Background: Plasma-activated water (PAW) is considered one of the emerging strategies that has been highlighted recently in the food industry for microbial decontamination and mycotoxin detoxification, due to its unique provisional characteristics. Aim: The effectiveness of PAW for aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), ochratoxin A (OTA), and fumonisin B1 (FB1) detoxification in naturally contaminated poultry feeds with its impacts on the feed quality were inspected. Methods: PAW-30 and PAW-60 were utilized for feed treatment for six time durations (5, 10, 15, 20, 40 and 60 min) each. The alterations in the physicochemical properties of PAW after different time durations of plasma inducement and treatment with and without feed samples were monitored. Competitive Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was employed for estimation of mycotoxin levels and High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) was utilized for results confirmation. Feed composition analyses with peroxide values (PVs) estimation were implemented according to standard analytical methods. Results: The physicochemical properties of PAW showed a significant decrease (P<0.05) in pH value from 6.72 to 2.68 and a significant increase (P<0.05) in oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), electrical conductivity (EC) and temperature from 235 mV, 5.1 μS/cm and 20.5 °C to 499.2 mV, 727.6 μS/cm and 26.8 °C, respectively after 60 min of plasma inducement in a time-dependent manner. The mycotoxins decay kinetics after PAW application were illustrated. Mycotoxins degradation efficiency significantly increased (P<0.05) with increasing water activation time. A significant increase (P<0.05) in AFB1, OTA and FB1 degradation levels was reported mainly during the first 10 min of treatment for AFB1 and the first 15 min for OTA and FB1 to record values of 28.33, 32.14 and 34.62% and 33.80, 40.70 and 43.38% after 60 min of feed exposure to PAW-30 and PAW-60, respectively. Significant differences (P<0.05) between examined mycotoxins in their degradation levels were recorded, where FB1 exhibited the highest degradation levels. Generally, feed compositions were slightly affected by PAW and fats were still having good quality. Conclusion: The possibility of PAW for degrading more than a quarter to a third of the original quantity of targeted mycotoxins in poultry feeds after 10 min of treatment with a slight effect on feed quality.
A new bio-electrochemical system was proposed for simultaneous removal of organic matters and salinity from actual domestic wastewater and synthetically prepared saline water, respectively. The performance of a three-chambered microbial osmotic fuel cell (MOFC) provided with forward osmosis (FO) membrane and cation exchange membrane (CEM) was evaluated with respect to the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal from wastewater, electricity generation, and desalination of saline water. The MOFC wasinoculated with activated sludge and fueled with actual domestic wastewater. Results revealed that maximum removal efficiency of COD from wastewater, TDS removal efficiency from saline water, power density, and current density were
... Show MoreWater pollution has created a critical threat to the environment. A lot of research has been done recently to use surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to detect multiple pollutants in water. This study aims to use Ag colloid nanoflowers as liquid SERS enhancer. Tri sodium phosphate (Na3PO4) was investigated as a pollutant using liquid SERS based on colloidal Ag nanoflowers. The chemical method was used to synthesize nanoflowers from silver ions. Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), and X-ray diffractometer (XRD) were employed to characterize the silver nanoflowers. This nanoflowers SERS action in detecting Na3PO4 was reported and analyzed
... Show Morewater quality assessment is still being done at specific locations of major concern. The use of Geographical Information System (GIS) based water quality information system and spatial analysis with Inverse Distance Weighted interpolation enabled the mapping of water quality indicators along Tigris river in Salah Al-Din government, Iraq. Water quality indicators were monitored by taking 13 river samples from different locations along the river during Winter season year 2020. Maps of 10 water quality indicators. This meant that the specific water quality indicator and diffuse pollution characteristics in the basin were better illustrated with the variations displayed along the course of the river than conventional line graphs. Creation of
... Show MoreThe main challenge is to protect the environment from future deterioration due to pollution and the lack of natural resources. Therefore, one of the most important things to pay attention to and get rid of its negative impact is solid waste. Solid waste is a double-edged sword according to the way it is dealt with, as neglecting it causes a serious environmental risk from water, air and soil pollution, while dealing with it in the right way makes it an important resource in preserving the environment. Accordingly, the proper management of solid waste and its reuse or recycling is the most important factor. Therefore, attention has been drawn to the use of solid waste in different ways, and the most common way is to use it as an alternative
... Show MoreSensibly highlighting the hidden structures of many real-world networks has attracted growing interest and triggered a vast array of techniques on what is called nowadays community detection (CD) problem. Non-deterministic metaheuristics are proved to competitively transcending the limits of the counterpart deterministic heuristics in solving community detection problem. Despite the increasing interest, most of the existing metaheuristic based community detection (MCD) algorithms reflect one traditional language. Generally, they tend to explicitly project some features of real communities into different definitions of single or multi-objective optimization functions. The design of other operators, however, remains canonical lacking any inte
... Show MoreSome physical and chemical characteristics of Jurf Al- Sakar drinking water plant in Babylon governorate have been studied. Seven locations for this plant were selected. These were the drinking water treatment plant source on Euphrates River before entering the plant, precipitation, filtration and collection tanks, and also after leaving the plant at distances of one meter, 4 and 8 km. The samples were collected bimonthly from October, 2002 to August, 2003. Some results match with the national and international standard characters while the other characters (Turbidity, total hardness, calcium, nitrate, phosphate and the biological oxygen demand values) were not match. The present study showed that drinking water treatment plant is undrinka
... Show MoreThe aim of this study was to isolate and identify the cyanobacterium Scytonema hofmanni Var. calcicolum from the domestic drinking tanks as a new record in Iraqi drinking water. Scytonema hofmanni var. calcicolum, a filamentous freshwater cyanobacterium (blue-green alga). This alga was isolated from the walls of the domestic plastic water tanks in Al- karkh/ Baghdad city on July 2014. The sampling was performed by collecting three samples from this tanks, the three examined samples microscopically revealed the dominance of this cyanobacterium as unialgal in the studied samples. The results showed this alga has the ability to tolerate high temperature up to 42 Cº and very low light intensity inside the tanks which up to 10 μE/m²/s.
Visualization of water flow around different bluff bodies at different Reynolds number ranging (1505 - 2492) was realized by designing and building a test rig which contains an open channel capable to ensure water velocity range (4-8cm/s) in this channel. Hydrogen bubbles generated from the ionized water using DC power supply are visualized by a light source and photographed by a digital camera. Flow pattern around a circular disk of (3.6cm) diameter and (3mm) thickness, a sphere of (3.8cm) diameter and a cylinder of
(3.2cm) diameter and (10cm) length are studied qualitatively. Parameters of the vortex ring generated in the wake region of the disk and the separation angle of water stream lines from the surface of the sphere are plott