IMPACT : International Journal of Research in Engineering & Technology

19-30

Authors: Saleh H. Al-Sharidi, Husin Sitepu & Noktan M. AlYami

The World Health Organization has raised concerns about the accidental fuel leakage during storage and transportation and, therefore extensive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) use has led to cases of natural water contamination [1-9]. This article describes the (i) visible light reaction condition for MTBE, (ii) solid-phase microextraction (SPME) technique incorporated with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to assist the MTBE photo-oxidation process, (iii) catalyst syntheses from different concentration of Ru in tungsten oxide (WO3), nano-WO3, Pt in nano-WO3, and (iv) formation of byproducts during photocatalytic degradation of MTBE by using the GC-MS [10-15]. The experimental results indicated that the MTBE removal can quickly and accurately be achieved in presence of Pt-loaded nanostructured WO3 under visible light radiation, i.e., 96-99% removal between 2.5 hours and 3 hours. The Pt/WO3 nano-composite showed much better photocatalytic MTBE removal than those of the Ru/WO3 and pure nanostructured and micron-sized WO3 [10]. Additionally, the by-products formation during photocatalytic degradation of MTBE obtained from GC-MS revealed that the degradation of MTBE proceeds essentially via formation of formic acid and 1, 1-dimethyl ethyl ester before its complete degradation [10].

39-56

Authors: Mohamed El-Wakeel, Said Abdelkader & Ahmed Kassar

During the end of the last century, marine accidents triggered the maritime community to apply and develop the international regulations for safety and environmental protection. Consequently, Port State Control (PSC) regulations were introduced as a new mechanism to enforce the implementation of such regulations, which aim to exclude the substandard ships from the seaborne fleet and ensure ships safety and reliability in clean seas. However, PSC of a port cannot inspect every ship calling at the port at any time; and a selecting ship for inspection system should be adopted due to time and resource limitations. Two Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)approaches were first used to rank the alternatives; these approaches are the Weighted Sum Model (WSM) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS).In this endeavor, ships to be inspected represent the alternatives and targeting factors represent the attributes; initial results are in favor of TOPSIS.