A novel encapsulated deep eutectic solvent (DES) was introduced for biodiesel production via a two-step process. The DES was encapsulated in medical capsules and were used to reduce the free fatty acid (FFA) content of acidic crude palm oil (ACPO) to the minimum acceptable level (< 1%). The DES was synthesized from methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide (MTPB) and p-toluenesulfonic acid (PTSA). The effects pertaining to different operating conditions such as capsule dosage, reaction time, molar ratio, and reaction temperature were optimized. The FFA content of ACPO was reduced from existing 9.61% to less than 1% under optimum operating conditions. This indicated that encapsulated MTPB-DES performed high catalytic activity in FFA esterification reaction and showed considerable activity even after four consecutive recycling runs. The produced biodiesel after acid esterification and alkaline transesterification met the EN14214 international biodiesel standard specifications. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to introduce an acidic catalyst in capsule form. This method presents a new route for the safe storage of new materials to be used for biofuel production. Conductor-like screening model for real solvents (COSMO-RS) representation of the DES using σ-profile and σ-potential graphs indicated that MTPB and PTSA is a compatible combination due to the balanced presence and affinity towards hydrogen bond donor and hydrogen bond acceptor in each constituent.
Many authors investigated the problem of the early visibility of the new crescent moon after the conjunction and proposed many criteria addressing this issue in the literature. This article presented a proposed criterion for early crescent moon sighting based on a deep-learned pattern recognizer artificial neural network (ANN) performance. Moon sight datasets were collected from various sources and used to learn the ANN. The new criterion relied on the crescent width and the arc of vision from the edge of the crescent bright limb. The result of that criterion was a control value indicating the moon's visibility condition, which separated the datasets into four regions: invisible, telescope only, probably visible, and certai
... Show MoreText categorization refers to the process of grouping text or documents into classes or categories according to their content. Text categorization process consists of three phases which are: preprocessing, feature extraction and classification. In comparison to the English language, just few studies have been done to categorize and classify the Arabic language. For a variety of applications, such as text classification and clustering, Arabic text representation is a difficult task because Arabic language is noted for its richness, diversity, and complicated morphology. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis and a comparison for researchers in the last five years based on the dataset, year, algorithms and the accuracy th
... Show MoreWith increased climate change pressures likely to influence harmful algal blooms, exposure to microcystin, a known hepatotoxin and a byproduct of cyanobacterial blooms can be a risk factor for NAFLD associated comorbidities. Using both
In this study some generic commercial products of Atorvastatin tablets were evaluated by dissolution test in acid medium by comparing with that of parent drug Lipitor of Pfizer Company. Some of solubilizing agents were studied in formulation of Atorvastatin tablet including; surface active agent and PEG 6000 .The most effective factor was the use of PEG6000 in formulation of Atorvastatin tablet which improved the dissolution and the results of dissolution profile of formulated tablet in this work was bioequivalent to that of Lipitor .The quantitative analysis of this work was performed by using reversed phase liquid chromatography and a proper mixture of  
... Show MoreErratum for Organic acid concentration thresholds for ageing of carbonate minerals: Implications for CO2 trapping/storage.
Modified asphalt is considered one of the alternatives to address the problems of deficiencies in traditional asphalt concrete, as modified asphalt addresses many of the issues that appear on the pavement layers in asphalt concrete, resulting from heavy traffic and vehicles loaded with loads that exceed the design loads and the large fluctuations in the daily and seasonal temperatures of asphalt concrete. The current study examined the role of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) as a modified material for virgin asphalt when it was added in different proportions (1%, 2%, 3%, 4%) of the asphalt weight. The experimental program includes the volumetric characteristics associated with the Marshall test, the physical properties, and th
... Show MoreAmino and fatty acids in the liver tissue of Uromastyx aegyptius microlepis during the periods of hibernation (December) and activity (May) were estimate by a high performance liquid chromatography, liver of a lizard during the activity and hibernation seasons, contained 18 amino acids, which include, 10 essential amino acids and 8 non-essential amino acids, and the liver in the male lizard contained five fatty acids during each season, the concentration rates of all the amino acids during the activity season were higher than their counterparts during the hibernation season, the total concentrations of essential and non-essential amino acids during the activity season were 19434.8 µg/ml, which was greater than the total concentrations leve
... Show MoreThe study discussed here deals with the isolation of Aspergillus niger from palm dates, the formal and the most famous fruit in Iraq, to test and qualify this fungus isolate for its ability to produce citric acid. Submerged fermentation technique was used in the fermentation process. A.niger isolated from “Zahdi” Palme dates was used in the study of the fermentation kinetics to get the production efficiency of citric acid. Kinetics of CA production via fermentation by A. niger S11 was evaluated within 432 h fermentation time and under submerged conditions of 11% (w/v) sucrose, 5% (v/v) inoculum size, pH 4, 30 °C and 150 rpm. The maximum citric acid produced was (37.116 g/l). Kine
An experimental and numerical study has been carried out to investigate the heat transfer by natural convection in a three dimensional annulus enclosure filled with porous media (silica sand) between two inclined concentric cylinders with (and without) annular fins attached to the inner cylinder under steady state condition; The experiments were carried out for a range of modified Rayleigh number (0.2 ≤Ra*≤ 11) and extended to Ra* =500 for numerical study, annulus inclination angle of (δ = 0˚, 30˚, 60˚ and 90˚). The numerical study was to write the governing equation under an assumptions used Darcy law and Boussinesq’s approximation and then solved numerically using finite difference approximation. It was found that the averag
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