The increasing demand for energy has encouraged the development of renewable resources and environmentally benign fuel such as biodiesel. In this study, ethyl fatty esters (EFEs), a major component of biodiesel fuel, were synthesized from soybean oil using sodium ethoxide as a catalyst. By-products were glycerol and difatty acyl urea (DFAU), which has biological characteristics, as antibiotics and antifungal medications. Both EFEs and DFAU have been characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technique. The optimum conditions were studied as a function of reaction time, reactant molar ratios, catalyst percentage and the effect of organic solvents. The conversion ratio of soybea

In this work, enhancement to the fluorescence characteristics of laser dye solutions hosting highly-pure titanium dioxide nanoparticles as random gain media. This was achieved by coating two opposite sides of the cells containing these media with nanostructured thin films of highly-pure titanium dioxide. Two laser dyes; Rhodamine B and Coumarin 102, were used to prepare solutions in hexanol and methanol, respectively, as hosts for the nanoparticles. The nanoparticles and thin films were prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The enhancement was observed by the narrowing of fluorescence linewidth as well as by increasing the fluorescence intensity. These parameters were compared to those of the dye only and the dye solution

In this study, the preparation and characterization of hyacinth plant /chitosan composite, as a heavy metal removal, were done. Water hyacinth plant (Eichhorniacrasspes) was collected from Tigris river in Baghdad. The root and shoot parts of plant were ground to powder. Composite materials were prepared at different ratios of plant part (from 2.9% to 30.3%, wt /wt) which corresponds to (30-500mg) of hyacinth plant (root and shoot) and chitosan. The results showed that all examined ratios of plant parts have an excellent absorption to copper (Cu (II)). Moreover, it was observed that 2.9% corresponds (30mg) of plant root revealed highest removal (82.7%) of Pb (II), while 20.23% of shoot removed 61% of Cd (II) within 24 hr

In this work, PAni nanofibers (NFs) are successfully synthesized via hydrothermal method. The structural, surface morphological, optical, electrical and H2S gas sensing properties have been investigated for PAni thin films deposited by spin coating technique. The XRD pattern reveals crystalline nature of PAni NFs with crystallite size of 9.2 nm. The SEM image of Polyaniline clearly indicates that the polymer possesses nanofiber like structure. The optical properties show that the optical energy gap follows allowed direct electronic transition calculated using Tauc’s equation. Intense hotoluminescence (PL) peaks at 309, 340 and 605 nm are observed. The electrical properties such as D.C. conductivity and Hall effect have been studied wher