Egyptian Jatropha oil extraction for biodiesel production

Biodiesel is the most desirable biofuel economically andtechnically and it can be made from any vegetable oil. InEGYPT jatropha oil seems to be the best source for biodiesel production because jatropha tree is easily growing and easily propagated.Also jatropha tree thrives in marginal and desert areas that are unable to support crops and it can be irrigated with primary treated municipal wastewater.The main purpose of this investigation is to compare andoptimize the oil yield extracted from jatropha seeds on both bench and pilot scale.Different solvents under different extraction conditions were studied to determine optimum solvent type, solid: liquid ratio and extraction time which gave maximum oil yield.Oil extracted specifications, losses in seeds dehulling &washing, losses in solvent used and extracted meal analysis& uses were also concluded

STLF-Net:Two-stream deep network for short-term load forecasting in residential buildings

Developing an appropriate model for accurate prediction of energy consumption is very essential for developing an effective energy management system for residential buildings. In view of this, the Short-term Load Forecasting (STLF) of household appliances has been performing an important role in supervising and managing energy in the residential community. In the domain of big data analytics, data-driven load forecasting approaches have realized an amazing performance in the recognition of patterns of residential electric loads and forecasting energy consumption. Nevertheless, current research emphasizes the use of powerful feature-engineering methods, which are ineffective and result in low generalization performance. Further, considering the differences in the consumption behavior of various home appliances, it is unfeasible to discover energy consumption characteristics physically in the power system. Thus, this study addresses the problems of STLF using a novel two-stream deep learning (DL) model called STLF-Net. The first stream is designed with Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs) to learn and capture the long-term temporal representations of the energy utilization data. Simultaneously, in the second stream, the short-term information and positional representations are modeled using a stack of temporal convolutional (TC) modules. The TC module is designated using dilated causal convolutions and residual connection to enable efficient feature extraction while alleviating the gradient vanishing issues. The learned representations from the two streams are fused and subsequently passed to several dense layers to generate the final hour-ahead load forecasts. Experimental assessments on two public energy consumption predictions datasets (IHEPC and AEP) demonstrated the superior performance of the STLF-Net over the recent cutting-edge data-driven approaches

Laboratory Investigation of Grouted Coupler Connection Details for ABC Bridge Projects

With an ever increasing desire to utilize accelerated bridge construction (ABC) techniques, it is becoming critical that bridge designers and contractors have confidence in typical details. The Keg Creek Bridge on US 6 in Iowa was a recent ABC example that utilized connection details that had been utilized elsewhere. The connection details used between the drilled shaft and pier column and between the pier column and the pier cap were details needing evaluation. These connection details utilized grouted couplers that have been tested by others with mixed results—some indicating quality performance and others indicating questionable performance. There was a need to test these couplers to gain an understanding of their performance in likely Iowa details and to understand how their performance might be impacted by different construction processes. The objective of the work was to perform laboratory testing and evaluation of the grouted coupler connection details utilized on precast concrete elements for the Keg Creek Bridge. The Bridge Engineering Center (BEC), with the assistance of the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Bridges and Structures, developed specimens representative of the Keg Creek Bridge connections for testing under static and fatigue loads in the structures laboratory. The specimens were also evaluated for their ability to resist the intrusion of water and chlorides. Evaluation of their performance was made through comparisons with design assumptions and previous research, as well as the physical performance of the coupled connections

Effect of Extractive Solvents on Bio – Oil Production From Microalgae via Hydrothermal Liquefaction

Bio–oil from spirulina sp. is complicated mixture with valued chemicals. The hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) converts directly the spirulina microalgae into liquid oil at reaction temperature 300°C with heating rate 10°C /min,100 bars pressure and 30 min. reaction time eight different organic solvents with different polarities were applied to extract the bio – oil from these chemicals. The order of bio–oil extraction yield of the eight solvents from high to low were as follow tetrahydrofuran (THF) ˃ dichloromethane (DCM) ˃ acetone (ACE) ˃ chloroform (CHL) ˃ methanol (MeOH)˃ ethyl-acetate (EAC) ˃ hexane (HEX) ˃toluene (TOL).The results obtained from single stage extraction process showed that maximum percentage oil yield was (26.55%). with rather high heating value (HHV ≈ 30 MJ/kg). The combination of THF, EAC and n-hexane was selected to extract and separate the bio – oil into three fraction heavy oil (48.9%) mid weight oil (37.8%) and light oil (62.2%). These three oils were characterized using gas chromatography mass spectrum (GC – mass). Keywords:- Bio–oil , extractives, hydrothermal , liquefaction, micro- algae.

Divergence across mitochondrial genomes of sympatric members of the Schistosoma indicum group and clues into the evolution of Schistosoma spindale

Schistosoma spindale and Schistosoma indicum are ruminant-infecting trematodes of the Schistosoma indicum group that are widespread across Southeast Asia. Though neglected, these parasites can cause major pathology and mortality to livestock leading to significant welfare and socio-economic issues, predominantly amongst poor subsistence farmers and their families. Here we used mitogenomic analysis to determine the relationships between these two sympatric species of schistosome and to characterise S. spindale diversity in order to identify possible cryptic speciation. The mitochondrial genomes of S. spindale and S. indicum were assembled and genetic analyses revealed high levels of diversity within the S. indicum group. Evidence of functional changes in mitochondrial genes indicated adaptation to environmental change associated with speciation events in S. spindale around 2.5 million years ago. We discuss our results in terms of their theoretical and applied implications

Degradation of 2, 4, 6-trinitotoluene in aqueous solution by ozonation and multi-stage ozonation biological treatment

The objective of this study was to explore the extent of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene synthetic solution and red water mineralization by comparing conventional direct ozonation and multi-stage ozonation-biological treatment process. The alkaline hydrolysis was used for remediation 2, 4, 6-trinitrotoluene and red water at pH = 10.9. Nevertheless, the hydroxyl radicals would be generated by ozone decomposition with ozone dose of 0.177 g/L. The samples were subjected to chemical oxygen demand and total organic carbon analysis to monitor pollutants removal. The rate of 2, 4, 6-trinitrotoluene and red water pollutants degradation were quantified using high performance liquid chromatography. 2, 4, 6-trinitrotoluene synthetic solution resulted 55.5 % chemical oxygen demand removal by 3 h direct ozonation. Following direct ozonation the biological treatment twenty four hours chemical oxygen demand reached 98.9 % and 98.7 % removal using humic acid and river water 1 % ( v/v) inoculation singly and respectively. Conventional direct ozonation showed non significant change in total organic carbon degradation. While on using multi-stage ozone-biological treatment process where humic acid and/or river water were used as inoculums singly and respectively, total organic carbon fulfilled 73 % and 98.3 % removal. The process was one hour direct ozonation and followed by three days multistage ozone-biological treatment. In multi-stage ozone-biological treatment process, ozonation was effective to decompose total organic carbon and to produce biodegradable dissolved organic carbon easily removed by ozone oxidation up to 98.3 % in 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene synthetic solution. Pollutants removal achieved 99 % in authentic red water effluent using river inoculation 1 % (v/v) in 5 days. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Fourier Transformation Infra Red methods were performed to confirm types of pollutants content in red water

Protection of biodiesel and oil from degradation by natural antioxidants of Egyptian Jatropha

Residue of methanolic extract of Egyptian Jatropha curcas contains bioactive substances such as phenolic compounds, which succeeded to be used as natural antioxidants for the protection of oils and their corresponding biodiesel against oxidative deterioration. In the present work, the residue of Jatropha roots were extracted with methanol and resulting residues, were investigated regarding their content of total phenolic compounds by folin-Cioalteau assay. Further, the antioxidant activities of the extracts were characterized by the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical method and proved remarkable results. Oxidation stability of Jatropha oil, used fried oil and olive oil and their corresponding biodiesel obtained by conventional transesterification were tested using thermal oxidation. Natural antioxidants such as (á-trocopherol), synthetic antioxidants as butylated hydroxytoluene and natural Jatropha root extract were used in the present study in comparison to investigate their addition effect on the oxidative stability of oils and their corresponding biodiesel. In the rapied thermal treatment test, results showed that addition of butylated hydroxytoluene 0.25 % was able to stabilize Jatropha oil 6 h, but poorly stabiliz biodiesel. Addition of 0.25 % á-trocopherol to Jatropha oil showed less oxidation stability after 2 h thermal treatment. Crude root extract addition at 0.25% to Jatropha oil showed good stability up to 4 h thermal treatment while addition of root extract at 0.25 % to biodiesel showed better stability up to 6 h thermal treatment. Besides addition of 220 ppm crude root extract to biodiesel was enough sufficient to occure oxidative stabilization. Also Jatropha root residue addition at 400 ppm was effective antioxidant for fresh Jatropha oil