The esterification of oleic acid with 2-ethylhexanol in presence of sulfuric acid as homogeneous catalyst was investigated in this work to produce 2-ethylhexyl oleate (biodiesel) by using semi batch reactive distillation. The effect of reaction temperature (100 to 130°C), 2-ethylhexanol:oleic acid molar ratio (1:1 to 1:3) and catalysts concentration (0.2 to 1wt%) were studied. Higher conversion of 97% was achieved with operating conditions of reaction temperature of 130°C, molar ratio of free fatty acid to alcohol of 1:2 and catalyst concentration of 1wt%. A simulation was adopted from basic principles of the reactive distillation using MATLAB to describe the process. Good agreement was achieved.
Photocatalyst composed of core/shell magnetic zincoxysulfide nanocomposite coated with sulfonated polyindole ([email protected]/SPID) has been prepared and used for simultaneous photocatalytic H2 production and Bisphenol A (BPA) degradation. XRD, FE-SEM, EDX, BET surface area, UV-vis DRS and VSM were used to characterize the synthesized nanocomposites. The photocatalytic performance was evaluated using batch reactor under visible light irradiation. The photocatalytic activity of [email protected]/SPID nanocomposite was revealed to exceed that of [email protected] nanocomposite due to the heterojunctions between SPID and [email protected] species. The results exhibited that the effect of BPA initial concentration was found to be effectual on the improvement
... Show MorePro-inflammatory cytokines play an important role in intercellular communications. In the last two decades, many cytokines have been identified in human milk. These cytokines are variable according to different conditions such as pathogenic infections which strongly stimulated the immune response. The present study aims to determine of IL1β and TNF-α in Toxoplasma gondii-free and infected women in an attempt to clarify the impacts of the infections on cytokines especially in mother's milk. The serum and milk sample were collected from 96 samples (48 for seropositive and 48 for seronegative). To confirm the Toxoplasma gondii infection; enzyme linked immunofluorescence assay (ELIFA) was used to detect anti-Toxoplasma Ig
... Show MoreFree water surface constructed wetlands (FSCWs) can be used to complement conventional waste water treatment but removal efficiencies are often limited by a high ratio of water volume to biofilm surface area (i.e. high water depth). Floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) consist of floating matrices which can enhance the surface area available for the development of fixed microbial biofilms and provide a platform for plant growth (which can remove pollutants by uptake). In this study the potential of FTWs for ammoniacal nitrogen (AN) removal was evaluated using experimental mesocosms operated under steady-state flow conditions with ten different treatments (two water depths, two levels of FTW mat coverage, two different plant densities and
... Show MoreFusidic acid (FA) is a well-known pharmaceutical antibiotic used to treat dermal infections. This experiment aimed for developing a standardized HPLC protocol to determine the accurate concentration of fusidic acid in both non-ionic and cationic nano-emulsion based gels. For this purpose, a simple, precise, accurate approach was developed. A column with reversed-phase C18 (250 mm x 4.6 mm ID x 5 m) was utilized for the separation process. The main constituents of the HPLC mobile phase were composed of water: acetonitrile (1: 4); adjusted at pH 3.3. The flow rate was 1.0 mL/minute. The optimized wavelength was selected at 235 nm. This approach achieved strong linearity for alcoholic solutions of FA when loaded at a serial concentrati
... Show MoreIn this work, p-n junctions were fabricated from highly-pure nanostructured NiO and TiO2 thin films deposited on glass substrates by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The structural characterization showed that the prepared multilayer NiO/TiO2 thin film structures were highly pure as no traces for other compounds than NiO and TiO2 were observed. It was found that the absorption of NiO-on-TiO2 structure is higher than that of the TiO2-on-NiO. Also, the NiO/TiO2 heterojunctions exhibit typical electrical characteristics, higher ideality factor and better spectral responsivity when compared to those fabricated from the same materials by the same technique and with larger particle size and lower structural purity.
The aim of this work was to develop and validate a rapid and low cost method for estimation of ibuprofen in pharmaceutical suspensions using Reverse-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography. The proposed method was conducted and validated according to International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) requirements. The chromatographic parameters were as follows: column of octyldecylsilyl C18 with dimensions (150 × 4.6) mm, mobile phase composed of acetonitrile with phosphoric acid with a ratio of 50 to 50 each using isocratic mode, flow rate of 1.5 mL/min and injection volume of 5 μL. The detection was carried out using UV detector at 220 nm. The method was validated and showed short retention time for ibuprofen peak at 7.651 min, wit
... Show MoreThis study investigated a novel application of forward osmosis (FO) for oilfield produced water treatment from the East Baghdad oilfield affiliated to the Midland Oil Company (Iraq). FO is a part of a zero liquid discharge system that consists of oil skimming, coagulation/flocculation, forward osmosis, and crystallization. Treatment of oilfield produced water requires systems that use a sustainable driving force to treat high-ionic-strength wastewater and have the ability to separate a wide range of contaminants. The laboratory-scale system was used to evaluate the performance of a cellulose triacetate hollow fiber CTA-HF membrane for the FO process. In this work, sodium chloride solution was used as a feed solution (FS) with a concentratio
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