The world is confronted with the twin crisis of fossil fuel depletion and environmental degradation caused by fossil fuel usage. Biodiesel produced from renewable feedstocks such as Jatropha seed oil or animal fats by transesterification offers a solution. Although biodiesel has been produced from various vegetable oils such as Jatropha seed oil, the reaction kinetics studies are very few in literature, hence the need for this study. Jatropha curcas seed oil was extracted and analyzed to determine its free fatty acid and fatty acid composition. The oil was transesterified with methanol at a molar ratio of methanol to oil 8:1, using 1% sodium hydroxide catalyst, at different temperature

Animal fats are a good, promising and ethical alternative source for biodiesel production, but they need more complex treatments than vegetable oils. Iraqi butchery plants waste fats (sheep fat) which are suggested as feedstock to produce biodiesel. This type of fat contains a large quantity of free fatty acids (FFAs) (acid number 49.13 mg KOH/g of fat). The direct transesterification of such fats produce high amount of soap instead of desired biodiesel, so a pre-treatment step (to reduce FFAs) is necessary before transesterification. This step was done by esterification of the free fatty acids in the fat by adding ethanol and using 1% acid catalyst (H2SO4) for 30 minutes. The results showed that the acid number of sheep fat after pre-tr

Most of the recent works related to the construction industry in Iraq are focused on investigating the validity of local raw materials as alternatives to the imported materials necessary for some practical applications, especially in thermal and sound insulation. This investigation includes the use of limestone dust as partial substitution of cement in combination with foam agent and silica fume to produce sustainable Lightweight Foam Concrete (LWFC). This study consists of two stages. In the first stage, trial mixes were performed to find the optimum dosage of foam agent. Limestone dust was used as a partial replacement for cement. Chemical analysis and fineness showed great similarity with cement. Many concrete mixes were prepared

A simple and novel method was developed by combination of dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction with UV spectrophotometry for the preconcentartion and determination of trace amount of malathion. The presented method is based on using a small volume of ethylenechloride as the extraction solvent was dissolved in ethanol as the dispersive solvent, then the binary solution was rapidly injected by a syringe into the water sample containing malathion. The important parameters, such the type and volume of extraction solvent and disperser solvent, the effect of extraction time and rate, the effect of salt addition and reaction conditions were studied. At the optimum conditions, the calibration graph was linear in the range of 2-100 ng mL-1 of ma

Bioethanol production from sugar fermentation is one of the most sustainable alternatives to substitute fossil fuel. production of bioethanol from low grade dates which are rich of sugars. An available sugar from a second grade dates (reduction sugar) was 90g/l in this study. Sugar can be served as essential carbon sources for yeast growth in aerobic condition and can also be converted to bioethanol in anaerobic condition. The effect of various parameters on bioethanol production, fermentation time, pH-values, inoculum size and initial sugar concentration were varied in order to determine the optimal of bioethanol production. The highest bioethanol yield was 33g/l which was obtained with sugar concentration 90 g/l, inocu

Advanced strategies for production forecasting, operational optimization, and decision-making enhancement have been employed through reservoir management and machine learning (ML) techniques. A hybrid model is established to predict future gas output in a gas reservoir through historical production data, including reservoir pressure, cumulative gas production, and cumulative water production for 67 months. The procedure starts with data preprocessing and applies seasonal exponential smoothing (SES) to capture seasonality and trends in production data, while an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) captures complicated spatiotemporal connections. The history replication in the models is quantified for accuracy through metric keys such as m

Iraq suffers from lack of water resources supply because the headwaters of the rivers located outside its borders and the influence of upstream countries on the quantities of flowing water, in addition to the increase of pressure on available water as a result of population increase and not adopting the principle of rationalization where misuse and wastage and lack of strategic vision to treat and manage water use in accordance with the economic implications fall.  This is reflected fallout on water security and subsequently on national and food security, while the issue of using water resources is development top priority in different countries in the world because of the importance of water effect on the security of indivi

The Iraqi marshes are considered the most extensive wetland ecosystem in the Middle East and are located in the middle and lower basin of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers which create a wetlands network and comprise some shallow freshwater lakes that seasonally swamped floodplains. Al-Hawizeh marsh is a major marsh located east of Tigris River south of Iraq. This study aims to assess water quality through water quality index (WQI) and predict Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) concentrations in Al-Hawizeh marsh based on artificial neural network (ANN). Results showed that the WQI was more than 300 for years 2013 and 2014 (Water is unsuitable for drinking) and decreased within the range 200-300 in years 2015 and 2016 (Very poor water). The develope