The semiempirical (PM3) and DFT quantum mechanical methods were used to investigate the theoretical degradation of Indigo dye. The chemical reactivity of the Indigo dye was evaluated by comparing the potential energy stability of the mean bonds. Seven transition states were suggested and studied to estimate the actually starting step of the degradation reaction. The bond length and bond angle calculations indicate that the best active site in the Indigo dye molecule is at C10=C11.  The most possible transition states are examined for all suggested paths of Indigo dye degradation predicated on zero-point energy and imaginary frequency. The first starting step of the reaction mechanism is proposed. The change in enthalpy, Gibbs free energ

Processing sulfur containing minerals is one of the biggest sources of acute anthropogenic pollution particularly in the form of acid mine drainage.

Storage of rainwater within the root depth zone is one of the modern ways to increase plant production. Subsurface water retention technology was applied to assess improving values of crop yield and crop water use efficiency, applying a membrane made of low-density polyethylene trough installed below the crop root zone. The goal of this paper is to assess that the retention of rainwater above the membrane can improve the crop yield and crop water use efficiency values for winter wheat. The experiment was conducted in open field, within Joeybeh Township, located in east of the Ramadi City, in Anbar Province, in winter growing season 2018-2019. Two plots T1 (with membrane trough) and T2 (without membrane) were used for the

Numeral recognition is considered an essential preliminary step for optical character recognition, document understanding, and others. Although several handwritten numeral recognition algorithms have been proposed so far, achieving adequate recognition accuracy and execution time remain challenging to date. In particular, recognition accuracy depends on the features extraction mechanism. As such, a fast and robust numeral recognition method is essential, which meets the desired accuracy by extracting the features efficiently while maintaining fast implementation time. Furthermore, to date most of the existing studies are focused on evaluating their methods based on clean environments, thus limiting understanding of their potential a

The aim of this study was extraction of jojoba oil using different solvents. A mixture of waterhexane and water-ethanol are used as solvents to extract jojoba oil in a batch extraction process and compared with a pure solvent extraction process. The effects of particle size of crushed seeds, solvent-to-water ratio and time on jojoba oil extraction were investigated. The best recovery of oil was obtained at the boiling temperature of the solvent and four hour of extraction time. When seed particle size was 0.45 mm and a pure ethanol was used (45% yield of oil extraction), whereas, it was 40% yield of oil at 25% water-hexane mixture. It was revealed that the water-ethanol and water-hexane mixtures have an effect on the oil extraction yield. T

Biomass has been extensively investigated, because of its presence as clean energy source. Tars and particulates formation problems are still the major challenges in development especially in the implementation of gasification technologies into nowadays energy supply systems. Laser Induced Fluorescence spectroscopy (LIF) method is incorporated for determining aromatic and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) produced at high temperature gasification technology. The effect of tars deposition when the gases are cooled has been highly reduced by introducing a new concept of measurement cell. The samples of PAH components have been prepared with the standard constrictions of measured PAHs by using gas chromatograph (GC). OPO laser with tun

Titanium oxide nanoparticles-modified smectite (SMC-nTiO2) as a low-cost adsorbent was investigated for the removal of Rhodamine B (RhB) from aqueous solutions. The adsorbents (SMC and SMC-nTiO2) were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The effects of various parameters like contact time, adsorbent weight, pH, and temperatures were examined. Three kinetic equations (pseudo-first-order (PFO), pseudo-second-order (PSO), and intra-particle diffusion) were used to evaluate the experimental kinetic of the data and the results showed that the adsorption process is in line with the PSO kinetic model. Adsorption equilibrium isotherms were modeled using La

In this work, enhancement to the fluorescence characteristics of laser dye solutions hosting highly-pure titanium dioxide nanoparticles as random gain media. This was achieved by coating two opposite sides of the cells containing these media with nanostructured thin films of highly-pure titanium dioxide. Two laser dyes; Rhodamine B and Coumarin 102, were used to prepare solutions in hexanol and methanol, respectively, as hosts for the nanoparticles. The nanoparticles and thin films were prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The enhancement was observed by the narrowing of fluorescence linewidth as well as by increasing the fluorescence intensity. These parameters were compared to those of the dye only and the dye solution

The present study investigates deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as potential media for enzymatic hydrolysis. A series of ternary ammonium and phosphonium-based DESs were prepared at different molar ratios by mixing with aqueous glycerol (85%). The physicochemical properties including surface tension, conductivity, density, and viscosity were measured at a temperature range of 298.15 K – 363.15 K. The eutectic points were highly influenced by the variation of temperature. The eutectic point of the choline chloride: glycerol: water (ratio of 1: 2.55: 2.28) and methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide:glycerol:water (ratio of 1: 4.25: 3.75) is 213.4 K and 255.8 K, respectively. The stability of the lipase enzyme isolated from porcine pancreas (PPL) a