Background: This in vitro study compares a novel calcium-phosphate etchant paste to conventional 37% phosphoric acid gel for bonding metal and ceramic brackets by evaluating the shear bond strength, remnant adhesive and enamel damage following water storage, acid challenge and fatigue loading. Material and Methods: Metal and ceramic brackets were bonded to 240 extracted human premolars using two enamel conditioning protocols: conventional 37% phosphoric acid (PA) gel (control), and an acidic calcium-phosphate (CaP) paste. The CaP paste was prepared from β-tricalcium phosphate and monocalcium phosphate monohydrate powders mixed with 37% phosphoric acid solution, and the resulting phase was confirmed using FTIR. The bonded premolars were exp

Traditional volumetric asphalt mix design methods do not directly evaluate cracking and rutting resistance, which may result in mixtures with inadequate field performance despite satisfying conventional volumetric requirements. Balanced Mix Design (BMD) has been introduced to address this limitation by incorporating performance testing. However, it remains unclear whether additive modification alone can recover mixtures that do not satisfy BMD criteria, or whether volumetric redesign (binder content optimization) is necessary. Therefore, this study investigated the effectiveness of additive modification before and after BMD redesign using IDEAL-CT and IDEAL-RT performance indices. Three additive systems were evaluated: SBS polymer,

Direct contact membrane distillation is an effective method for production of fresh water from saline water. In this study two samples were used as feed solutions; the first one was RO waste from Al-Hilla Coca-Cola Factory (TDS= 2382 mg/l) and the other was Haji Ali drainage water (TDS= 4127 mg/l). Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) hydrophobic membrane supported with polypropylene (PP) was used as flat sheet form with plate and frame cell. Results proved that membrane distillation is an effective technique to produce fresh water with high quality from brine with low salinity content. With membrane area of 8x8 cm², the volume of treated water decreased from 34.97 ml at first half hour to 33.02 ml after 180 min of

The study of surface hardness, wear resistance, adhesion strength, electrochemical corrosion resistance and thermal conductivity of coatings composed from sodium silicate was prepared using graphite micro-size particles and carbon nano particles as fillers respectively of concentration of (1-5%), for the purpose of covering and protecting the oil distillation towers. The results showed that the sodium silicate coating reinforced with carbon nano-powder has higher resistance to stitches, mechanical wear, adhesive and thermal conductivity than graphite/sodium silicate composite especially when the ratio 5% and 1%, the electrochemical corrosion test confirmed that the coating process of stainless steel 304 lead to increasin

Electrospinning is a novel technique that can be used to produce highly porous fibers with highly tunable properties. In this research, this technique is adopted to prepare the electrospun nanofiber membrane for membrane distillation application. A custom-built electrospinning setup was made to prepare the nanofibers membrane. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) polymer was used in the electrospinning process due to its high hydrophobicity. Electrospun (PVDF) nanofibers were tested in direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) process using 0.6 M sodium chloride as a feed solution. The resulting nanofiber membrane exhibited high performance in DCMD (i.e. relatively high water flux and high salt rejection). It has been found

Shaky Baghdad heavy crude oil 22 API is processed by distillation and solvent extraction. The purpose of distillation is to separate the light distillates    (light fractions) which represent 35% of heavy crude oil, and to obtain the reduced crude oil. The heavy residue (9 API) is  extracted with Iraqi light naphtha to get the deasphaltened oil (DAO), the extraction carried out with temperature range of 20-75 ^oC, solvent to oil ratio 5-15:1(ml:g) and a mixing time of 15 minutes. In general, results show that API of DAO increased twice the API of reduced crude oil while sulfur and metals content decreased 20% and 50% respectively. Deasphaltened oil produced from various operating conditions blended with the

Production of fatty acid esters (biodiesel) from oleic acid and 2-ethylhexanol using sulfated zirconia as solid catalyst for the production of biodiesel was investigated in this work.

       The parameters studied were temperature of reaction (100 to 130°C), molar ratio of alcohol to free fatty acid (1:1 to 3:1), concentration of catalyst (0.5 to 3%wt), mixing speed (500 to 900 rpm) and types of sulfated zirconia (i.e modified, commercial, prepared  catalyst according to literature and reused catalyst). The results show the best conversion to biodiesel was 97.74% at conditions of 130°C, 3:1, 2wt% and 650 rpm using modified catalyst respectively. Also, modified c

Desalination is a process where fresh water produces from high salinity solutions, many ways used for this purpose and one of the most important processes is membrane distillation (MD). Direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) can be considered as the most prominent type from MD types according to ease of design and modus operandi. This work studies the efficiency of using DCMD operation for desalination brine with different concentration (1.75, 3.5, 5 wt. % NaCl). Frame and plate cell was used with flat sheet PTFE hydrophobic type membrane. The study proves that MD is an effective process for desalination brines with feed temperature less than 60˚C especially for feed with low TDS. 37˚C, 47˚C, and 57˚C was feed t

Ag₂O (Silver Oxide) is an important p-type (in chasm to most oxides which were n-type), with a high conductivity semiconductor. From the optical absorbance data, the energy gap value of the Ag₂O thin films was 1.93 eV, where this value substantially depends on the production method, vacuum evaporation of silver, and optical properties of Ag₂O thin films are also affected by the precipitation conditions. The n-type and p-type silicon substrates were used  with porous silicon wafers to precipitate  ±125 nm, as thick Ag₂O thin film by thermal evaporation techniques in vacuum and via rapid thermal oxidation of 400^oC and oxidation time 95 s, then characterized by measurement of

The Adaptive Optics technique has been developed to obtain the correction of atmospheric seeing. The purpose of this study is to use the MATLAB program to investigate the performance of an AO system with the most recent AO simulation tools, Objected-Oriented Matlab Adaptive Optics (OOMAO). This was achieved by studying the variables that impact image quality correction, such as observation wavelength bands, atmospheric parameters, telescope parameters, deformable mirror parameters, wavefront sensor parameters, and noise parameters. The results presented a detailed analysis of the factors that influence the image correction process as well as the impact of the AO components on that process