×
The submission system is temporarily under maintenance. Please send your manuscripts to
Go to Editorial ManagerSolar desalination uses solar radiation to convert saline or seawater into clean water and is increasingly crucial due to growing pollution from industrial and automotive sources. Although solar stills offer a sustainable solution, they face challenges in terms of production efficiency. This study presents a new structural design for solar stills, which incorporates advanced insulation materials, a well-designed distillate channel, and an inclined base to enhance productivity. The research explores how different climatic conditions such as wind speed, solar radiation, and atmospheric humidity affect solar still performance. Seven experimental setups were evaluated, comparing traditional inclined stills with advanced closed-loop systems. The results demonstrated that closed-loop systems improved productivity by 28.6% compared to open-loop systems. Additionally, moderate wind speeds increased productivity by 20.82%, while partial cloud cover and light rain decreased productivity by 52.15% and 12.9%, respectively. However, light rain also enhanced condensation efficiency by cooling the glass surface. This study highlights the importance of incorporating environmental factors into the design and optimization of solar still systems for improved performance.
Wars have imposed on some countries a state of haste and rush towards haphazard, unstudied urban planning to fill the shortage of architectural elements and urban formations. Urban sustainability, alongside environmental and economic sustainability, has recently gained great importance in contemporary global studies. Given the problems suffered by the city of Basra regarding architectural formation and devastating environmental pollution, in addition to the significant deficit in finding the required design solutions for the urban rehabilitation of the city, it was necessary to limit individual attempts that tend towards unconscious concepts leading to anomaly and lack of harmony with the city's distinct environment. Urban formation is a series of visual interferences that cannot be intercepted by individual, personal, and unstudied attempts; therefore, shared visions agreed upon by specialists in various fields, primarily the environment, must be formulated. Hence, the research tends towards finding research areas that can offer objective and realistic solutions to be the basis for the future structure of damaged cities within the framework of the concept of sustainable urban development in the future. Here, the research aims to select the best methods for shaping the modern city of Basra.
In the sustainable dwelling, in all its formations whether at the urban or architectural level, the effects of the surrounding environment are taken into account in the design process, starting from the distribution of residential functions, the form of the dwelling, or even the structural materials used in its formulation, in addition to the technological dimension, not to mention the site and its effects as well as the consumed energy and its effects. The study proceeds with research and analysis to build a comprehensive strategy for the problem related to the harsh climate of the region, and its negative effect on residential formation, by activating ideal solutions to those problems according to the principles of environmental sustainability. The concept of the new healthy dwelling in its proposed form addresses the benefits that sustainable environmental formation can offer in improving the conditions of thermal comfort within architectural spaces and then designing a new form of housing under the name of passive energy bio-climatic formation systems. Its ideas must be subject to the wisdom of the architect through passing over all effective strategies that help create the maximum material comfort and thus reduce high environmental costs.
Shatt Al-Arab river has been used as the raw material for the drinking water, irrigation and fish purposes in Basrah city. Concurrently, this river has been polluted by domestic, farming and industrial waste. Three main factories lie on the bank of Shatt Al-Arab river: Al-Hartha Paper Mill, Hartha Power Station and Al-Najibia Power Plant. All these consume water from the river and return their wastewater back to it. The aim of this study is to assess the water quality of Shatt Al-Arab river and its suitability for drinking, irrigation and aquatic life through physicochemical analysis temperature, pH, EC, Total Dissolve Solid (TDS), Cl − , Na + , K + , Ca +2 , Mg+2, HCO 3 total hardness, Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD). BOD5 concentration near factories showed polluted water, unsafe and requiring costly treatment to use for drinking water. Sodium concentration is a key factor for irrigation, which represent by SAR and SSP. As SSP exceed 75.73 % in water near these factories, this could breakdown soil structure and can damage agriculture area. The high concentrations of BOD5 and COD could pose a threat to aquatic life and fishes. As Shatt Al-Arab river is used for different purpose, the result in this study showed polluted water near industrial areas. Therefore, it is recommended to have regular data on water quality for this river near these areas.
Flaring systems used in oil production systems have a significant impact on both the economy and the environment as they discharge large quantities of burned gases of elevated temperature to the atmosphere that have the potential to be used in some applications. This study aims to investigate the economic losses incurred due to the combustion of gases not utilized in the Rumaila oil field in Basrah, the southern region of Iraq. Additionally, the potential to use flare gases for power generation and water desalination was studied. The mathematical models established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were utilized in this study to estimate and calculate the expected losses and used MatLab Ver. R22 to get result. The result leads to expected annular economic losses to reach $ 347,735,700. Also, the flare gases can be used to produce electric power of 1175 MW per year, it can be used for producing desalinating water of 115,911,900 m 3 for thermal desalination and 173,867,850 m 3 for membrane desalination.
The analysis of raw domestic sewage has a greater importance for design of an effective and economic rational sewage treatment. The objectives of this study are to determine the chemical, physical and Biochemical characteristics of raw domestic sewage for Basrah city. Results show that; the strength of Basrah raw domestic sewage can be classified as a strong strength concentration wastewater due to high levels of organic loading rate BOD5 , COD. Also, it can be seen a very high concentrations of TDS , CL- and increasing in EC levels above the typical limits due to the salinity of domestic water supply in Basrah. High concentrations of oil and grease were found as result of misuse of the sewerage system. While the values of pH, temperature, nutrients and the number of FC are within the typical acceptable limits.
The trend of using natural fibers in geotechnical engineering has become of great interest to improve weak soils due to some of its advantages such as local availability, environmental friendliness, and lower cost. In this study, a set of unconfined compression strength and direct shear tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of Al-Nasiriya clayey soil reinforced with natural fibers. Three different types of natural fibers were investigated as sustainable ones, including wheat straw fiber and palm frond fiber, as well as imperata cylindrica fiber. The effects of various fiber contents (0.25 %, 0.5 %, 0.75 %, and 1 %) and lengths (20 mm, 30 mm, and 40 mm) were experimentally evaluated. The results indicated that the compressive strength increased significantly with the increase of fiber content and length up to an optimum value and then decreased. The optimum fiber content and length were 0.5 % and 30 mm, respectively. Compared to the unreinforced soil, the compressive strength values at the optimum content and length increased by 102 %, 126 %, and 66 % for samples reinforced with wheat straw, palm fronds, and imperata cylindrica fibers, respectively. The shear properties improved due to soil reinforcement with natural fibers. Compared to the unreinforced soil, the internal friction angle of the samples reinforced with wheat straw, palm fronds, and imperata cylindrica fibers increased by 17.7 %, 42 %, and 9 %, respectively. Forever, the cohesion and shear strength are also improved due to inclusion of natural fibers.
The prediction of the concentration fields of pollutants released to the atmosphere is a key factor in assessing possible environmental damages caused by industrial emissions. To solve the concentration equation for gaseous or particulate effluents it is necessary to know as accurately as possible the velocity field and turbulence intensities at the atmospheric boundary layer in the region of interest. A two dimensional mathematical model based on the equations of fluid mechanics along with a modified non- isotropic k-ε turbulence model are employed to calculate the flow and dispersion at the atmospheric micro scale (distances of the order of kilometers). Results of investigation are obtained by using the finite volume method (FVM) to solve the average Navier Stock equations coupling with turbulent k- ε model. The calculation was carried out for plume flow from the industrial chimney with different plume velocities, wind velocities and heights of stack. The equations of model are solved with SIMPLE schemes. FLUENT program used to show the results of the plume flow at the variable parameters of wind and plume velocities and heights of stack, the code is applied to simulate several cases of flow and dispersion. Comparisons against experimental results show that the non-isotropic turbulence model has better ability to foresee the plume dispersion than the standard k- ε, in which the non-isotropic character of turbulence is relevant. The computational results show that the plume path and concentrations are correctly predicted by the numerical model.
The Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG) is an environmental water recovery that easily dehumidifies water vapor moisture from the air. This article presents an experiment to construct an AWG model using solar energy as a source of power. An experimental and numerical study for a device of (AWG) is performed. The experimental work is performed at Basrah city, located in the south of Iraq, during August and September of 2019 and March of 2020. The theoretical results are calculated by EES and the numerical study has been conducted by the (ANSYS19/CFD/ FLUENT) program. The experimental device is tested for different days with different climate conditions. The Maximum water production obtained is 3.4 L/day from all the testing days, for different hours of operation when the relative humidity in the range of (45 – 95 %) and the temperature range from 17 °C to 45 °C. The results shown that, the water production rate is increased with increasing humidity, temperatures, hours of operation, and model size.
Solar power systems, also known as photovoltaic (PV) systems, are widely used as a clean and sustainable energy source worldwide. However, these systems can be affected by various factors that contribute to dust accumulation, which have been grouped into five categories: module characteristics, environmental factors, climatic conditions, exposure situations, and soiling properties. Dust accumulation can significantly impact photovoltaic modules' efficiency and power output, leading to a decrease in electricity generation. Airborne dust reduces the intensity of solar radiation by scattering and absorbing it, especially in hot and dry regions such as southern Iraq. This study provides an updated overview of the process of dust accumulation on photovoltaic modules south of Iraq. Moreover, it illustrates the methods used to measure dust accumulation and the performance of solar PV under soiling. Furthermore, it exemplifies the sources of the soiling generation. Additionally, it demonstrates the composition and size of dust particles. Finally, future research perspectives are discussed, and a thorough investigation of the impact of dust is suggested in all regions of Iraq and even in all countries of the world, especially those interested in clean energy. This research aims to understand the effect of dust soiling on PV performance. The outcome of this research will help design the PV module system while considering the most effective method to reduce or prevent dust accumulation in specific areas.
The problem of construction debris has been emerged as one of the most important environmental problems in the Iraqi governorates due to higher rates of population growth and the need for the establishment of new construction projects to rebuilding Iraq. Therefore, this research aims to estimate the quantity of construction debris in Basra governorate and suggested method for recycling the homogeneous to rubble material that can be used in the building after admixing with cement. The study estimated the quantity of this debris in Basra during the study period, amounting to a full year up to 177.907 tons, that is equivalent to an average of 0.06 tons/m². And recycling of debris concrete to give the results of the usual approach to the concrete and be within the limits allowed in the code of Iraq and the U.S. and can be used in the production of non-loading concrete blocks.
It is very crucial to minimize the environmental impact that induced from the development of industry, by applying strict policies and innovate eco-friendly industries. Indeed, construction manufacture considered as one of the most industries that affect the environment, especially concrete production and usage in structural buildings. For instance, traditional concrete, which is consists of a high amount of cement, is contributed to the emission of CO 2 . Therefore, researchers seeking to develop a new technology of concrete by replacement some amount of cement by materials which are considered to become more friendly to the environment. Nowadays, this new technology is known as Green Concrete. The importance of using green concrete is not only to decrease the emission amounts of CO 2 but also to replace cement by industrial waste. In this paper, a review has been presented to understand green concrete benefits and materials that may be used instead of cement and aggregate.
Visual pollution refers to the negative impact of various environmental elements on the visual experience of individuals and the quality of the surroundings. This includes unsightly buildings and other man-made structures that disrupt natural beauty. The design of building facades plays a significant role in determining visual pollution. This study aimed to assess the impact of facade design on visual pollution by testing which facade design considerations most contribute to visual pollution in Peshawa-Qazi Street (100 m) in Erbil City. An online survey was conducted with 283 participants in six architectural departments within engineering colleges and other online engineering platforms in Erbil, Duhok, and Suleimani. Respondents included architectural students from the 3rd to 5th stage, academic staff, and professional architects. They rated the impact of individual facade elements, contextual integration, and other factors on visual pollution. A one-sample T-test was used to compare mean scores to a test value of (2.5). Results showed that all three categories of façade design considerations significantly increase visual pollution compared to the test value (p < 0.05). Considerations regarding the overall context of a facade had the most significant impact (mean of 1.93 higher than the test value), followed by other factors (mean of 1.79 higher) and individual elements (mean of 0.71 higher). To decrease visual pollution, it is recommended to the policymakers and municipalities to develop regulations, façade design guidelines and for architects to follow the principles of architectural form and composition regarding the integration of building facades with their surroundings, façade practical considerations, and refined composition of façade elements.
Recently, Internet of Thing technology has been used to develop numerous applications, this paper compromising design and implementation of greenhouse prototype that integrated with the IoT to adjust the system’s parameters and monitor the system status from any place in this world. This system involves three intelligent controllers that designed to stabilize the temperature degree, water level in soil, and light intensity inside the greenhouse prototype structure. These systems have been built by two important parts: the hardware and software. The hardware part could be achieved by designing and implementing the control circuits, actuators, and install the sensors as well as the devices. The second one is the software part which is involves implementing Fuzzy Inference Engine that represent the system’s brain that monitor and manage the entire process in the system to ensure the best performance. This system has been built to contain three control systems that means there are three different Fuzzy controllers. In order to keep the system practicality, the fuzzy controllers should be aggregated in single code that resides in single microcontroller chip with additional codes that perform the IoT duties. The proposed IoT system provides the ability for specific people to monitor and manage their systems remotely, using a web application with cloud technology. The major contributions of the proposed system are started by downloading the controller’s set-points (the desired environmental conditions) from the web page, transfer the set- points to the controllers, and upload data that read from sensors to the same web page.)
The problem that still exists nowadays with the petrol station is the method of operation because the petrol station is currently operated manually. As it is a time-consuming process that increases manpower, other problems are related to accuracy, gasoline smuggling, fluctuations in global oil prices, sales, database management, environmental pollution and others. Traditional methods of monitoring fuel in petrol station by humans on site are unable to meet the expectations for efficiency, accuracy and cost. Therefore, this paper designs an intelligent system of three filling stations, where the three stations are simultaneously displayed on a single web application, and this IoT-based system is implemented to address all the problems. Therefore, this paper presents the design and implementation of three petrol stations in which we are going to measure the level of fuel and show it to central server. internet of things (IoT) based petrol station monitoring system is a good approach to improve monitoring efficiency and to improve management efficiency in stations remotely. simulation results presented in LabVIEW software showed the ability of the system to monitor levels of petrol, detect fire, evaporation and etc.
The desalination market is gradually growing as a result of the significant water scarcity in various regions throughout the world. Concentrated solar power (CSP) can be used to power distillation, which is an effective method for addressing water shortages in areas where there is both a severe lack of water and abundant direct normal irradiation. CSPs are ideal candidates for the advancement of desalination technologies due to their capacity to produce both thermal and electricity energy. This review article offers a comprehensive of the current status of cutting-edge CSP-desalination systems. The paper reviews previously published studies conducted by researchers in the field of multi-effect desalination using concentrated solar collectors, and they are classified into two main types. Exclusively freshwater generation and freshwater / electricity cogeneration. In addition, the paper reviews conventional desalination. This review illustrates that there are numerous prospective methods for integrating desalination systems into CSPs. Potential areas for future investigation in CSP-desalination systems. In particular, the most significant obstacles to be surmounted are lowering the costs and efficiency improvements of solar repayment and desalination equipment. A potential method to expedite the commercialization of these plants is to develop innovative strategies that optimize thermal efficiency and reduce costs. Environmental factors (solar radiation intensity, ambient temperature and wind speed) and design factors (solar field area, number of mirrors, number of stages, steam temperature, steam quantity and pressure) are the main effective parameters that affect the distilled water production process. In general, the CSP desalination systems are environmentally and technically appealing; however, there remains substantial progress to be made in order for these plants to be commercially viable.
Plants and agriculture are important in Iraq and the world because they are among the essential basics of life; their importance lies in several fields, such as industry and food. Plant diseases are the first direct influence on plant production and the Iraqi economy. The primary contribution of this work is developing an efficient early warning system for tomato plant diseases based on readily available environmental data, demonstrating the usefulness of machine learning methods in real agricultural environments. This research investigates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for the early prediction of tomato diseases in Iraqi agriculture, based on temperature and humidity data collected from Salah al-Din Governorate. Two major diseases were studied: Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus (TYLCV) and late blight. The data were pre-processed and used to train predictive models, including linear regression and Random Forest Regressor (RFR). Results show that RFR outperformed linear regression, achieving a lower Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.053852 and a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.45000, indicating its superior accuracy in predicting disease occurrences.
An-Najaf Province is one of the most important cities in Iraq and is experiencing rapid population growth and continuous expansion of infrastructure, including residential buildings, hotels, bridges, and commercial centers. This study aims to establish a spatial database of gypsum content in soils across An-Najaf Province, including Najaf city center and Al-Kufa city, to support safe geotechnical design. A total of 464 boreholes and in situ test records were analyzed using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques to assess the spatial variability of gypsum content. The adopted methodology comprised four main stages: data collection, georeferencing of geotechnical data, application of interpolation methods, and map generation. Nine geotechnical distribution maps were produced for depths of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 35 m. Results indicated that the 0–4 m depth layer is predominantly moderately gypsiferous, with gypsum content ranging between 10–25%. The 4–8 m depth layer is mainly slightly gypsiferous, with values between 3–10%, while deeper layers from 8 to 35 m are very slightly gypsiferous, with contents ranging from 0.3–3%. These findings show that the near-surface layers (0–4 m) exceed the allowable gypsum content limit of 10%, which may pose potential risks to construction stability, particularly in combination with the high groundwater levels in the Najaf region.
In this proposed study, all environmental factors affecting the aboveground and buried pipes, such as solar radiation and temperature, and soil temperature, have been studied on the characteristics of flow inside the aboveground and underground pipelines by building a mathematical model using MATLAB based on energy balance equations. From the mathematical model, the effect of solar radiation on the aboveground section of the pipeline is significate. During March and an inlet temperature of 34 °C, the pipeline outlet fluid temperature will rise to 50 °C. Other parameters affecting the aboveground section of the pipeline, such as ambient temperature and wind speed, have a much smaller effect on the fluid temperature, and the temperature difference is approximately 4 °C between the highest and lowest pipeline outlet fluid temperature. The result for the underground section of the pipeline showed that the main affecting parameter on the fluid temperature is the burry depth of the pipeline, the deeper the pipeline depth the lower the temperature variation and the lower fluid temperature can be seen, at 1 meter of bury depth the minimum and maximum fluid temperature was 18 °C and 36 °C respectively, and at 5 meters of bury depth, the minimum and maximum fluid temperature was 26 °C and 31 °C respectively. This study also checks different process parameters. Some of these are fluid flow, pipe diameter, and pipe material. The effect of the fluid flow and pipe diameter has a similar impact on the fluid temperature (while fixing all the other parameters), the higher the fluid flow or the smaller the pipe diameter resulted in a better heat transfer and more considerable temperature difference, and vice versa. The final process parameter, pipe material, had little to no effect on the fluid temperature variation.
Conventional Refrigeration Systems (VCRS) are the most commonly used in industrial buildings and facilities. Conventional refrigeration systems are among the most energy-consuming sources in addition to causing more environmental problems and gas emissions, such as hydrocarbons (HCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), are known to contribute to global warming and ozone depletion. Absorption Refrigeration Systems (VARS) are a good alternative to conventional refrigeration systems because they use low-grade heat sources and operate with environmentally friendly liquids. The most important of these heat sources is the heat wasted from engines, industrial processes and many other sources. The global objective of the study is a literature review on the different ways to operate the absorption refrigeration system using waste heat in engines that include exhaust gases and engine cooling water as well as renewable energy that includes solar energy. Reviews of the literature have demonstrated how the absorption refrigeration system can be used and operated using a variety of thermal sources. This study also supports the usage of ecologically friendly chillers to provide air conditioning and refrigeration, as it shows these systems have a lower performance coefficient when compared to conventional refrigeration systems.
A significant quantity of pollutants are contained within domestic wastewater which creates a substantial environmental issue with a large quantity of effluent that contains high amounts of contaminants. Turbidity is a major indicator of water quality and a measure of suspended solids. The purpose of this investigation was to study the use of electrocoagulation (EC) as a method of removing turbidity from municipal wastewater using aluminum electrodes. Using a Design of Experiments (DOE) approach, specifically Response Surface Methodology (RSM), the effect of three important operating variables was studied. These were: the initial pH of the wastewater in the range from 3 to 9; the current (or amperage, ranged from 0.1 A to 1.1 A); and the time for which the wastewater was treated by the EC process (ranged from 10 minutes to 20 minutes). The initial turbidity of each of the municipal wastewaters used in the testing remained constant at 336 NTU (nephelometric turbidity units) throughout the entire investigation. The effect of a number of different experiments was made in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the EC process for removing turbidity from the municipal wastewaters, and in addition take a measure of a predictive model of turbidity removal efficiency. The main conclusion drawn from the investigation was that the EC process will be very effective for removing turbidity from municipal wastewaters, which can vary from 5% removal to total removal (as high as 97%). There appeared to be a statistical correlation between the removal efficiency and the three experimental variables: pH (r=0.4316); amperage (r=0.3714); and time of treatment (r=0.3965). The removal efficiency was highest using the variables of Run 8 whereby the pH was equal to 9, the current was held constant at 0.6 A and the treatment time was 10 minutes, resulting in a turbidity removal efficiency of 97%. The various data showed that both slightly acid (pH=6) and alkaline (pH=9) gave a markedly superior removal than acid (pH=3) for obtaining constant, high removal efficiencies (average of 90.00% and 90.33%, respectively). Also, it was determined that a current of 0.6 A provided the most optimum amperage, giving an average removal efficiency of 95.33%. In addition, it was shown that long treatment times resulted in high removal efficiency, with the most averages of removal efficiencies recorded when the time of treatment was set.