During this final time period of the project, work was carried out in two areas. A major amount of effort was devoted to preparation of the final technical report for the project. The data taken on the project were organized and the asphaltenes, solvents, and catalysts used in the diffusional uptake experiments were organized into various systems. Since a large portion of the time for this report was spent on the preparation of the final technical report itself, the executive summary of the final technical report has been included in this semi-annual report as indicative of the effort during this time period. In addition to work on the final technical report for the project, a limited experimental study of dye adsorption into active carbon particles was performed by an undergraduate student in chemical engineering, Mr. Zachery Emerson. The objective of this study was to compare the diffusional uptake performance in two different types of vessels, a stirred glass cell and the tubing microreactor, for a simple dye-water-carbon diffusional uptake system. Due to time limitations, only qualitative conclusions were drawn from this study.

The mathematical model which we have developed previously for diffusion controlled adsorption was extended to allow for the inclusion of the effects of extraparticle film mass transfer resistance as embodied in a finite Sherwood number. A Mathcad based program was used to simulate the experimental data using summation of a large number of terms in the infinite series solution. Parametric studies and accompanying plots revealed that the effects of film resistance on the uptake process were found to increase in significance as the adsorption capacity parameter in the model decreased. In addition, the two carbon catalyst supports prepared in our own laboratory were tested for their diffusional characteristics in uptake experiments using petroleum asphaltenes dissolved in toluene at three temperatures. The resulting experimental data were simulated with the mathematical model developed in the report.