The effects of using aqueous nanofluids containing covalently functionalized graphene nanoplatelets with triethanolamine (TEA-GNPs) as novel working fluids on the thermal performance of a flat-plate solar collector (FPSC) have been investigated. Water-based nanofluids with weight concentrations of 0.025%, 0.05%, 0.075%, and 0.1% of TEA-GNPs with specific surface areas of 300, 500, and 750 m2/g were prepared. An experimental setup was designed and built and a simulation program using MATLAB was developed. Experimental tests were performed using inlet fluid temperatures of 30, 40, and 50 °C; flow rates of 0.6, 1.0, and 1.4 kg/min; and heat flux intensities of 600, 800, and 1000 W/m2. The FPSC’s efficiency increased as the flow rate and heat flux intensity increased, and decreased as inlet fluid temperature increased. When using nanofluids in the FPSC, the measured temperatures of absorber plate and tube wall decreased down to 3.35% and 3.51%, respectively, with the increase in weight concentration and specific surface area, while the efficiency increased up to 10.53% for 0.1- wt% TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g, in comparison with water. When using water as heat transfer fluid, very good agreement was obtained between the experimental and predicted values of absorber plate temperature, tube wall temperature, and collector’s efficiency with maximum differences of 3.02%, 3.19%, and 3.26%, respectively. While, when using nanofluids, higher differences were found, up to 4.74%, 4.7%, and 13.47% for TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g, respectively. Accordingly, the MATLAB code was capable of simulating the thermal performance of FPSCs utilizing nanofluids as their heat transfer fluids with acceptable accuracy. Values of performance index were all greater than 1, and increased as weight concentration increased up to 1.104 for 0.1- wt% TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g, implying higher positive effects on efficiency than negative effects on pressure drop. Accordingly, the investigated nanofluids can efficiently be used in FPSCs for enhanced energy efficiency, and the 0.1- wt% water-based TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g was comparatively the superior one.
Artificial Neural networks (ANN) are powerful and effective tools in time-series applications. The first aim of this paper is to diagnose better and more efficient ANN models (Back Propagation, Radial Basis Function Neural networks (RBF), and Recurrent neural networks) in solving the linear and nonlinear time-series behavior. The second aim is dealing with finding accurate estimators as the convergence sometimes is stack in the local minima. It is one of the problems that can bias the test of the robustness of the ANN in time series forecasting. To determine the best or the optimal ANN models, forecast Skill (SS) employed to measure the efficiency of the performance of ANN models. The mean square error and
... Show More. The concepts of structural flexibility became one of the important goals in the design phases to reach high performance in architecture. The pioneering projects and ideas that linked architecture with technologies and scientific innovations appeared, with the aim of reaching projects that mix the concepts of flexibility with the development of machine thought and modern technology to meet the functional, environmental, and aesthetic requirements for human wellbeing. The aim of this paper is to identify the mechanisms used in order to reach flexible structural systems capable of accommodating technological changes and developments. The research hypothesizes that the structural design according to the concepts of flexibility achieves high s
... Show MoreIn a world of fierce competition companies of different activities strive to strengthen their competitiveness in order to be able to deliver greater value to their customers and gain a distinct sites in competition with other companies in the market at the local and international levels. Every company seeks to focus on one or more of the competitive capabilities in order to turn it into an obvious advantage or a number of competitive advantages to contribute in improving the performance and superiority over its competitors. Therefore, the management of companies no longer need only useful information for the internal aspects of the environment, but also need to include the external environment that includes various and constantly changin
... Show MoreThe research seeks to clarify the problems related to the aspects of the financial and accounting process resulting from entering into contractual arrangements with a period of more than 20 years, among which is the research problem represented by the lack of clarity of the foundations and procedures for the recognition of oil costs and additional costs borne by foreign invested companies, which led to a weakening of their credibility and reflection. Negatively "on the measurement and accounting disclosure of financial reports prepared by oil companies, and the research aims to lay down sound procedures for measuring and classifying oil costs and additional costs paid to foreign companies, and recognizing and recording them in th
... Show MoreIn the current digitalized world, cloud computing becomes a feasible solution for the virtualization of cloud computing resources. Though cloud computing has many advantages to outsourcing an organization’s information, but the strong security is the main aspect of cloud computing. Identity authentication theft becomes a vital part of the protection of cloud computing data. In this process, the intruders violate the security protocols and perform attacks on the organizations or user’s data. The situation of cloud data disclosure leads to the cloud user feeling insecure while using the cloud platform. The different traditional cryptographic techniques are not able to stop such kinds of attacks. BB84 protocol is the first quantum cry
... Show MoreAn image retrieval system is a computer system for browsing, looking and recovering pictures from a huge database of advanced pictures. The objective of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) methods is essentially to extract, from large (image) databases, a specified number of images similar in visual and semantic content to a so-called query image. The researchers were developing a new mechanism to retrieval systems which is mainly based on two procedures. The first procedure relies on extract the statistical feature of both original, traditional image by using the histogram and statistical characteristics (mean, standard deviation). The second procedure relies on the T-
... Show MoreIn this paper, precision agriculture system is introduced based on Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). Soil moisture considered one of environment factors that effect on crop. The period of irrigation must be monitored. Neural network capable of learning the behavior of the agricultural soil in absence of mathematical model. This paper introduced modified type of neural network that is known as Spiking Neural Network (SNN). In this work, the precision agriculture system is modeled, contains two SNNs which have been identified off-line based on logged data, one of these SNNs represents the monitor that located at sink where the period of irrigation is calculated and the other represents the soil. In addition, to reduce p
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The research study focused on the need to clarify the relationship between the Websites of Iraqi Newspapers and their roles in covering the internal crises in Iraq. The selection of Iraqi websites for the newspapers Al-Zaman and Al-Sabah was adopted as one of the most important media with a wide audience; and as a model of hot news and continuous coverage of those sites since 2003 so far. As a result, this necessitated the emergence of new types of methods of editing and writing news stories related to Iraq.
Consequently, the enormous and rapidly changing amount of Iraq news, the process of preparing and creating news has become a complex industry
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