Iraqi Journal of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

This work aims to study extraction of essential oil (EO) from peppermint leaves using hydro-distillation methods. The peppermint oil extraction with hydro-distillation method studied the effect of the extraction temperature on the yield of peppermint oil. Besides, it also studied the kinetics during the extraction process. The second-order mechanism was adopted in the model of hydro-distillation to estimate many parameters such as the initial extraction rate, capacity of extraction, the constant rat of extraction at various temperatures and activation energy. The results showed that the extraction process is a spontaneous process, since the Gibbs free energy has a negative value at all studied temperatures. For example the Gibbs free energy at (70, 80, 90, and 100 ºC)were (-2.93, -3.84, -4.75, -5.66) respectively.

This work focuses on the formation of a pure phase Faujasite-type zeolite Y via a static aging step in the absence of seeds at the ranges chosen for this study. Nano-sized crystals of Y zeolite were successfully obtained when LUDOX AS-40 was used as a silica source for gel composition of range 6 and crystallization wasconducted for a period of 4 to 19 hr at 100⁰C with surface area of 672 m2/g. Moreover, large-crystals with high crystallinity pure phase Y zeolite (with surface area of 682 m2/g) can be obtained here at the above conditions but when hydrous sodium metasilicate was used as a silica source. The most significant outcome of this study is that static aging effectively leads to obtaining a pure phase Y zeolite for all selected ranges at controlled conditions in a seedless synthesis.

The surplus glycerol produced from biodiesel production process as a by-product with high quantity can be considered as a good source to prepare glycerol carbonate (GC) whereas with each 1000 kg from biodiesel obtains 100 kg from glycerol. The aim of this paper is studying the possibility of converting the glycerol to glycerol carbonate using the bio-char prepared from reed plant as a catalyst. The catalyst was prepared at different temperatures ranging from 400-800°C. The results show that the bio- char prepared at 700 ᴼC gives a best one among the others types of bio-char, but the yield was increased to 67.80% using prepared bio-char and when the catalyst promoted by sodium hydroxide, the obtained yield reached to 98.3% and complete conversion. In this study, the complete conversion was achieved at optimum conditions which were 60ᴼC, 90 min, 3:1 DMC:G , 3%wt. catalyst loading and using bio-char modified with 3 molar NaOH .

Bio-diesel is an attractive fuel fordiesel engines. The feedstock for bio-diesel production is usually vegetable oil, waste cooking oil, or animal fats. This work provides an overview concerning bio-diesel production. Also, this work focuses on the commercial production of biodiesel. The objective is to study the influence of these parameters on the yield of produced. The biodiesel production affecting by many parameters such s alcohol ratio (5%, 10%,15 %, 20%,25%,30%35% vol.), catalyst loading (5,10,15,20,25) g,temperature (45,50,55,60,65,70,75)°C,reaction time (0-6) h, mixing rate (400-1000) rpm. the maximum bio-diesel production yield (95%) was obtained using 20% methanol ratio and 15g biocatalyst at 60°C.

Light naphtha is one of the products from distillation column in oil refineries used as feedstock for gasoline production. The major constituents of light naphtha are (Normal Paraffin, Isoparaffin, Naphthene, and Aromatic). In this paper, we used zeolite (5A) with uniform pore size (5A) to separate normal paraffin from light naphtha, due to the suitable pore size for this process and compare the behavior of adsorption with activated carbon which has a wide range of pores size (micropores and mesopores) and high surface area. The process is done in a continuous system- Fixed bed column- at the vapor phase with constant conditions of flow rate 5 ml/min, temperature 180oC, pressure 1.6 bar and 100-gramweight of each adsorbent according to many other experiments on zeolite (5A) and choose the best conditions for comparison. The molecular sieve (5A) separated the normal paraffin (C4 – C8) from light naphtha feed with highest percentage removal reaching a (92.36 %) at the beginning of the process. Activated carbon separated naphthene and aromatics with highest percentage removal reaching a (95.3 %) for naphthenes and a (100 %) for aromatics at the beginning of the separation process. The study shows the difference in physical adsorption behavior and the effect of pore size on these processes.

The main objective of this study is to experimentally investigate the effect of the CMC polymeric drag reducer on the pressure drop occurred along the annulus of the wellbore in drilling operation and investigate the optimum polymer concentration that give the minimum pressure drop. A flow loop was designed for this purpose consist from 14 m long with transparent test section and differential pressure transmitter that allows to sense and measure the pressure losses along the test section. The results from the experimental work show that increasing in polymer concentration help to reduce the pressure drop in annulus and the optimum polymer concentration with the maximum drag reducing is 0.8 kg/m3. Also increasing in flow rate and corresponding fluid velocity in the gap of the annulus helped to reduce the pressure losses due to fluid flow.

Bioethanol production from sugar fermentation is one of the most sustainable alternatives to substitute fossil fuel. production of bioethanol from low grade dates which are rich of sugars. An available sugar from a second grade dates (reduction sugar) was 90g/l in this study. Sugar can be served as essential carbon sources for yeast growth in aerobic condition and can also be converted to bioethanol in anaerobic condition. The effect of various parameters on bioethanol production, fermentation time, pH-values, inoculum size and initial sugar concentration were varied in order to determine the optimal of bioethanol production. The highest bioethanol yield was 33g/l which was obtained with sugar concentration 90 g/l, inoculum size 1%, 52h time and pH-value 5.

The present research was conducted to synthesis Y-Zeolite by sol-gel technique using MWCNT (multiwalled carbon nanotubes) as crystallization medium to get a narrow range of particle size distribution with small average size compared with ordinary methods. The phase pattern, chemical structure, particle size, and surface area were detected by XRD, FTIR, BET and AFM, respectively. Results shown that the average size of Zeolite with and without using MWCNT were (92.39) nm and (55.17) nm respectively .Particle size range reduced from (150-55) nm to (130-30) nm. The surface area enhanced to be (558) m2/g with slightly large pore volume (0.231) km3/g was obtained. Meanwhile, degree of crystallization decreased to 120%.

The purpose of this paper is to examine absorbance for the removal of the Red Congo using wheat husk as a biological pesticide. Several experiments have been conducted with the aim of configuring breakthrough data in a fluidized bed reactor. The minimum fluidized velocities of the bed were found to be 0.031 mm/s for mish sizes of (250) µm diameter with study the mass transfer be calculated KL values. The results showed a well-fitting with the experimental data. Different operating conditions were selected: bed height (2, 5 and 10) cm, flow rate (90, 100and 120) ml/sec and particle diameter (250, 600, 1000) µm. The breakthrough curves were plotted for Congo Red, Values showed that the lower the bed, the lower the number of adsorbents and the potential of the weak bed to condense the density of the solution, which also increases the flow rate and will increase the mass transfer rate.

Hydroisomerization of Iraqi light naphtha was studied on prepared Ni-Pt/H-mordenite catalyst at a temperature range of 220-300°C, hydrogen to hydrocarbon molar ratio of 3.7, liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV) 1 hr-1 and at atmospheric pressure.
The result shows that the hydrisomerization of light naphtha increases with the increase in reaction temperature at constant LHSV. However, above 270 0C the isomers formation decreases and the reaction is shifted towards the hydrocracking reaction, a higher octane number of naphtha was formed at 270 °C.