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.
In this research, we propose to use two local search methods (LSM's); Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and the Bees Algorithm (BA) to solve Multi-Criteria Travelling Salesman Problem (MCTSP) to obtain the best efficient solutions. The generating process of the population of the proposed LSM's may be randomly obtained or by adding some initial solutions obtained from some efficient heuristic methods. The obtained solutions of the PSO and BA are compared with the solutions of the exact methods (complete enumeration and branch and bound methods) and some heuristic methods. The results proved the efficiency of PSO and BA methods for a large number of nodes ( ). The proposed LSM's give the best efficient solutions for the MCTSP for
... Show MoreWithin this work, to promote the efficiency of organic-based solar cells, a series of novel A-π-D type small molecules were scrutinised. The acceptors which we designed had a moiety of N, N-dimethylaniline as the donor and catechol moiety as the acceptor linked through various conjugated π-linkers. We performed DFT (B3LYP) as well as TD-DFT (CAM-B3LYP) computations using 6-31G (d,p) for scrutinising the impact of various π-linkers upon optoelectronic characteristics, stability, and rate of charge transport. In comparison with the reference molecule, various π-linkers led to a smaller HOMO–LUMO energy gap. Compared to the reference molecule, there was a considerable red shift in the molecules under study (A1–A4). Therefore, based on
... Show MoreThe modification of hydrophobic rock surfaces to the water-wet state via nanofluid treatment has shown promise in enhancing their geological storage capabilities and the efficiency of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen (H2) containment. Despite this, the specific influence of silica (SiO2) nanoparticles on the interactions between H2, brine, and rock within basaltic formations remains underexplored. The present study focuses on the effect of SiO2 nanoparticles on the wettability of Saudi Arabian basalt (SAB) under downhole conditions (323 K and pressures ranging from 1 to 20 MPa) by using the tilted plate technique to measure the contact angles between H2/brine and the rock surfaces. The findings reveal that the SAB's hydrophobicity intensif
... Show MoreRecent growth in transport and wireless communication technologies has aided the evolution of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The ITS is based on different types of transportation modes like road, rail, ocean and aviation. Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a technology that considers moving vehicles as nodes in a network to create a wireless communication network. VANET has emerged as a resourceful approach to enhance the road safety. Road safety has become a critical issue in recent years. Emergency incidents such as accidents, heavy traffic and road damages are the main causes of the inefficiency of the traffic flow. These occurrences do not only create the congestion on the road but also increase the fuel consumption and p
... Show MoreThis work was conducted to study the recovery of catalyst and desirable components from tar formed in phenol production unit and more particularly relates to such a method whereby better recovery of copper salts, phenol, benzoic acid and benzoate salts from tar by aqueous acid solution was accomplished.
The effect of solvent type, solvent concentration (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 wt%), agitation speed (100, 200, 300 and 400 rpm), agitation time (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 min), temperature (90, 100, 110, 120, 130 and 140 oC) , phase ratio (1/1, 2/1, 3/1, 4/1 and 5/1) and number of extraction (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) were examined in order to increase the catalyst and desirable components extraction.
Four types of solvent were used; hydrochloric
Sulphated zirconia (SZ) is one of the most important solid acid catalysts was synthesize at different operating conditions, different calcination temperature and sulfonating time has been used. The prepared catalyst was distinguished by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), particle size and morphology of catalyst were checked by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) respectively, in addition to analysis by (DTA) Differential thermally and Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX). Finally, the N2 adsorption-desorption was used to measure the surface area (BET) and pore volume. High degree of tetragonal crystallinity was obtained 90 %, and surface area of 169 m2/g and pore volume of 0.39 cm3g-1 at 600°C calcination temperature for 3
... Show MoreSolving problems via artificial intelligence techniques has widely prevailed in different aspects. Implementing artificial intelligence optimization algorithms for NP-hard problems is still challenging. In this manuscript, we work on implementing the Naked Mole-Rat Algorithm (NMRA) to solve the n-queens problems and overcome the challenge of applying NMRA to a discrete space set. An improvement of NMRA is applied using the aspect of local search in the Variable Neighborhood Search algorithm (VNS) with 2-opt and 3-opt. Introducing the Naked Mole Rat algorithm based on variable neighborhood search (NMRAVNS) to solve N-queens problems with different sizes. Finding the best solution or set of solutions within a plausible amount of t
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Background: The oral cavity is a complex environment, both structurally and functionally, the hard and soft tissues are in close a proximity. Oral tissues subjected to wear throughout the life, that threatened the vitality of the pulp or increase the sensitivity of dentinal tubules. One of the common dental problems is loss of enamel or cementum, which stimulate the nerve ending in or near the pulp and manifested as pain sensation. Aim of the study: This study had done to evaluate the effects of 980nm diode Laser in diameters reduction of exposed dentinal tubules analyze the results and morphological changes of irradiated dentine surface by FE-SEM (field emission scann
... Show MoreThe increase globally fossil fuel consumption as it represents the main source of energy around the world, and the sources of heavy oil more than light, different techniques were used to reduce the viscosity and increase mobility of heavy crude oil. this study focusing on the experimental tests and modeling with Back Feed Forward Artificial Neural Network (BFF-ANN) of the dilution technique to reduce a heavy oil viscosity that was collected from the south- Iraq oil fields using organic solvents, organic diluents with different weight percentage (5, 10 and 20 wt.% ) of (n-heptane, toluene, and a mixture of different ratio
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