Catalytic reduction is considered an effective approach for the reduction of toxic organic pollutants from the environment, but finding an active catalyst is still a big challenge. Herein, Ag decorated CeO2 catalyst was synthesized through polyol reduction method and applied for catalytic reduction (conversion) of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP). The Ag decorated CeO2 catalyst displayed an outstanding reduction activity with 99% conversion of 4-NP in 5 min with a 0.61 min−1 reaction rate (k). A number of structural characterization techniques were executed to investigate the influence of Ag on CeO2 and its effect on the catalytic conversion of 4-NP. The outstanding catalytic performances of the Ag-CeO2 catalyst can be assigned to strong synergistic interaction of Ag with CeO2 that prevents the aggregation of Ag species and also, helps in the exposure of more surface active metallic Ag0. In addition, the Ag-CeO2 catalyst shown remarkable durability up to several (five) repeated rounds, certifying its everyday applicability.
Low grade crude palm oil (LGCPO) presents as an attractive option as feedstock for biodiesel production due to its low cost and non-competition with food resources. Typically, LGCPO contains high contents of free fatty acids (FFA), rendering it impossible in direct trans-esterification processes due to the saponification reaction. Esterification is the typical pre-treatment process to reduce the FFA content and to produce fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). The pre-treatment of LGCPO using two different acid catalysts, such as titanium oxysulphate sulphuric acid complex hydrate (TiOSH) and 5-sulfosalicylic acid dihydrate (5-SOCAH) was investigated for the first time in this study. The optimum conditions for the homogenous catalyst (5-SOCAH) wer
... Show MoreAccurate description of thermodynamic, structural, and electronic properties for bulk and surfaces of ceria (CeO2) necessitates the inclusion of the Hubbard parameter (U) in the density functional theory (DFT) calculations to precisely account for the strongly correlated 4f electrons. Such treatment is a daunting task when attempting to draw a potential energy surface for CeO2-catalyzed reaction. This is due to the inconsistent change in thermo-kinetics parameters of the reaction in reference to the variation in the U values. As an illustrative example, we investigate herein the discrepancy in activation and reaction energies for steps underlying the partial and full hydrogenation of acetylene over the CeO2(111) surface. Overall, we find th
... Show MoreThe present study reports the effect of temperature and liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV) on the cumene cracking reaction rate and selectivity by using a laboratory continuous flow unit with fixed bed reactor operating at atmospheric pressure. The prepared HX zeolite was made from Iraqi kaolin with good crystallinity .The activity and selectivity of prepared HX-zeolite was compared with standard HY zeolite and HX zeolite catalysts in the temperature range of 673-823K and LHSV of 0.7-2.5 h-1 . It was found that the cumene conversion increases with increasing temperature and decreasing LHSV at 823K and LHSV of 0.7 h-1 the conversions 65.32, 42.88 and 59.42 mol% for HY, HX and prepared HX catalysts respectively and at LHSV of 2.5 h-1 and th
... Show MorePolyacrylonitrile nanofiber (PANFS), a well-known polymers, has been extensively employed in the manufacturing of carbon nanofibers (CNFS), which have recently gained substantial attention due to their excellent features, such as spinnability, environmental friendliness, and commercial feasibility. Because of their high carbon yield and versatility in tailoring the final CNFS structure, In addition to the simple formation of ladder structures through nitrile polymerization to yield stable products, CNFS and PAN have been the focus of extensive research as potential production precursors. For instance, the development of biomedical and high-performance composites has now become achievable. PAN homopolymer or PAN-based precursor copolymer can
... Show MoreBig data analysis is essential for modern applications in areas such as healthcare, assistive technology, intelligent transportation, environment and climate monitoring. Traditional algorithms in data mining and machine learning do not scale well with data size. Mining and learning from big data need time and memory efficient techniques, albeit the cost of possible loss in accuracy. We have developed a data aggregation structure to summarize data with large number of instances and data generated from multiple data sources. Data are aggregated at multiple resolutions and resolution provides a trade-off between efficiency and accuracy. The structure is built once, updated incrementally, and serves as a common data input for multiple mining an
... Show MoreThis paper deals with the thirteenth order differential equations linear and nonlinear in boundary value problems by using the Modified Adomian Decomposition Method (MADM), the analytical results of the equations have been obtained in terms of convergent series with easily computable components. Two numerical examples results show that this method is a promising and powerful tool for solving this problems.
The alternating direction implicit method (ADI) is a common classical numerical method that was first introduced to solve the heat equation in two or more spatial dimensions and can also be used to solve parabolic and elliptic partial differential equations as well. In this paper, We introduce an improvement to the alternating direction implicit (ADI) method to get an equivalent scheme to Crank-Nicolson differences scheme in two dimensions with the main feature of ADI method. The new scheme can be solved by similar ADI algorithm with some modifications. A numerical example was provided to support the theoretical results in the research.
