The consumption of fresh fruits has increased nowadays due to the lifestyle of the consumers. Maintaining the quality and nutritional value of cut fruits during storage is difficult compared to whole fruits. Deterioration of internal and external quality usually occurs in freshly harvested fruits. It is necessary to use different techniques to maintain the quality and increase the shelf life of the freshly cut product. This research studied the effect of treating apple slices with cold plasma once and with filtered water again on quality characteristics (hardness, moisture content, sugar content, carbohydrate content, and color) after being stored for five days. The best treatment was determined using two different pressures of the plasma j

Water/oil emulsion is considered as the most refractory mixture to separate because of the interference of the two immiscible liquids, water and oil. This research presents a study of dewatering of water / kerosene emulsion using hydrocyclone. The effects of factors such as: feed flow rate (3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 L/min), inlet water concentration of the emulsion (5%, 7.5%, 10%, 12.5%, and 15% by volume), and split ratio (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9) on the separation efficiency and pressure drop were studied. Dimensional analysis using Pi theorem was applied for the first time to model the hydrocyclone based on the experimental data. It was shown that the maximum separation efficiency; at split ratio 0.1, was 94.3% at 10% co

The present paper is an experimental study to improve the productivity of the conventional solar still. This done by modifying conventional still in a way that the distilled basin is larger than distillation basin, thus providing an increase in the condensation surface and speeding up the condensation process. Moreover, increase in the dimensions of the distilled base helps coupling reflective panels to the distilled base to reflect incident solar radiation to the distillation basin. For this purpose , two solar stills were made, one conventional designand another made according to the proposed design. The two solar stills were tested during the period from February to July 2009 under varying weather conditions of Basra, Iraq (latitude o

Fiber reinforced polymer composite is an important material for structural application. The diversified application of FRP composite has taken center of attraction for interdisciplinary research. However, improvements on mechanical properties of this class of materials are still under research for different applications. In this paper we have modified the epoxy matrix by Al₂O₃, SiO₂ and TiO₂ nano particles in glass fiber/epoxy composite to improve the mechanical and physical properties. The composites are fabricated by hand lay-up method. It is observed that mechanical properties like flexural strength, hardness are more in case of SiO₂ modified epoxy composite compare to other nano

A simple technique is proposed in this paper for estimating the coefficient of permeability of an unsaturated soil based on physical properties of soils that include grain size analysis, degree of saturation or water content, and porosity of the soil. The proposed method requires the soil-water characteristic curve for the prediction of the coefficient of permeability as most of the conventional methods. A procedure is proposed to define the hydraulic conductivity function from the soil water characteristic curve which is measured by the filter paper method. Fitting methods are applied through the program (SoilVision), after indentifying the basic properties of the soil such as Attereberg limits, specific gravity, void ratio, porosity, d

In the present study, composites were prepared by Hand lay-up molding and investigated. The composites constituents were epoxy resin as the matrix, 6% volume fractions of Glass Fibers (G.F) as reinforcement and 3%, 6% of industrial powder (Calcium Carbonate CaCO₃, Potassium Carbonate K₂CO₃ and Sodium Carbonate Na₂CO₃) as filler. Density, water absorption, hardness test, flexural strength, shear stress measurements and tests were conducted to reveal their values for each type of composite material. The results showed that the non – reinforced epoxy have lower properties than composites material. Measured density results had show an incremental increase with volume fraction increase

Monitoring lotic ecosystems is vital for addressing sustainability issues. The Al-Shamiyah River is the primary source of water for various daily activities in the Al-Shamiyah district. This study assessed the pollution levels of the river by measuring the concentration and distribution of heavy metals—specifically chromium, cadmium, manganese, copper, zinc, and lead—in both the river's water and sediments. The concentrations of heavy metals in the water ranged from 0.05 to 1.44µg/ L for copper (Cu), 1.57 to 7.25µg/ L for manganese (Mn), 0 to 1.7µg/ L for cadmium (Cd), 0.02 to 1.33µg/ L for lead (Pb), 0.08 to 2.74µg/ L for zinc (Zn), and 0.44 to 1.84µg/ L for chromium (Cr). In the particulate phase, the concentrations ranged from

This study involves the design of 24 mixtures of fiber reinforced magnetic reactive powder concrete containing nano Silica. Tap water has been used in mixing 12 of these mixtures, while the other 12 have been mixed using magnetic water. Nano Silica (NS) with ratios (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3) % were used. The results showed that the mixture containing 2.5%NS gives the highest compressive strength at age 7 days. Many different other tests were carried out, the results showed that the fiber reinforced magnetic reactive powder concrete containing 2.5% NS (FRMRPCCNS)  has the higher bulk density, dynamic modulus of elasticity, ultrasonic pulse velocity  electrical resistivity and lesser absorption than fiber reinforced

Numerical study has been conducted to investigate the thermal performance enhancement of flat plate solar water collector by integrating the solar collector with metal foam blocks.The flow is assumed to be steady, incompressible and two dimensional in an inclined channel. The channel is provided with eight foam blocks manufactured form copper. The Brinkman-Forchheimer extended Darcy model is utilized to simulate the flow in the porous medium and the Navier-Stokes equation in the fluid region. The energy equation is used with local thermal equilibrium (LTE) assumption to simulate the thermofield inside the porous medium. The current investigation covers a range of solar radiation intensity at 09:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 04:00

A plastic tubes used as absorber of active flat plate solar collector (FPSC) for heating water were studied numerically and experimentally. The set-up is located in Babylon (republic of Iraq) 43.8⁰ East longitude and 32.3⁰ North latitude with titled of 45⁰ toward the south direction.  The study involved three dimensions mathematical model for flat coil plastic absorber which solved by FLUENT-ANSYS-R.18 program. Experiments were conducted at outdoor conditions for clear days on January and February 2018 with various water volume flow rates namely (500, 750, 1000, 1250, and 1500 Liter per hour LPH) on each month for Reynolds number range of (1 x 10⁴ to 5 x 10⁴) th