration and current density were examined. In addition, treated solution and sludge characteristics, energ...

Chitosan was selected as a natural coagulating agent for the removal of acid dyes (Acid Blue 292; AB292, and Acid Red 398; AR398) from dye-containing solutions. The study was organised in two phases. In phase 1, chitosan was used alone as a natural coagulant for the removal of the dyes. For this purpose, the effect of different parameters including...

The main objective of present work was to compare the overall performances of "moving-bed" and "conventional" sequencing batch reactor. For this purpose, different experimental parameters including COD and dye concentration, turbidity, MLSS concentration, MLVSS/MLSS ratio, sludge volume index (SVI) and Oxidation-Reduction Potential (ORP) were calcu...

Mazandaran wood and paper industry (MWPI) generates large amounts of wood waste (WW) daily. The aim of this study is to apply WW from this factory as a low cost and non-conventional adsorbent for reactive blue 19 dye removal from aqueous solutions. For this purpose, effects from main parameters during the adsorption process include contact time, in...

In this study, the response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize three operating variables of adsorption process including initial pH, adsorbent dose and initial dye concentration for the removal of reactive blue 19 dye using dried pulp and paper sludge. Optimum conditions were obtained at initial pH of 3.06, adsorbent dose of 9.34 g/...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of different plastic media on performance of moving bed sequencing batch reactor (MB-SBR) for treatment of wastewater containing an azo dye. Three types of plastic media with different specific surface area (190 m2/m3, 450 m2/m3 and 517 m2/m3) were used as the biofilm carriers in MB-SBR1, 2 and 3...

This study presents a comparison between dried sewage sludge (DSS) and sewage sludge ash (SSA) for Acid Red 119 dye removal. Results revealed that optimal pH, contact time and adsorbent dosage for DSS and SSA were (3, 11), (120, 30 min) and (5, 4 g/L), respectively. Isotherm and kinetic studies revealed that both adsorbents follow Freundlich isothe...

The aim of study is to evaluate performance of dried pulp and paper sludge (DPPS) from Mazandaran wood and paper industries for reactive blue 19 (RB19) dye removal. For this purpose, the effect of various experimental parameters including contact time, pH, adsorbent dose and initial dye concentration were examined. Results showed that an optimum dy...

Air pollution is a major problem in industrial cities and metropolitans such as Tehran. In this research published and real PSI values are compared by using the hourly air quality data of Air Quality Control Company of Tehran during March 2008 and May 2009. The published data were based on 24 hours fixed average between 11:00 AM and 11:00 AM, while...

This study aims to compare the performance of two waterworks sludge samples, ferric chloride sludge (FCS) and polyaluminium chloride sludge (PACS), as coagulants to remove Acid Red 119 (AR119) dye from aqueous solution. A series of batch experiments were performed to investigate the effect of initial pH, coagulant dosage and initial dye concentrati...