Iraqi Journal of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

This work was conducted to study the extraction of pelletierine sulphate from Punica
granatum L. roots by liquid membrane techniques. Pelletierine sulphate is used
widely in medicine. The general behavior of extraction process indicates that
pelletierine conversion increased with increasing the number of stages and the discs
rotation speed but high rotation speed was not favored because of the increased risk of
droplet formation during the operation. The pH of feed and acceptor solution was also
important. The results exhibit that the highest pelletierine conversion was obtained
when using two stages, (10 rpm) discs speed of stainless steel discs, (pH=9.5) of feed
solution and (pH=2) of acceptor solution in n-decane. Assuming the existence of two
thin reaction layers in the feed and stripping solutions, mathematical model was
developed to describe the pelletierine transport. On the basic of the experimental data
obtained under various conditions and the model proposed, it was found that the
solute transfer into the liquid membrane is mainly diffusion-controlled.

Animal fats are a good, promising and ethical alternative source for biodiesel
production, but they need more complex treatments than vegetable oils. Iraqi butchery
plants waste fats (sheep fat) which are suggested as feedstock to produce biodiesel.
This type of fat contains a large quantity of free fatty acids (FFAs) (acid number
49.13 mg KOH/g of fat). The direct transesterification of such fats produce high
amount of soap instead of desired biodiesel, so a pre-treatment step (to reduce FFAs)
is necessary before transesterification. This step was done by esterification of the free
fatty acids in the fat by adding ethanol and using 1% acid catalyst (H2SO4) for 30
minutes. The results showed that the acid number of sheep fat after pre-treatment step
reduced to 0.97 mg KOH/g of fat at esterification step. Transesterification of treated
fats (produce from esterification) used to convert biodiesel. The maximum yield of
biodiesel was about 85 vol. % for treated fats obtained with 25/100 ethanol/fat wt.
ratio, 70° C reaction temperature and 50 minutes total treatment period (pre-treatment
step and transesterification reaction). The suggested model of the production rate
kinetic of transesterification reaction, found that the production rate is inversely
proportional with the volume of biodiesel produced with activation energy of 25320
J/mole.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is the most common process for dealing with primary and
secondary wastewater sludge. In the present work, four pre-treatment methods
(ultrasonic, chemical, thermal, and thermo-chemical) are investigated in Al-Rustumya
Wastewater Treatment plant in order to find their effect on biogas production and
volatile solid removal efficiency during anaerobic digestion.
Two frequencies of ultrasonic wave were used 30 KHz and 50 KHz during the pretreatment. Sodium hydroxide was added in different amounts to give three pH values
of 9, 10 and 11 in chemical pre-treating processes. The sludge was heated at 60oC and
80oC through thermal pre-treatment experiment. Also, the sludge was treated thermochemically at 80 oC and pH 11 prior to anaerobic digestion. Maximum biogas
production (6009 ml) was obtained at ultrasonic pre-treatment method with 30 kHz.
The volumetric ratio of produced biogas to the initial volume of sludge is about 4:1.

The problem of steady, laminar, natural convective flow in an square enclosure with
and without partitions is considered for Rayleigh number (103
-106
) and Prandtl
number (0.7). Vertical walls were maintained isothermal at different temperatures
while horizontal walls and the partitions were insulated. The length of partition was
taken constant. The number of partitions were placed on horizontal surface in
staggered arrangement from (1– 3) and ratio of partition thickness (H/L= 0.033,
0.083, 0.124). The problem is formulated in terms of the vorticity-stream function
procedure. A numerical solution based on a program in Fortran 90 with the finite
difference method is obtained. Representative results illustrating the effects of the
thickness and number of partitions on the contour maps of the streamlines and
temperature are reported and discussed. In addition, the local Nusselt number is
evaluated. Results show that the values of stream function (the strength of flow) in
enclosure increases with the increasing Rayleigh number. As the number of partitions
and thickness of partition increases, the strength of flow decreases. Mean Nusselt
number increases with increasing Rayleigh number at different number of partitions.
The numerical results are compared with available numerical results and experimental
data and a good agreement is obtained.