Development and population expansion have the lion's share of driving up the fuel cost. Biodiesel has considerable attention as a renewable, ecologically friendly and alternative fuel source. In this study, CaO nanocatalyst is produced from mango leaves as a catalysis for the transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) to biodiesel. The mango tree is a perennial plant, and its fruit holds significant economic worth due to its abundance of vitamins and minerals. This plant has a wide geographical range and its leaves can be utilized without any negative impact on its growth and yield. An analysis was conducted to determine the calcium content in the fallen leaves, revealing a significant quantity of calcium that holds potential for utilization. The catalyst was characterized by different analytic techniques such as XRD, SEM-EDS, FT-IR, and BET analyses. Several parameters impacted on the transesterification process were exploited by conventional transesterification (batch). The result revealed that the optimum reaction was reached at a methanol to oil ratio of 50% w/w, catalyst loading of 3%, temperature of 65℃ and reaction time of 1.5 h with a yield of 93.21%, and the activation energy of the transesterification reaction was found to be 38.906 KJ mol-1. The reaction was verified to be irreversible pseudo-first order based on a linear Arrhenius plot and a high R2 value. The catalyst shows good stability and catalytic activity when it is reused and the yield was found to be 80.293% in the 5th cycle.
The process of accurate localization of the basic components of human faces (i.e., eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) from images is an important step in face processing techniques like face tracking, facial expression recognition or face recognition. However, it is a challenging task due to the variations in scale, orientation, pose, facial expressions, partial occlusions and lighting conditions. In the current paper, a scheme includes the method of three-hierarchal stages for facial components extraction is presented; it works regardless of illumination variance. Adaptive linear contrast enhancement methods like gamma correction and contrast stretching are used to simulate the variance in light condition among images. As testing material
... Show More<span>One of the main difficulties facing the certified documents documentary archiving system is checking the stamps system, but, that stamps may be contains complex background and surrounded by unwanted data. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to isolate background and to remove noise that may be surrounded stamp. Our proposed method comprises of four phases, firstly, we apply k-means algorithm for clustering stamp image into a number of clusters and merged them using ISODATA algorithm. Secondly, we compute mean and standard deviation for each remaining cluster to isolate background cluster from stamp cluster. Thirdly, a region growing algorithm is applied to segment the image and then choosing the connected regi
... Show MoreMany strains of lactic bacteria produce antimicrobial peptides of bacteriocins that are antibiotics used against pathogenic strains. The present work aimed to use a banana peels medium in the fermentation process to replace the commercial MRS medium for decreasing the cost of bacteriocins LAB production. Based on the result, banana peel was a cost-effective and viable alternative carbon source for the production and development of bacteriocin-producing Lactobacilli. The growth of lactobacilli in commercial MRS medium and Banana Peel medium showed no differences, therefore banana peel waste can be used to produce Lactobacilli bacteriocins. Lactobacillus strains grew exceptionally well at 37 C and pH 6.0.
This work reports the development of an analytical method for the simultaneous analysis of three fluoroquinolones; ciprofloxacin (CIP), norfloxacin (NOR) and ofloxacin (OFL) in soil matrix. The proposed method was performed by using microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), solid-phase extraction (SPE) for samples purification, and finally the pre-concentrated samples were analyzed by HPLC detector. In this study, various organic solvents were tested to extract the test compounds, and the extraction performance was evaluated by testing various parameters including extraction solvent, solvent volume, extraction time, temperature and number of the extraction cycles. The current method showed a good linearity over the concentration ranging from
... Show MoreThe successful implementation of deep learning nets opens up possibilities for various applications in viticulture, including disease detection, plant health monitoring, and grapevine variety identification. With the progressive advancements in the domain of deep learning, further advancements and refinements in the models and datasets can be expected, potentially leading to even more accurate and efficient classification systems for grapevine leaves and beyond. Overall, this research provides valuable insights into the potential of deep learning for agricultural applications and paves the way for future studies in this domain. This work employs a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based architecture to perform grapevine leaf image classifi
... Show MoreA comparative study was carried out to evaluate alkaloid antibacterial activity which was extracted from the root bark Punica granatum L. by liquid membrane techniques (SA) and organic solvent traditional techniques (SB). The screening of the antimicrobial activity was conducted by agar well diffusion method against Staphylococcus aureus, Enterobacter cloacae, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Proteus mirabilis at three concentration levels (5, 10 and 15 mg/ml). Alkaloid extracts were analyzed by a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method. Among the tested extractions, SB showed the highest antibacterial activity against all five bacterial strains, especially at 15 mg/ml concentration. However, all the B type solution
... Show MoreIn this research, annealed nanostructured ZnO catalyst water putrefaction system was built using sun light and different wavelength lasers as stimulating light sources to enhance photocatalytic degradation activity of methylene blue (MB) dye as a model based on interfacial charges transfer. The structural, crystallite size, morphological, particle size, optical properties and degradation ability of annealed nanostructured ZnO were characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and UV-VIS Spectrometer, respectively. XRD results demonstrated a pure crystalline hexagonal wurtzite with crystalline size equal to 23 nm. From AFM results, the average particle size was 79.25nm. All MB samples and MB with annealed nanostr
... Show MoreRemoval of solar brown and direct black dyes by coagulation with two aluminum based
coagulants was conducted. The main objective is to examine the efficiency of these
coagulants in the treatment of dye polluted water discharged from Al-Kadhymia Textile
Company (Baghdad-Iraq). The performance of these coagulants was investigated through
jar test by comparing dye percent removal at different wastewater pH, coagulant dose,
and initial dye concentration. Results show that alum works better than PAC under acidic
media (5-6) and PAC works better under basic media (7-8) in the removal of both solar
brown and direct black dyes. Higher doses of PAC were required to achieve the
maximum removal efficiency under optimum pH co
Since its first description as a cytotoxic agent, Olea europaea leaves extract gained significant popularity against human breast cancer, ethyl acetate extract of Olea europaea leaves obtained by acid hydrolysis method was evaluated in vitro as cytotoxic agent against new human breast cancer (AMJ13) cell line, using the MTT assay. One main pentacyclic triterpenoid; oleanolic acid, was isolated from leaves of Olea europaea by well-known two different methods, but not used for this compound before, the acidic hydrolysis method and basic acidic method. The presence of oleanolic acid was proved in both methods with qualitative and quantitative d
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