Health and environmental factors as well as operational difficulties are major challenges facing the development of an anaerobic digestion process. Some of these problems relate to the use of sludge collected from primary and secondary clarifier units in wastewater treatment plants for laboratory purposes.

The present study addresses the preparation of sludge for laboratory purposes by using a mixture that consists of the digested sludge, which is less pathogenic, compared to the collected sludge from the primary or secondary clarifier, and food wastes. The sludge has been tested experimentally for 19 and 32 days under mesophilic conditions. The results show a steady methane production rate from the anaerobic dig

Construction is a complicated process that takes place in an almost uncontrollable environment. Although projects can be carefully planned in advance in principle, there is a chance that unforeseen events and crises can disrupt these plans, affecting project development. Because the initial investment expenditures in construction projects are so large, they may be quickly influenced by crises, resulting in significant financial losses. The 2014 financial crisis was one of the most prominent crises that Iraq faced, which significantly impacted various activities in general and the construction industry in particular. Despite the importance of crisis management systems, the researchers found a great lack of local studies l

This paper proposes a new strategy to enhance the performance and accuracy of the Spiral dynamic algorithm (SDA) for use in solving real-world problems by hybridizing the SDA with the Bacterial Foraging optimization algorithm (BFA). The dynamic step size of SDA makes it a useful exploitation approach. However, it has limited exploration throughout the diversification phase, which results in getting trapped at local optima. The optimal initialization position for the SDA algorithm has been determined with the help of the chemotactic strategy of the BFA optimization algorithm, which has been utilized to improve the exploration approach of the SDA. The proposed Hybrid Adaptive Spiral Dynamic Bacterial Foraging (HASDBF)

The study of cooperative education is important not only for researchers but also for those interested in studying educational methods, such as university professors, teachers in schools, and all educational institutions. This is because of its effectiveness in teaching students, developing their skills, developing their ideas and employing them in the study and finding appropriate solutions to the questions posed by the teacher. It also helps in instilling a spirit of cooperation among the students by dividing them into groups to achieve the desired goals. The aim of the study is to clarify how important it is for teachers to use cooperative education in addressing the educational, social and psychological aspects when teaching stu

Iraqi kaolin was used for the preparation and characterization of NaY zeolite for biodiesel production via esterification reaction. Oleic acid was used usually as a typical simulated feedstock of high acid number for the esterification reaction.

   The chemical composition for the prepared Nay zeolite is as following:  (Ca₂.6Na₁.K_0.1)(Al₆.3Si₁₇.₇)O₄₈.16H₂O, the silica to alumina ratio in the prepared catalyst was found equal to 2.6 and Na₂O content was 12.26 wt. %, with relative crystallinity equal to 147.4 % obtained by the X-ray diffraction. The surface area result shows that the prepared catalyst has 330 m²

The primary objective of this study was to identify the mechanisms for the development and propagation of longitudinal cracks that initiate at the surface of composite pavement. In this study the finite element program ANSYS version (5.4) was used and the model worked out using this program has the ability to analyze a composite pavement structure of different layer properties. Also, the aim of this study was modeling and analyzing of the composite pavement structure with the physical presence of crack induced in concrete underlying layer. The results obtained indicates that increasing the thickness of the asphalt layer tends to decrease the stress intensity factor, which may be attributed to the rapidly decrease of horizontal tensile st