Biodiesel is an environmentally friendly fuel and a good substitution for the fossil fuel. However, the purity of this fuel is a major concern that challenges researchers. In this study, a calcium oxide based catalyst has been prepared from local waste eggshells by the calcination method and tested in production biodiesel. The eggshells were powdered and calcined at different temperatures (700, 750, 800, 850 and 900 °C) and periods of time (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 hr.). The effect of calcination temperature and calcination time on the structure and activity of the solid catalyst were examined by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Brunaure-Emmett-Teller (BET). The optimum catalyst performance was obtained at 900 °C and 3 hr. The characterization tests revealed a crystalline phase of CaO, a specific surface area 12.5m2/gm and good distribution of the active component. The effects of different transesterification reaction variables on the catalyst performance were also investigated. The highest conversion, 96.11% was obtained at 30:1 methanol-to-waste cooking oil molar ratio, 65°C, 3 wt. % catalyst loading and 3 hr reaction time. Additionally, durability of CaO was examined. It was found that high activity and durability were obtained by washing with n-hexan. It found that the use of eggshell as a heterogeneous catalyst for biodiesel production provides a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way of green fuel production.
In this research, the removal of cadmium (Cd) from simulated wastewater was investigated by using a fixed bed bio-electrochemical reactor. The effects of the main controlling factors on the performance of the removal process such as applied cell voltage, initial Cd concentration, pH of the catholyte, and the mesh number of the cathode were investigated. The results showed that the applied cell voltage had the main impact on the removal efficiency of cadmium where increasing the applied voltage led to higher removal efficiency. Meanwhile increasing the applied voltage was found to be given lower current efficiency and higher energy consumption. No significant effect of initial Cd concentration on the removal efficie
... Show MoreThis research aims to investigate the color distribution of a huge sample of 613654 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Those galaxies are at a redshift of 0.001 - 0.5 and have magnitudes of g = 17 - 20. Five subsamples of galaxies at redshifts of (0.001 - 0.1), (0.1 - 0.2), (0.2 - 0.3), (0.3 - 0.4) and (0.4 - 0.5) have been extracted from the main sample. The color distributions (u-g), (g-r) and (u-r) have been produced and analysed using a Matlab code for the main sample as well as all five subsamples. Then a bimodal Gaussian fit to color distributions of data that have been carried out using minimum chi-square in Microsoft Office Excel. The results showed that the color distributions of the main sample and
... Show MoreThe ability of Cr (VI) removal from aqueous solution using date palm fibers (leef) was investigated .The effects of pH, contact time, sorbets concentration and initial metal ions concentration on the biosorption were investigated.
The residual concentration of Cr (VI) in solution was determined colorimetrically using spectrophotometer at wave length 540 nm .The biosorption was pH-dependent, the optimum pH was 7 and adsorption isotherms obtained fitted well with Langmuir isotherms .The Langmuir equation obtained was Ce/Cs = 79.99 Ce-77.39, the correlation factor was 0.908.These results indicate that date palm fibers (leef) has a potential effect for the uptake of Cr (VI) from industrial waste water.
Adsorption techniques are widely used to remove certain classes of pollutants from wastewater. Phenolic compounds represent one of the problematic groups. Na-Y zeolite has been synthesized from locally available Iraqi kaolin clay. Characterization of the prepared zeolite was made by XRD and surface area measurement using N2 adsorption. Both synthetic Na-Y zeolite and kaolin clay have been tested for adsorption of 4-Nitro-phenol in batch mode experiments. Maximum removal efficiencies of 90% and 80% were obtained using the prepared zeolite and kaolin clay, respectively. Kinetics and equilibrium adsorption isotherms were investigated. Investigations showed that both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms fit the experimental data quite well. On the
... Show MoreLiquid – liquid equilibria data were measured at 293.15 K for the pseudo ternary system (sulfolane + alkanol) + octane + toluene. It is observed that the selectivity of pure sulfolane increases with cosolvent methanol but decreases with increasing the chain length of hydrocarbon in 1-alkanol. The nonrandom two liquid (NRTL) model, UNIQUAC model and UNIFAC model were used to correlate the experimental data and to predict the phase composition of the systems studied. The calculation based on NRTL model gave a good representation of the experimental tie-line data for all systems studied. The agreement between the correlated and the experimental results was very good
This study concerns the removal of a trihydrate antibiotic (Amoxicillin) from synthetically contaminated water by adsorption on modified bentonite. The bentonite was modified using hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (HTAB), which turned it from a hydrophilic to a hydrophobic material. The effects of different parameters were studied in batch experiments. These parameters were contact time, solution pH, agitation speed, initial concentration (C0) of the contaminant, and adsorbent dosage. Maximum removal of amoxicillin (93 %) was achieved at contact time = 240 min, pH = 10, agitation speed = 200 rpm, initial concentration = 30 ppm, and adsorbent dosage = 3 g bentonite per 1L of pollutant solution. The characterization of the adsorbent, modi
... Show MoreThis study aimed to assess the efficiency of Nerium oleander in removing three different metals (Cd, Cu, and Ni) from simulated wastewater using horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland (HSSF-CW) system. The HSSF-CW pilot scale was operated at two hydraulic retention times (HRTs) of 4 and 7 days, filled with a substrate layer of sand and gravel. The results indicated that the HSSF-CW had high removal efficiency of Cd and Cu. A higher HRT (7 days) resulted in greater removal efficiency reaching up to (99.3% Cd, 99.5% Cu, 86.3% Ni) compared to 4 days. The substrate played a significant role in removal of metals due to adsorption and precipitation. The N. oleander plant also showed a good tolerance to the uptake of Cd, Cu, and Ni ions fr
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