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.
AThe Bridge Maintenance Management System (BMMS) is an application system that uses existing data from a Bridge Management System database for monitoring and analysis of current bridges performance, as well as for estimating the current and future maintenance and rehabilitation needs of the bridges. In a transportation context, the maintenance management is described as a cost-effective process to operate, construct, and maintain physical money. This needs analytical tools to support the allocation of resources, materials, equipment, including personnel, and supplies. Therefore, Geographic Information System (GIS) can be considered as one tool to develop the road and bridge maintenanc
The current study showed that the plants were collected from 23 geographical locations in Brenaj, Wasit, Iraq. The region was characterized by a great diversity of wild plants spread densely in this region. The results were as follows: 32 families, 149 species. Asteraceae was the most widespread with 29 species from the group of dicotyledons, followed by the Fabaceae family (19) species, but there are 13 plant families, with one plant species recorded for each plant family. in Brenaj, Wasit included: Aizoaceae, Capparaceae, Convolvulaceae, Frankeniaceae, Molluginaceae, Papaveraceae, Phyllanthaceae, Primulaceae, Rutaceae, Rubiaceae, Verbenaceae, Zygophyllaceae, Urticaceae, while the plant family Poaceae was most widespread in genera and spec
... Show MoreThe purpose of the study is the city of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, was chosen to study the spectral reflection of the land cover and to determine the changes taking place in the areas of the main features of the city using the temporal resolution of multispectral bands of the satellite Landsat 5 and 8 for MSS and OLI sensors respectively belonging to NASA and for the period 1999-2021, and calculating the increase and decrease in the basic features of Baghdad. The main conclusions of the study were, This study from 1999 to 2021 and in two different seasons: the Spring of the growing season and Summer the dry season. When using the supervised classification method to determine the differences, the results showed remarkable changes. Where h
... Show MoreThe present work presents design and implementation of an automated two-axis solar tracking system using local materials with minimum cost, light weight and reliable structure. The tracking system consists of two parts, mechanical units (fixed and moving parts) and control units (four LDR sensors and Arduino UNO microcontroller to control two DC servomotors). The tracking system was fitted and assembled together with a parabolic trough solar concentrator (PTSC) system to move it according to information come from the sensors so as to keep the PTSC always perpendicular to sun rays. The experimental tests have been done on the PTSC system to investigate its thermal performance in two cases, with tracking system (case 1) and without trackin
... Show MoreThis paper aims to study the second-order geometric nonlinearity effects of P-Delta on the dynamic response of tall reinforced concrete buildings due to a wide range of earthquake ground motion forces, including minor earthquake up to moderate and strong earthquakes. The frequency domain dynamic analysis procedure was used for response assessment. Reinforced concrete building models with different heights up to 50 stories were analyzed. The finite element software ETABS (version 16.0.3) was used to analyze reinforced concrete building models.
The study reveals that the percentage increase in buildings' sway and drift due to P-Delta effects are nearly constant for specific building height irrespective of the seism
... Show MoreA study has been done to find the optimum separators pressures of separation stations. Stage separation of oil and gas is accomplished with a series of separators operating at sequentially reduced pressures. Liquid discharged from a higher pressure separator into the lower pressure separator. The set of working separators pressures which yield maximum recovery of liquid hydrocarbon from the well fluid is the optimum set of pressures which is the target of this work.
Computer model is used to find the optimum separators pressures. The model employs the Peng-Robinson equation of state for volatile oil. Application of this model shows good improvement of al
The concept of sustainability is one of the modern concepts that influenced the quality of the urban plans for the cities, through the interest in the environmental and social aspects as well as the economic aspect and the need to balance to achieve sustainable development.
The research aims to identify the most prominent methods of sustainable urban land use planning and the strategies developed within these approaches to achieve sustainable development. The research started from the problem of a knowledge gap in adopting sustainable approaches and strategies when planning urban land uses for the holy city of Karbala.
In the theoretical aspect, the concepts of sustainable development, sustainable planning methodologies a
... Show MoreImage classification is the process of finding common features in images from various classes and applying them to categorize and label them. The main problem of the image classification process is the abundance of images, the high complexity of the data, and the shortage of labeled data, presenting the key obstacles in image classification. The cornerstone of image classification is evaluating the convolutional features retrieved from deep learning models and training them with machine learning classifiers. This study proposes a new approach of “hybrid learning” by combining deep learning with machine learning for image classification based on convolutional feature extraction using the VGG-16 deep learning model and seven class
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