Iraqi Journal of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

This work deals with the preparation of Sulfated Zirconia catalyst (SZ) for isomerization of n-hexane model and refinery light naphtha, as well as enhanced the role of promoters to get the target with the mild condition, stability, and to prevent the formation of coke precursors on strong acidic sites of the catalyst. The prepared Ni-WO3/Sulfated Zirconia catalyst was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer –Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analysis, Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), and atomic force microscopy (AFM) Analyzer. The results illustrate that the maximum conversion and selectivity for n-hexane isomerization with Ni-WSZ at the operating temperature of 150 °C was 80.1% and 96 % respectively. While the experimental with light naphtha, the results show that the maximum conversion and selectivity with Ni-WSZ at the operating temperature of 150 °C was 53% and 74% respectively.

In recent years, it has been evident that searching for alternative methods with low-price and eco-friendly features that produce high-quality adsorbents is in high demand. In the present work, rice husk from Iraqi rice named (Amber) had been used as the primary source to produce rice husk ash (RHA) for the removal of the antibiotic metronidazole (Flagyl) from water. After good drying of rice husk, RHA was obtained at 600 °C using an electric oven. RHA has been investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), porosity, and surface area. The adsorption data of the experimental work were optimized to assess Langmuir and Freundlich's constants. The thermodynamic parameters is likely a change in (Gipp’s energy (ΔG°), enthalpy (ΔH°), and entropy (ΔS°)). The impacts of increasing temperature on adsorption capacity were investigated using variant temperatures (25, 30, 45,65), and the results revealed that the dynamic adsorption data could be represented by the pseudo-second-order kinetics model. The observed values for the heat of adsorption as well as the free energy were revealed that the adsorption process of Flagyl on RHA favors high temperatures.