This work focuses on the use of biologically produced activated carbon for improving the physi-co-chemical properties of water samples obtained from the Tigris River. An eco-friendly and low-cost activated carbon was prepared from the Alhagi plant using potassium hydroxide (KOH) as an impregnation agent. The prepared activated carbon was characterised using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy to determine the functional groups that exist on the raw material (Alhagi plant) and Alhagi activated carbon (AAC). Scanning electron microscope–energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscope was also used to investigate the surface shape and the elements that compose the powder. Brunauer–Emmett–Teller surface area analysis was used to evaluate the spe

Monthly rainfall data of Baghdad meteorological station were taken to study the time behavior of these data series. Significant fluctuation,very slight increasing trend and significant seasonality were noticed. Several ARIMA models were tested and the best one were checked for the adequacy. It is found that the SEASONAL ARIMA model of the orders SARIMA(2,1,3)x(0,1,1) is the best model where the residual of this model exhibits white noise property, uncorrelateness and they are normally distributed. According to this model, rainfall forecast for four years was also achieved and showing similar trend and extent of the original data.

Abstract

  In this study, modified organic solvent (organosolv) method was applied to remove high lignin content in the date palm fronds (type Al-Zahdi) which was taken from the Iraqi gardens. In modified organosolv, lignocellulosic material is fractionated into its constituents (lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose). In this process, solvent (organic)-water is brought into contact with the lignocellulosic biomass at high temperature, using stainless steel reactor (digester). Therefor; most of hemicellulose will remove from the biomass, while the solid residue (mainly cellulose) can be used in various industrial fields. Three variables were studied in this process: temperature, ratio of ethano

Large quantities of contaminated carwash wastewater are produced per day from carwash places. Extensively it contains large quantities of chemicals from detergents, oil, grease, heavy metals, suspended solids, types of hydrocarbons, and biological contents. A novel electrocoagulation treatment by foil electrodes was conducted to remove COD, turbidity, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) from contaminated carwash wastewater and decrease its Electrical Conductivity (EC). A thin layer of aluminum foil is used as an electrode in this treatment process. The effects of different voltage and treatment times were studied. The best result was found at a voltage of 30 volts and treatment time 90 minute where the removal efficiency of COD

    Crow Search Algorithm (CSA) can be defined as one of the new swarm intelligence algorithms that has been developed lately, simulating the behavior of a crow in a storage place and the retrieval of the additional food when required. In the theory of the optimization, a crow represents a searcher, the surrounding environment represents the search space, and the random storage of food location represents a feasible solution. Amongst all the food locations, the one where the maximum amount of the food is stored is considered as the global optimum solution, and objective function represents the food amount. Through the simulation of crows’ intelligent behavior, the CSA attempts to find the optimum solutions to a variety of the proble

A super pixel can be defined as a group of pixels, which have similar characteristics, which can be very helpful for image segmentation. It is generally color based segmentation as well as other features like texture, statistics…etc .There are many algorithms available to segment super pixels like Simple Linear Iterative Clustering (SLIC) super pixels and Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Application with Noise (DBSCAN). SLIC algorithm essentially relay on choosing N random or regular seeds points covering the used image for segmentation. In this paper Split and Merge algorithm was used instead to overcome determination the seed point's location and numbers as well as other used parameters. The overall results were better from the SL

Characteristic evolving is most serious move that deal with image discrimination. It makes the content of images as ideal as possible. Gaussian blur filter used to eliminate noise and add purity to images. Principal component analysis algorithm is a straightforward and active method to evolve feature vector and to minimize the dimensionality of data set, this paper proposed using the Gaussian blur filter to eliminate noise of images and improve the PCA for feature extraction. The traditional PCA result as total average of recall and precision are (93% ,97%) and for the improved PCA average recall and precision are (98% ,100%), this show that the improved PCA is more effective in recall and precision.

A high sensitivity, low power and low cost sensor has been developed for photoplethysmography (PPG) measurement. The PPG principle was applied to follow the dilatation and contraction of skin blood vessels during the cardiac cycle. A standard light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been used as a light emitter and detector, and in order to reduce the space, cost and power, the classical analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) replaced by the pulse-based signal conversion techniques. A general purpose microcontroller has been used for the implementation of measurement protocol. The proposed approach leads to better spectral sensitivity, increased resolution, reduction in cost, dimensions and power consumption. The basic sensing configuration prese

Forward osmosis (FO) process was applied to concentrate the orange juice. FO relies on the driving force generating from osmotic pressure difference that result from concentration difference between the draw solution (DS) and orange juice as feed solution (FS). This driving force makes the water to transport from orange juice across a semi-permeable membrane to the DS without any energy applied. Thermal and pressure-driven dewatering methods are widely used, but they are prohibitively energy intensive and hence, expensive. Effects of various operating conditions on flux have been investigated. Four types of salts were used in the DS, (NaCl, CaCl2, KCl, and MgSO4) as osmotic agent and the experiments were performed at the concentration of

Cadmium is one of the heavy metal found in the wastewater of many industries. The electrocoagulation offers many advantages for the removal of cadmium over other methods. So the removal of cadmium from wastewater by using electrocoagulation was studied to investigate the effect of operating parameters on the removal efficiency. The studied parameters were the initial pH, initial concentration, and applied voltage. The study experiments were conducted in a batch reactor with  with two pairs of aluminum electrodes with dimension  and 2mm in thick with 1.5 cm space between them. The optimum removal was obtained at pH =7, initial concentration = 50 mg/L, and applied voltage = 20 V and it was 90%.