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

Background. Nanocoating of biomedical materials may be considered the most essential developing field recently, primarily directed at improving their tribological behaviors that enhance their performance and durability. In orthodontics, as in many medical fields, friction reduction (by nanocoatings) among different orthodontic components is considered a substantial milestone in the development of biomedical technology that reduces orthodontic treatment time. The objective of the current research was to explore the tribological behavior, namely, friction of nanocoated thin layer by tantalum (Ta), niobium (Nb), and vanadium (V) manufactured using plasma sputtering at 1, 2, and 3 hours on substrates made of 316L stainless steel (SS),

Infrared photoconductive detectors working in the far-infrared region and room temperature were fabricated. The detectors were fabricated using three types of carbon nanotubes (CNTs); MWCNTs, COOH-MWCNTs, and short-MWCNTs. The carbon nontubes suspension is deposited by dip coating and drop–casting techniques to prepare thin films of CNTs. These films were deposited on porous silicon (PSi) substrates of n-type Si. The I-V characteristics and the figures of merit of the fabricated detectors were measured at a forward bias voltage of 3 and 5 volts as well as at dark and under illumination by IR radiation from a CO2 laser of 10.6 μm wavelengths and power of 2.2 W. The responsivity and figures of merit of the photoconductive detector

Carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) were widely used in strengthening reinforced concrete members
in the last few years, these fibers consist mainly of high strength fibers which increase the member capacity in addition to changing the mode of failure of the reinforced concrete beams. Experimental and theoretical investigations were carried to find the behavior of reinforced concrete beams strengthened by CFRP in shear and bending. The experimental work included testing of 12 beams divided into 4 groups; each group contains 3 beams. The following parameters were taken into consideration: - Concrete crushing strength. - CFRP strengthening location (shear strengthening and both shear and flexure strengthening). Reinforced beams were

This research includes a study of dezincification by corrosion from brass alloys in three types of media, which are acidic solution, basic and slat solution in different percentages. The study show the higher dezincification occurs in basic solution which decrease the fatigue properties where the fatigue properties are inversely proportional with dezincification.

In this work, a joint quadrature for numerical solution of the double integral is presented. This method is based on combining two rules of the same precision level to form a higher level of precision. Numerical results of the present method with a lower level of precision are presented and compared with those performed by the existing high-precision Gauss-Legendre five-point rule in two variables, which has the same functional evaluation. The efficiency of the proposed method is justified with numerical examples. From an application point of view, the determination of the center of gravity is a special consideration for the present scheme. Convergence analysis is demonstrated to validate the current method.

In recent years, the number of applications utilizing mobile wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has increased, with the intent of localization for the purposes of monitoring and obtaining data from hazardous areas. Location of the event is very critical in WSN, as sensing data is almost meaningless without the location information. In this paper, two Monte Carlo based localization schemes termed MCL and MSL* are studied. MCL obtains its location through anchor nodes whereas MSL* uses both anchor nodes and normal nodes. The use of normal nodes would increase accuracy and reduce dependency on anchor nodes, but increases communication costs. For this reason, we introduce a new approach called low communication cost schemes to reduce communication

Metal contents in vegetables are interesting because of issues related to food safety and ‎potential health risks. The availability of these metals in the human body ‎may perform many biochemical functions and some of them linked with various diseases at ‎high levels. The current study aimed to evaluate the concentration of various metals in ‎common local consumed vegetables using ICP-MS. The concentrations of metals in vegetables ‎of tarragon, Bay laurel, dill, Syrian mesquite, vine leaves, thymes, arugula, basil, common ‎purslane and parsley of this study were found to be in the range of, 76-778 for Al, 10-333 for B, 4-119 for ‎Ba, ‎2812‎-24645 for Ca, 0.1-0.32 for Co, 201-464 for Fe, 3661-46400 for K, 0.31–‎‎1.