Experimental investigations had been done in this study to demonstrate the effect of natural particles used as a reinforcement material to unsaturated polyester resin. The tensile test and water absorption were investigated according to (ASTM D638) and (ASTM D570), respectively. The influence of sunflower husk and pomegranate husk particles, used as a reinforcement material, on the tensile strength, Young's modulus and water absorption with different weight fraction (3%, 7% and 10%) and particle grain size (50µm, 100 µm and 150 µm), has been investigated. The water absorption of polymer composites was studied by measuring the specimen weight before and after immersion in water for one hundred days. In the experiments of tensile test,

The paper discusses the structural and optical properties of In2O3 and In2O3-SnO2 gas sensor thin films were deposited on glass and silicon substrates and grown by irradiation of assistant microwave on seeded layer nucleated using spin coating technique. The X-ray diffraction revealed a polycrystalline nature of the cubic structure. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) used for morphology analysis that shown the grain size of the prepared thin film is less than 100 nm, surface roughness and root mean square for In2O3 where increased after loading SnO2, this addition is a challenge in gas sensing application. Sensitivity of In2O3 thin film against NO2 toxic gas is 35% at 300oC. Sensing properties were improved after adding Tin Oxide (SnO2) to be mo

The pure ZnS and ZnS-Gr nanocomposite have been prepared
successfully by a novel method using chemical co-precipitation. Also
conductive polymer PPy nanotubes and ZnS-PPy nanocomposite
have been synthesized successfully by chemical route. The effect of
graphene on the characterization of ZnS has been investigated. X-ray
diffraction (XRD) study confirmed the formation of cubic and
hexagonal structure of ZnS-Gr. Dc-conductivity proves that ZnS and
ZnS-Gr have semiconductor behavior. The SEM proved that
formation of PPy nanotubes and the Gr nanosheet. The sensing
properties of ZnS-PPy/ZnS-Gr for NO2 gas was investigated as a
function of operating temperature and time under optimal condition.
The sensitivity,

In this paper, thermal performance of a zig-zig solar air heater (ZZSAH) with and without using steel wire mesh on the absorber plate of the collector is experimentally investigated. The experimental work includes four inclination angles of the collector 20^o, 30^o, 45^o, and 60^o and four air mass flow rates of 0.03, 0.04, 0.06, and 0.08 kg/s under varieties of operating conditions of a geographic location of  Baghdad. New correlation equations of Nusselt number are obtained from experimental results for both types of collectors where the effect of varying of the inclination angle of collector taken into consideration in the experiment. The correlations show good agreement wi

In this study, a one-dimensional model represented by Butler-Volmer-Monod (BVM) model was proposed to compute the anode overpotential and current density in a mediator-less MFC system. The system was fueled with various organic loadings of real field petroleum refinery oily sludge to optimize the favorable organic loading for biomass to operate the suggested system. The increase in each organic loading showed higher resistance to electrons transport to the anode represented by ohmic loss. On the contrary, both activation and mass transfer losses exhibited a noticeable decrement upon the increased organic loadings. However, current density was improved throughout all increased loads achieving a maximum current density of 5.2 A/m³

It is well known that petroleum refineries are considered the largest generator of oily sludge which may cause serious threats to the environment if disposed of without treatment. Throughout the present research, it can be said that a hybrid process including ultrasonic treatment coupled with froth floatation has been shown as a green efficient treatment of oily sludge waste from the bottom of crude oil tanks in Al-Daura refinery and able to get high yield of base oil recovery which is 65% at the optimum operating conditions (treatment time = 30 min, ultrasonic wave amplitude = 60 micron, and (solvent: oily sludge) ratio = 4). Experimental results showed that 83% of the solvent used was recovered meanwhile the main water

The current study deals with the performance of constructed wetland (CW) incorporating a microbial fuel cell (MFC) for wastewater treatment and electricity generation. The whole unit is referred to as CW-MFC. This technique involves two treatments; the first is an aerobic treatment which occurs in the upper layer of the system (cathode section) and the second is anaerobic biological treatment in the lower layer of the system (anode section). Two types of electrode material were tested; stainless steel and graphite. Three configurations for electrodes arrangement CW-MFC were used. In the first unit of CW-MFC, the anode was graphite plate (GPa) and cathode was also graphite plate (GPc), in the second CW-MFC unit, the anode was stainless st

Sub-threshold operation has received a lot of attention in limited performance applications.However, energy optimization of sub-threshold circuits should be performed with the concern of the performance limitation of such circuit. In this paper, a dual size design is proposed for energy minimization of sub-threshold CMOS circuits. The optimal downsizing factor is determined and assigned for some gates on the off-critical paths to minimize the energy at the maximum allowable performance. This assignment is performed using the proposed slack based genetic algorithm which is a heuristic-mixed evolutionary algorithm. Some gates are heuristically assigned to the original and the downsized design based on their slack time determined by static tim

In this work, a vertical pulsating heat pipe heat exchanger (PHPHE)  was designed for waste heat recovery, exchanging thermal energy between two air streams in a counterflow configuration. The heat exchanger consists of six rows, each row consists of one pulsating heat pipe (PHP), and each PHP has six turns. The working fluid used in the heat pipe was acetone with fill ratios of 50%, 60%, and 70%. The effect of evaporator inlet temperature at 40, 45, and 50°C and air velocity at 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 m/s on the pulsating heat pipes consisting of three sections- evaporator, condenser, and adiabatic, whose dimensions were 25 x 25 x 10 cm, was studied. At the same time, the condenser temperature was maintained at 26°C. The system’s th

Iodine-doped polythiophene thin films are prepared by aerosol assisted plasma jet polymerization at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The doping of iodine was carried out in situ by employing iodine crystals in thiophene monomer by weight mixing ratios of 1%, 3%, 5% and 7%. The chemical composition analyses of pure and iodine-doped and heat-treated polythiophene thin films are carried out by FTIR spectroscopy studies. The optical band gaps of the films are evaluated from absorption spectrum studies. Direct transition energy gaps are determined from Tauc plots. The structural changes of polythiophene upon doping and the reduction of optical band gap are explained on the basis of the results obtained from FTIR spectroscopy, UV–V