Geodiversity is the variety within abiotic natural elements that include: rocks, minerals, landforms, soil types, and water resources. Recently ecologists and naturalists recognized that there is close relationship between geodiversity and ecosystems. Huwaiza marsh is located south eastern Iraq within Lower Mesopotamian plain. The main rock bed units which crop out north east of the studied area comprises many types of rocks: conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone, siltstone and claystone belong to Bai Hassan, Mukdadiya and Injana Formations. The general elevation of the area ranges around 5 meters (a. s. l.) near the marsh and increase northeast to more than 100 meters (a. s. l.) and the Land forms are: cuesta, oxbow lakes, flood plain, water lake, shallow marshes, mud flats, and sand dunes. Soil (sediments) usually derived from north east rock bed units and from rivers, which are composed of gravel, sand, silt and silty clay. Huwaiza Marsh is provided by water resources from Musharah and Kahlaa distributaries in addition to Al- Teeb and Duwaireeg rivers which enter Al- Sanaf seasonal marsh, then after to Huwaiza Marsh. The later has 1377 km2 during rainy season and 650 km2 during dry season. Geodiversity created diverse ecosystems such as: desert (including sand dune), salt flat (sabkha), mud flats and aqueous ecosystem that provided good flora and fauna diversity of which wide range of plant and animal species use the area. Such geodiversity formed the foundation in creation three main terrestrial ecoregions in this area of Iraq. Huwaiza marsh and adjacent area can be used for scientific researches, education, traditional agricultural, ecotourism and for other sustainable developments. Vertebrate biodiversity comprises 27 mammals, 81 birds, 6 reptiles, 3 amphibians, and 9 freshwater fishes. The characteristic vertebrates of each habitat of Huwaiza marsh were indicated. Of interest among them is the presence of African Darter Anhinga rufa in Deep-water marsh habitat; Basra Reed Warbler Acrocephalus griseldis, Goliath heron Ardea goliath, and smooth coated otter Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli in shallow water marsh habitat.
The temperature control process of electric heating furnace (EHF) systems is a quite difficult and changeable task owing to non-linearity, time delay, time-varying parameters, and the harsh environment of the furnace. In this paper, a robust temperature control scheme for an EHF system is developed using an adaptive active disturbance rejection control (AADRC) technique with a continuous sliding-mode based component. First, a comprehensive dynamic model is established by using convection laws, in which the EHF systems can be characterized as an uncertain second order system. Second, an adaptive extended state observer (AESO) is utilized to estimate the states of the EHF system and total disturbances, in which the observer gains are updated
... Show MoreThe aim of this work is to detect the best operating conditions that effect on the removal of Cu2+, Zn2+, and Ni2+ ions from aqueous solution using date pits in the batch adsorption experiments. The results have shown that the Al-zahdi Iraqi date pits demonstrated more efficient at certain values of operating conditions of adsorbent doses of 0.12 g/ml of aqueous solution, adsorption time 72 h, pH solution 5.5 ±0.2, shaking speed 300 rpm, and smallest adsorbent particle size needed for removal of metals. At the same time the particle size of date pits has a little effect on the adsorption at low initial concentration of heavy metals. The adsorption of metals increases with increas
... Show MoreA new Ni(II) nanostructured chelating system (DHN) was introduced for selective optical heavy-metal ion sensing in an aqueous medium. The cooperative chelating system comprising 8-hydroxyquinoline (8-HQ) and dimethylglyoxime (DMG) has been developed for the first time in association with fibre optic sensing for selective optical heavy-metal ion sensing in an aqueous medium. The Ni(II) nanocompound fluoresces upon 578 nm excitation, showing a highly sensitive optical response with a linear calibration curve in the range 0–100 ng/mL. The regression equation of the calibration curve is y = 0.0035x + 0.9990, which indicates very good linearity, implying R2 = 0.999 with high sensitivity (calibration slope of 0.0035) and low baseline noise (bla
... Show MoreThe current paper investigates the effect of cut-out design parameters on load-bearing capacity and buckling behaviour of steel cylindrical shell using a nonlinear finite element analysis in modelling cylinder buckling under longitudinal compressive load. The effect of four geometry design parameters: shell diameter to thickness ratio, cut-out location, orientation, and size were investigated in this study. To enhance the prediction of buckling behaviour, both geometrical and material nonlinearities were considered. An ANSYS APDL code was written and tested by verifying its validity through comparison with former buckling study. The results showed that changing the cut-out location from mid-height of the cylindrical shell towards a
... Show MoreGas-lift technique plays an important role in sustaining oil production, especially from a mature field when the reservoirs’ natural energy becomes insufficient. However, optimally allocation of the gas injection rate in a large field through its gas-lift network system towards maximization of oil production rate is a challenging task. The conventional gas-lift optimization problems may become inefficient and incapable of modelling the gas-lift optimization in a large network system with problems associated with multi-objective, multi-constrained, and limited gas injection rate. The key objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of utilizing the Genetic Algorithm (GA) technique to optimize t
The cathodic deposition of zinc from simulated chloride wastewater was used to characterize the mass transport properties of a flow-by fixed bed electrochemical reactor composed of vertical stack of stainless steel nets, operated in batch-recycle mode. The electrochemical reactor employed potential value in such a way that the zinc reduction occurred under mass transport control. This potential was determined by hydrodynamic voltammetry using a borate/chloride solution as supporting electrolyte on stainless steel rotating disc electrode. The results indicate that mass transfer coefficient (Km) increases with increasing of flow rate (Q) where .The electrochemical reactor proved to be efficient in removing zinc and was abl
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