Sharif Digital Repository

Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) grafted chitosan was prepared by ceric-initiated graft polymerization of acrylonitrile onto chitosan in a homogenous medium. The copolymer chitosan-g-PAN product was then hydrolyzed to yield a novel smart hydrogel (H-chitoPAN) with superabsorbing properties. The influence of add-on values as well as temperature and time of hydrolysis of the initial chitosan-g-PAN on swelling behavior of the hydrogel was evaluated in water and various salt solutions. The swelling kinetics of the superabsorbing hydrogel was studied as well. The hydrogels exhibited ampholytic and pH-sensitivity characteristics. Several sharp swelling changes were observed in lieu of pH variations in a... 

The use of adjusted/optimized saline water categorized into two different classes namely smart water (SW) and low salinity (LoSal) water injection has been proposed for more oil recovery from specific types of oil reservoirs. There are possible mechanisms concerning SW flooding that have been proposed in the literature, some of them are still subject to more examination. In this study, an experimental investigation is performed to determine the influence of type and amount of salt to the surface properties including interfacial tension (IFT) and contact angle (CA) of aqueous solution + acidic and asphaltenic crude oil + carbonate rock systems. For this purpose, the concentration of different... 

Understanding the fresh groundwater lens (FGL) behavior and potential threat of climatic-induced seawater intrusion (SWI) are significant for the future water resources management of many small islands. In this paper, the FGL of Kish Island, an arid-region case in the Persian Gulf, Iran, is modeled using two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) simulations. These simulations are based on the application of SUTRA, a density-dependent groundwater numerical model. Also, the numerical model parameters are calibrated using PEST, an automated parameter estimation code. Firstly a detailed conceptualization of the FGL model is completed to understand the sensitivity of the FGL to some... 

An efficient route for the synthesis of gem-bis(dithiocarbamate) derivatives is developed using dithiocarbamic acid salts generated from primary aliphatic amines and CS2. The method offers high yields, employs mild reaction conditions, and demonstrates excellent functional group compatibility. The structures of the products were confirmed spectroscopically and by X-ray analysis  

In salting-out liquid-liquid extraction (SALLE) technique, water-miscible organic solvents are used for extraction of polar analytes from saline solutions. In this study, for the first time, a coupled 1-mL syringes system was utilized to perform a miniaturized SALLE method. Sulfanilamide antibiotic was extracted and determined via the developed method followed by high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV). The extraction process was carried out by rapid shooting of acetonitrile as extraction solvent (syringe B) into saline aqueous sample solution (syringe A), and then the shooting was repeated several times at a rate of 1 cycle s-1. Thereby, an extremely large... 

In this work, the thermodynamic behavior of aqueous solutions containing the solutes NaCl, glucose, and/or urea is investigated. These substances are vital components for living bodies and further they are main components of blood serum. Osmotic coefficients were determined by cryoscopic measurements in single-solute and multi-solute aqueous solutions containing salts (NaCl, KCl, CaCl2), glucose, and/or urea. The results show that NaCl determines the osmotic coefficients in the urea/glucose/NaCl/water system. Investigation of the effect of different salts on osmotic coefficients revealed ion-specific effects. At physiologically important solute concentrations in typical blood serum... 

Perchloric acid immobilized on silica gel (SiO2-HClO4) has been utilized as a mild and cheap reagent for onepot preparation of different varieties of flavylium salts via tandem reaction of different acetophenones with Salicylaldehydes under solvent-free conditions. Different reaction conditions such as conventional heating and microwave irradiation have been investigated. The corresponding flavylium salts have been prepared in high yields. The procedure is milder and more convenient than the known procedures  

The implementation of Monte Carlo simulations (MCSs) for the propagation of uncertainty in real-world seawater intrusion (SWI) numerical models often becomes computationally prohibitive due to the large number of deterministic solves needed to achieve an acceptable level of accuracy. Previous studies have mostly relied on parallelization and grid computing to decrease the computational time of MCSs. However, another approach which has received less attention in the literature is to decrease the number of deterministic simulations by using more efficient sampling strategies. Sampling efficiency is a measure of the optimality of a sampling strategy. A more efficient sampling strategy requires... 

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are non-specific symbionts developing mutual and beneficial symbiosis with most terrestrial plants. Because of the obligatory nature of the symbiosis, the presence of the host plant during the onset and proceeding of symbiosis is necessary. However, AM fungal spores are able to germinate in the absence of the host plant. The fungi detect the presence of the host plant through some signal communications. Among the signal molecules, which can affect mycorrhizal symbiosis are plant hormones, which may positively or adversely affect the symbiosis. In this review article, some of the most recent findings regarding the signaling effects of plant hormones, on... 

The fresh groundwater lenses (FGLs) of small islands can be highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, including sea-level rise (SLR). Many real cases of atoll or sandy islands involve two-layer hydrogeological conceptualizations. In this paper, the influential factors that affect FGLs in two-layer small islands subject to SLR are investigated. An analytical solution describing FGLs in circular islands, composed of two geological layers, is developed for the simplified case of steady-state and sharp-interface conditions. An application of the developed model is demonstrated to estimate the FGL thickness of some real-world islands by comparison with existing FGL thickness data. Furthermore,... 

The present work deals with a novel approach for grafting a sol-gel based sorbent, using diazonium salts for preparation of an unbreakable capillary microextraction (CME) device in on-line combination with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The use of diazonium salts modifier allowed all types of metallic and non-metallic substrates to be used without any limitation. Substrates including copper, brass, stainless steel and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) were chosen to be functionalized by chemical or electrochemical reduction of 4-amino phenyl acetic acid. Then, 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propylamine (3TMSPA) was selected as the precursor and the only reagent for preparation of the... 

In this paper, we suggest a general model for the fixed-valued impulse noise and propose a two-stage method for high density noise suppression while preserving the image details. In the first stage, we apply an iterative impulse detector, exploiting the image entropy, to identify the corrupted pixels and then employ an Adaptive Iterative Mean filter to restore them. The filter is adaptive in terms of the number of iterations, which is different for each noisy pixel, according to the Euclidean distance from the nearest uncorrupted pixel. Experimental results show that the proposed filter is fast and outperforms the best existing techniques in both objective and subjective performance measures... 

A number of challenges including instability, nonconvergence, nonuniqueness, nonoptimality, and lack of a general guideline for inverse modelling have limited the application of automatic calibration by generic inversion codes in solving the saltwater intrusion problem in real-world cases. A systematic parameter selection procedure for the selection of a small number of independent parameters is applied to a real case of saltwater intrusion in a small island aquifer system in the semiarid region of the Persian Gulf. The methodology aims at reducing parameter nonuniqueness and uncertainty and the time spent on inverse modelling computations. Subsequent to the automatic calibration of the... 

A duplex surface treatment on DIN 1.2210 steel has been developed involving nitriding and followed by chromium thermo-reactive deposition (TRD) techniques. The TRD process was performed in molten salt bath at 550, 625 and 700°C for 1-14h. The process formed a thickness up to 9.5μm of chromium carbonitride coatings on a hardened diffusion zone. Characterization of the coatings by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) indicates that the compact and dense coatings mainly consist of Cr(C,N) and Cr2(C,N) phase. All the growth processes of the chromium carbonitride obtained by TRD technique followed a parabolic kinetics. Activation energy (Q) for the... 

The cyclization of cyclohexane-1,3-diones with various substituted pyridinium salts afforded functionalized 8-oxa-10-aza-tricyclo[7.3.1.0 2,7]trideca-2(7),11-dienes. The reaction proceeds by regioselective attack of the central carbon atom of the 1,3-dicar-bonyl unit to 4-position of the pyridinium salt and subsequent cyclization by base-assisted proton migration and nucleophilic addition of the oxygen atom to the 2-position, as was elucidated by DFT computations. Fairly extensive screening of bases and additives revealed that the presence of potassium cations is essential for formation of the product  

The system, Pd(OAc)2/imidazolium salts (L2), was found as an efficient catalyst in the Heck coupling reaction of olefins with aryl halides and Suzuki reactions of various aryl halides with aryl boronic acids under aerobic condition. This catalytic system demonstrates great tolerance to a wide range of groups on all substrates of aryl halides, alkenes and aryl boronic acids  

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is the most substantial mineral constituent of a bone which has been extensively used in medicine as implantable materials, owing to its good biocompatibility, bioactivity high osteoconductive, and/or osteoinductive properties. Nevertheless, its mechanical property is not utmost appropriate for a bone substitution. Therefore, a composite consist of HA and a biodegradable polymer is usually prepared to generate an apt bone scaffold. In the present work polycaprolactone (PCL), a newly remarkable biocompatible and biodegradable polymer, was employed as a matrix and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles were used as a reinforcement element of the composite. HA/PCL nanocomposites were... 

In this work, we present a new method of noise removal which is applied on images corrupted by impulse noise. This new algorithm has a good trade-off between quantitative and qualitative properties of the recovered image and the computation time. In this new method, the corrupted pixels are replaced by using a median filter or, they are estimated by their neighbors' values. Our proposed method shows better results especially in very high density noisy images than Standard Median Filter (SMF), Adaptive Median Filter (AMF) and some other well-known filters for removing impulse noise. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm in measures of PSNR and SSIM, specifically... 

Effect of alkaline metal salts on the solvent extraction of platinum from leached spent dehydrogenation catalysts (Pt/Al2O3) in aqua-regia by the Trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) has been investigated. Best salting out effect was achieved using KCl as the additive salt in which process upto 90% of Platinum extraction achieved. Response Surface methodology utilized in order to design the experiments, model the extraction process for platinum and aluminum as well as; optimize the whole process. It was shown that solvent extraction of platinum by TOPO was kinetically fast and the needed equilibrium time for it was less than 30 seconds. In the present study, proposed models for platinum and... 

In this research, data on liquid-liquid extraction of platinum from commercial spent catalysts by trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) in toluene were experimentally obtained. Alkaline metal salts were used to optimize the separation process. Best Salting-out effect was obtained by KCl which extracted up to 90% of platinum utilizing TOPO. Furthermore, extraction percentages of Pt and Al depending upon different factors were investigated. It was observed that the extraction process was kinetically fast and achieving the equilibrium time took less than 30 seconds. Optimized points obtained utilizing response surface methodology (RSM) by the "Design Expert" software in order to minimize the...