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Abstract: Adsorption is a widely used method for abatement of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions due to its high efficiency and relatively low operating cost. Following adsorption, desorption is usually used to regenerate the adsorbent. Adsorbent regeneration, often known as the most limiting step in the adsorption process, is a time-consuming stage and is often completed through using hot purge gas or superheated steam. In the thermal regeneration process, regeneration time directly impacts energy consumption, and thus, the operating cost of the air treatment facility. In recent years, microwave (MW) regeneration has been proposed as a potential alternative to conventional thermal regeneration techniques. For an effective MW regeneration process, the adsorbent/adsorbate system should be able to absorb MW and convert it to heat. However, there are many adsorbent/adsorbate systems that are transparent to MW. In this research, different techniques were developed in chapters 3 to 6 to improve MW regeneration of porous MW-transparent adsorbents. Additionally, chapter 7 explores a novel technique to monitor VOC desorption process using a non-contact MW sensor and determine the required time for adsorbent regeneration.

A multi-stage N x N interconnection network is said to be universal if it realizes the set of all permutations on N objects. A new bound on the number of stages required for the universality of shuffle-exchange network as well as the analysis of the combinational power for the block-structured networks are given. Finally, the complexity of the verification of a new sufficient condition for rearrangeability due to Benes B5 is analyzed.