With increasing population and development, the resources of fossil fuels decreased, leading to the need to find alternative sources of energy. Furthermore, the use of fossil fuels is accompanied by several downsides including environmental fatality associated with toxic gas emissions from diesel engines and continuous increase of the price of diesel fuel. Biodiesel is one of the most important types of renewable energy that replaces the fossil fuel requirement (mineral diesel) and maintains eco-friendly sustainability. Calcium is an essential plant nutrient as it plays an important role in the formation of plant cell walls and membranes. Therefore, the fallen leaves of mango tree can be utilized to produce nano calcium oxide and serve as a highly effective catalyst in the transesterification process for biodiesel production. The green approach of mango leaves extract is more cost-effective, nontoxic, and environmentally friendly compared to other ways such as chemical and physical procedures. Transesterification reaction was conducted at fixed parameters of 65 ℃ reaction temperature, 3 wt.% catalyst concentration, 1.5 h reaction time, and 50% alcohol to oil weight ratio. The effects of several other parameters on the transesterification reaction were studied such as the volume of the reaction mixture, mixing speed, FFA% content, and methanol/ethanol weight ratio. The study found that methanol is more effective than ethanol as alcohol in transesterification reaction, and the FFA% has a slight effect on the catalyst to 1.8% FFA. The produced biodiesel was characterized by GC-MS and FT-IR analysis which indicate the presence of esters. The physical and fuel characteristics of the produced biodiesel were measured; it had a viscosity of 3.708 mm2/s, a density of 0.88869 g/cm3, and a flash point of 108 °C.
The production of biodiesel generates soap impurities that hinder biodiesel performance and complicate its purification. This study presents a novel approach for soap removal from biodiesel using NiO–doped ZnO nanoparticle (NP) adsorbent. The NPs are synthesized using a gliding arc discharge (GAD) method as a non-thermal plasma source (NTP). NiO doping reduced the bandgap energy by 74%, reduced the crystallite size, and increased the surface area by 78%, entailing lattice strain and structural modifications. Soap removal efficiency was 99.7% for NiO–doped ZnO within 16 min, compared with 95.5% for ZnO. Soap uptake as high as 2320 mg/g NiO–doped ZnO was reported, which could be equally fitted by Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms su
... Show MoreIn composite steel-concrete structures, shear connectors in the form of headed steel studs are commonly utilized to transfer longitudinal shear force developed at the interface between the two materials. To overcome the shortcomings of design codes, which frequently understate shear capacity and fail to take advantage of sophisticated computational methods, this paper presents an optimization attempt to estimate the shear strength of headed steel studs utilizing the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) technique using MATLAB software. Data from 234 experimental tests are employed to identify and highlight key input parameters influencing the shear strength of headed steel studs. These key parameters include concrete compressive strength (f’c
... Show MoreWater scarcity, rising energy costs, and declining irrigation efficiency are significant barriers to wheat production in Iraq. This study evaluates the economic, environmental, and sustainability impacts of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into irrigation management under semiarid conditions. Field experiments conducted at the Al‐Ra'id Research Station in Baghdad during the 2025 season compared conventional diesel‐based irrigation with AI‐assisted irrigation that used soil moisture sensors, Internet of Things (IoT) controllers, and predictive weather algorithms. The analysis employed Cobb–Douglas production modeling, cost–benefit analysis, net
Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were used to evaluate the capability of Glutamine (Gln) and its derivative chemicals as inhibitors for the anti-corrosive behavior of iron. The current work is devoted to scrutinizing reactivity descriptors (both local and global) of Gln, two states of neutral and protonated. Also, the change of Gln upon the incorporation into dipeptides was investigated. Since the number of reaction centers has increased, an enhancement in dipeptides’ inhibitory effect was observed. Thus, the adsorption of small-scale peptides and glutamine amino acids on Fe surfaces (1 1 1) was performed, and characteristics such as adsorption energies and the configuration with the highest stability and lowest energy were ca
... Show MoreThe purpose of this work is to concurrently estimate the UVvisible spectra of binary combinations of piroxicam and mefenamic acid using the chemometric approach. To create the model, spectral data from 73 samples (with wavelengths between 200 and 400 nm) were employed. A two-layer artificial neural network model was created, with two neurons in the output layer and fourteen neurons in the hidden layer. The model was trained to simulate the concentrations and spectra of piroxicam and mefenamic acid. For piroxicam and mefenamic acid, respectively, the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm with feed-forward back-propagation learning produced root mean square errors of prediction of 0.1679 μg/mL and 0.1154 μg/mL, with coefficients of determination of
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