Background: Plasma-activated water (PAW) is considered one of the emerging strategies that has been highlighted recently in the food industry for microbial decontamination and mycotoxin detoxification, due to its unique provisional characteristics. Aim: The effectiveness of PAW for aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), ochratoxin A (OTA), and fumonisin B1 (FB1) detoxification in naturally contaminated poultry feeds with its impacts on the feed quality were inspected. Methods: PAW-30 and PAW-60 were utilized for feed treatment for six time durations (5, 10, 15, 20, 40 and 60 min) each. The alterations in the physicochemical properties of PAW after different time durations of plasma inducement and treatment with and without feed samples were monitored. Competitive Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was employed for estimation of mycotoxin levels and High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) was utilized for results confirmation. Feed composition analyses with peroxide values (PVs) estimation were implemented according to standard analytical methods. Results: The physicochemical properties of PAW showed a significant decrease (P<0.05) in pH value from 6.72 to 2.68 and a significant increase (P<0.05) in oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), electrical conductivity (EC) and temperature from 235 mV, 5.1 μS/cm and 20.5 °C to 499.2 mV, 727.6 μS/cm and 26.8 °C, respectively after 60 min of plasma inducement in a time-dependent manner. The mycotoxins decay kinetics after PAW application were illustrated. Mycotoxins degradation efficiency significantly increased (P<0.05) with increasing water activation time. A significant increase (P<0.05) in AFB1, OTA and FB1 degradation levels was reported mainly during the first 10 min of treatment for AFB1 and the first 15 min for OTA and FB1 to record values of 28.33, 32.14 and 34.62% and 33.80, 40.70 and 43.38% after 60 min of feed exposure to PAW-30 and PAW-60, respectively. Significant differences (P<0.05) between examined mycotoxins in their degradation levels were recorded, where FB1 exhibited the highest degradation levels. Generally, feed compositions were slightly affected by PAW and fats were still having good quality. Conclusion: The possibility of PAW for degrading more than a quarter to a third of the original quantity of targeted mycotoxins in poultry feeds after 10 min of treatment with a slight effect on feed quality.
Contamination of surface and groundwater with excessive concentrations of fluoride is of significant health hazard. Adsorption of fluoride onto waste materials of no economic value could be a potential approach for the treatment of fluoride-bearing water. This experimental and modeling study was devoted to investigate for the first the fluoride removal using unmodified waste granular brick (WGB) in a fixed bed running in continuous mode. Characterization of WGB was carried out by FT-IR, SEM, and EDX analysis. The batch mode experiments showed that they were affected by several parameters including contact time, initial pH, and sorbent dosage. The best values of these parameters that provided maximum removal percent (82%) with the in
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The removal of SO2 from simulated gas stream (SO2 + air) in a fixed bed reactor using Modified Activated Carbon (MAC) catalysts was investigated. All the experiments were conducted at atmospheric pressure, initial SO2 concentration of 2500 ppm and bed temperature of 90oC. MAC was prepared by loading a series of nickel and copper oxides 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10 w
... Show MoreThis study investigated the application of the crystallization process for oilfield produced water from the East Baghdad oilfield affiliated to the Midland Oil Company (Iraq). Zero liquid discharge system (ZLD) consists of several parts such as oil skimming, coagulation/flocculation, forward osmosis, and crystallization, the crystallization process is a final part of a zero liquid discharge system. The laboratory-scale simple evaporation system was used to evaluate the performance of the crystallization process. In this work, sodium chloride solution and East Baghdad oilfield produced water were used as a feed solution with a concentration of 177 and 220 g/l. The impact of temperature (70, 80, and 90 °C), mixing speed (300, 400, and 500 rp
... Show MoreThis study investigated the application of the crystallization process for oilfield produced water from the East Baghdad oilfield affiliated to the Midland Oil Company (Iraq). Zero liquid discharge system (ZLD) consists of several parts such as oil skimming, coagulation/flocculation, forward osmosis, and crystallization, the crystallization process is a final part of a zero liquid discharge system. The laboratory-scale simple evaporation system was used to evaluate the performance of the crystallization process. In this work, sodium chloride solution and East Baghdad oilfield produced water were used as a feed solution with a concentration of 177 and 220 g/l. The impact of temperature (70, 80, and 90 °C), mixing speed (300, 400, and 500
... Show MoreMarkov chains are an application of stochastic models in operation research, helping the analysis and optimization of processes with random events and transitions. The method that will be deployed to obtain the transient solution to a Markov chain problem is an important part of this process. The present paper introduces a novel Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) approach to solve the Markov chain problem. The probability distribution of a continuous-time Markov chain with an infinitesimal generator at a given time is considered, which is a resulting solution of the Chapman-Kolmogorov differential equation. This study presents a one-step second-derivative method with better accuracy in solving the first-order Initial Value Problem
... Show MoreA metal-assisted chemical etching process employing p-type silicon wafers with varied etching durations is used to produce silicon nanowires. Silver nanoparticles prepared by chemical deposition are utilized as a catalyst in the formation of silicon nanowires. Images from field emission scanning electron microscopy confirmed that the diameter of SiNWs grows when the etching duration is increased. The photoelectrochemical cell's characteristics were investigated using p-type silicon nanowires as working electrodes. Linear sweep voltammetry (J-V) measurements on p-SiNWs confirmed that photocurrent density rose from 0.20 mA cm-2 to 0.92 mA cm-2 as the etching duration of prepared SiNWs increased from 15 to 30 min. The
... Show MoreThis research presents a new algorithm for classification the
shadow and water bodies for high-resolution satellite images (4-
meter) of Baghdad city, have been modulated the equations of the
color space components C1-C2-C3. Have been using the color space
component C3 (blue) for discriminating the shadow, and has been
used C1 (red) to detect the water bodies (river). The new technique
was successfully tested on many images of the Google earth and
Ikonos. Experimental results show that this algorithm effective to
detect all the types of the shadows with color, and also detects the
water bodies in another color. The benefit of this new technique to
discriminate between the shadows and water in fast Matlab pro
Based on the diazotization-coupling reaction, a new, simple, and sensitive spectrophotometric method for determining of a trace amount of (BPF) is presented in this paper. Diazotized metoclopramide reagent react with bisphenol F produces an orange azo-compound with a maximum absorbance at 461 nm in alkaline solution. The experimental parameters were optimized such as type of alkaline medium, concentration of NaOH, diazotized metoclopramide amount, order additions, reaction time, temperature, and effect of organic solvents to achieve the optimal performance for the proposed method. The absorbance increased linearly with increasing bisphenol F concentration in the range of 0.5-10 μg mL-1 under ideal conditions, with a correlati
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