The purpose of this study is to produce the soil improvement materials from food waste and water hyacinth by using a dehydration process. The experiments were divided into two parts : 1) the study of the optimum temperature and time for converting food waste and water hyacinths to soil improvement materials by determining the temperatures of 100 °C 150 °C and 200°C in the periods of 1 hour 2 hours and 3 hours respectively 2) the study of nutrient content in the materials before and after mixing into the soil for 5 days. The soil used in the experiment was sampled from Sai Ma Subdistrict Nonthaburi Province. The parameters used to evaluate the ability to improve the soil quality were soil moisture pH electro conductivity total nitrogen total phosphorus total potassium and organic matter. The results showed that the optimum temperature for drying the food waste was 150°C for 2 hours and the optimum temperature for drying the water hyacinth was 200°C for 3 hours. When the materials were mixed into soil it found that the soil drainage was improved. Mixing the materials into soil could increase the pH value from 5.2 to 5.4 and increase the electrical conductivity from 0.72 mS/cm to 14.78 mS/cm. Besides the plant nutrients including Nitrogen phosphorus and potassium also increased after adding soil improvement materials.

Dehydration of ethanol to ethylene was investigated over Mn- and Ni-containing mordenites. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) BET method and temperature programmed desorption of ammonia. The performances on dehydration of ethanol to ethylene for these catalysts were compared at temperature range 250-450°oC WHSV (weight hourly space velocity) of 1 h-1 time on stream of 30-240 min and catalyst weight of 1.0 g. The results showed that conversion of ethanol of the Mn-MOR and Ni MOR was quite similar but selectivity to ethylene of the Mn-MOR catalyst was much higher. The Ni-MOR showed high selectivity to ethane due to its hydrogenation ability.