Structure type and disorder have become important questions in catalyst design, with the most active catalysts often noted to be “disordered” or “amorphous” in nature. To quantify the effects of disorder and structure type systematically, a test set of manganese(III,IV) oxides was developed and their reactivity as oxidants and catalysts tested against three substrates: methylene blue, hydrogen peroxide, and water. We find that disorder destabilizes the materialsthermodynamically, making them stronger chemical oxidantsbut not necessarily better catalysts. For the disproportionation of H2O2 and the oxidative decomposition of methylene blue, MnOx-mediated direct oxidation competes with catalytically mediated oxidation, making the most

Corrosion Resistance Enhancement for low carbon steel is very important to extend its life service, the coating process is one of the methods which can using to achieve this, and it's the most important in surface treatments to improve the properties of metals and alloys surfaces such as corrosion resistance. In this work, low carbon steel was nitrided and coated with nano zinc using gas phase coating technical, to enhance the resistance of corrosion. The process included adding two layers. The first, a nitride layer, was added by precipitating nitrogen (N) gas, and the second, a zinc (Zn) layer, was added by precipitating Zn. The process of precipitating was carried out at different periods (5, 10, and 15 minutes). Scan electron mi

Sol-gel method was use to prepare Ag-SiO2 nanoparticles. Crystal structure of the nanocomposite was investigated by means of X-ray diffraction patterns while the color intensity was evaluated by spectrophotometry. The morphology analysis using atomic force microscopy showed that the average grain sizes were in range (68.96-75.81 nm) for all samples. The characterization of Ag-SiO2 nanoparticles were investigated by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Ag-SiO2 NPs are highly stable and have significant effect on both Gram positive and negative bacteria. Antibacterial properties of the nanocomposite were tested with the use of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. The results have shown antibacteri

Ziegler and Nichols proposed the well-known Ziegler-Nichols method to tune the coefficients of PID controller. This tuning method is simple and gives fixed values for the coefficients which make PID controller have weak adaptabilities for the model parameters variation and changing in operating conditions. In order to achieve adaptive controller, the Neural Network (NN) self-tuning PID control is proposed in this paper which combines conventional PID controller and Neural Network learning capabilities. The proportional, integral and derivative (K_P, K_I, K_D) gains are self tuned on-line by the NN output which is obtained due to the error value on the desired output of the system under control. The conventio

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