Yahia Abobakor Alhamed

This paper presents a study on optimizing organic contaminants removal using rotating biological contactors (RBCs) through a kinetic and equilibrium analysis. Response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to explore non-linear relationships and identify optimal operating conditions for...

Catalytic activity of nano-Au-catalyst(s) for the complete propane oxidation was investigated. The results showed that the nature of both Au precursor and support strongly influences catalytic activity of the Au-catalyst(s) for the propane oxidation. Oxidation state, size, and dispersion of Au nanoparticles in the Au-catalysts, surface area, crystallinity, phase structure, and redox property of the support are the key aspects for the complete propane oxidation. Among the studied Au-catalysts, the -Ce catalyst is found to be the most active catalyst.

The modified generalized Laguerre-Gauss collocation (MGLC) method is applied to obtain an approximate solution of fractional neutral functional-differential equations with proportional delays on the half-line. The proposed technique is based on modified generalized Laguerre polynomials and Gauss quadrature integration of such polynomials. The main advantage of the present method is to reduce the solution of fractional neutral functional-differential equations into a system of algebraic equations. Reasonable numerical results are achieved by choosing few modified generalized Laguerre-Gauss collocation points. Numerical results demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency, and versatility of the proposed method on the half-line.

A comparative study is presented of the hydrolytic and thermal stability of 24 different kinds of monolayers on Si(111), Si(100), SiC, SiN, SiO₂, CrN, ITO, PAO, Au, and stainless steel surfaces. These surfaces were modified utilizing appropriate organic compounds having a constant alkyl chain length (C₁₈), but with different surface-reactive groups, such as 1-octadecene, 1-octadecyne, 1-octadecyltrichlorosilane, 1-octadecanethiol, 1-octadecylamine and 1-octadecylphosphonic acid. The hydrolytic stability of obtained monolayers was systematically investigated in triplicate in constantly flowing aqueous media at room temperature in acidic (pH 3), basic (pH 11), phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and deionized water (neutral conditions), for a period of 1 day, 7 days, and 30 days, yielding 1152 data points for the hydrolytic stability. The hydrolytic stability was monitored by static contact angle measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The covalently bound alkyne monolayers on Si(111), Si(100), and SiC were shown to be among the most stable monolayers under acidic and neutral conditions. Additionally, the thermal stability of 14 different monolayers was studied in vacuum using XPS at elevated temperatures (25–600 °C). Similar to the hydrolytic stability, the covalently bound both alkyne and alkene monolayers on Si(111), Si(100) and SiC started to degrade from temperatures above 260 °C, whereas on oxide surfaces (e.g., PAO) phosphonate monolayers even displayed thermal stability up to ∼500 °C.