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.

The current study aimed to determine the morphometric and meristic characteristics of the North African catfish Clarias gariepinus (Burchell, 1822). Six specimens of C. gariepinus were collected from the Tigris River, in central Iraq. This study is considered the confirmation first record of this species in Iraq, and the second documentation of this exotic fish. The present species is characterized by a very long dorsal fin, a rounded caudal fin and four pairs of barbels.

Nanostructured Al2O3has been applied as a protective coating against corrosion of the carbon steel (C.S) in seawater environment (3.5% NaCl) at temperatures range (298-328)K. Aluminananoparticles were deposited on carbon steel substrates by cathodic electrophoretic deposition (EPD) with ethanol as suspension medium and poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) as polymeric charging agent. Meanwhile, thesurface morphology was examined using Atomic-force microscopy (AFM). The cross-section AFM showed that the particles sizes for the Al2O3 NPs is around 60-80 nm. The anticorrosion behaviour of coated C.S was investigated in 3.5% NaCl at temperature range 298-328 K by potentiodynamic polarization measurements. Results show that using PAA in suspension coat incr

      Detecting protein complexes in protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks is a challenging problem in computational biology. To uncover a PPI network into a complex structure, different meta-heuristic algorithms have been proposed in the literature. Unfortunately, many of such methods, including evolutionary algorithms (EAs), are based solely on the topological information of the network rather than on biological information. Despite the effectiveness of EAs over heuristic methods, more inherent biological properties of proteins are rarely investigated and exploited in these approaches. In this paper, we proposed an EA with a new mutation operator for complex detection problems. The proposed mutation operator is formulate

Sheet piles are necessary with hydraulic structures as seepage cut-off to reduce the seepage. In this research, the computational work methodology was followed by building a numerical model using Geo-Studio program to check the efficiency of using concrete sheet piles as a cut-off or reducer for seepage with time if the sheet piles facing the drawdown technique. Al-Kifil regulator was chosen as a case study, an accurate model was built with a help of observed reading of the measuring devices, which was satisfactory and helped in checking the sheet piles efficiency. Through the study, three scenarios were adopted (with and without) drawdown technique, it was found that at the short time there's no effect of the drawdown technique on

Circular thin walled structures have wide range of applications. This type of structure is generally exposed to different types of loads, but one of the most important types is a buckling. In this work, the phenomena of buckling was studied by using finite element analysis. The circular thin walled structure in this study is constructed from; cylindrical thin shell strengthen by longitudinal stringers, subjected to pure bending in one plane. In addition, Taguchi method was used to identify the optimum combination set of parameters for enhancement of the critical buckling load value, as well as to investigate the most effective parameter. The parameters that have been analyzed were; cylinder shell thickness, shape of stiffeners section an

Surface water samples from different locations within Tigris River's boundaries in Baghdad city have been analyzed for drinking purposes. Correlation coefficients among different parameters were determined. An attempt has been made to develop linear regression equations to predict the concentration of water quality constituents having significant correlation coefficients with electrical conductivity (EC). This study aims to find five regression models produced and validated using electrical conductivity as a predictor to predict total hardness (TH), calcium (Ca), chloride (Cl), sulfate (SO₄), and total dissolved solids (TDS). The five models showed good/excellent prediction ability of the parameters mentioned

       Using orbit- motion limited theory, as the exact theory in calculating the ion and electron current in dusty plasma, the variations of charge number on a dust grain in Ar-plasma are studied by changing various charging parameters. Most of dependences of charge number on plasma parameters in this paper take into account the close packed effect.

 Accuracy in multiple objects segmentation using geometric deformable models sometimes is not achieved for reasons relating to a number of parameters. In this research, we will study the effect of changing the parameters values on the work of the geometric deformable model and define their efficient values, as well as finding out the relations that link these parameters with each other, by depending on different case studies including multiple objects different in spacing, colors, and illumination. For specific ranges of parameters values the segmentation results are found good, where the success of the work of geometric deformable models has been limited within certain limits to the values of these parameters.