Sharif Digital Repository

Greenhouses require energy in order to provide a proper environment for crop production. Utilizing solar energy in solar greenhouses is a sustainable solution to face this problem. In this study, a solar greenhouse concept is considered, and a dynamic thermal model is developed to predict the inside air temperature. The model is integrated into an optimization procedure to find the optimal greenhouse design that has the best thermal performance by adjusting its structural parameters. This optimization procedure provides a tool to find the optimal solar greenhouse design for each climate condition and predict its performance. For instance, for the case study of Tehran (Iran), the optimal... 

A high-throughput solid-phase microextraction (SPME) on 96-well plate together with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was developed for the determination of some selected pesticides in cucumber samples. Pieces with the length of 1.0cm of silicon tubing were precisely prepared and then coated on the end part of stainless steel wires. The prepared fibers were positioned in a home-made polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)-based constructed ninety-six holes block to have the possibility of simultaneous immersion of the SPME fibers into the center of individual wells. Pesticides such as diazinon, penconazol, tebuconazol, bitertanol, malathion, phosalone and chlorpyrifos-methyl were selected... 

In this work, a colorimetric sensor array has been designed for the identification and discrimination of thiometon (TM) and phosalone (PS) as organophosphate pesticides and prothioconazole (PC) as a triazole pesticide. For this purpose, two different plasmonic nanoparticles including unmodified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and unmodified silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were used as sensing elements. The principle of the proposed strategy relied on the aggregation AuNPs and AgNPs through the cross-reactive interaction between the target pesticides and plasmonic nanoparticles. Therefore, these aggregation-induced UV–Vis spectra changes were utilized to discriminate the target pesticides with the... 

Biomass, originates from plant- or animal-based materials with a huge potential to be reused. Here we report a simple, rapid and inexpensive method for preparation of modified biochars derived from the banana peel followed by their applications in pipette-tip micro solid-phase extraction (PT-µSPE). Due to the contribution of various effective parameters on modification of banana peel biochars (BPBs), Taguchi design was used to optimize activation temperature, activation repetition, treatment material and impregnation ratio. Efficiency of the prepared BPBs were studied by extraction of twelve various pesticides, as model analytes with an extended range of log P values (1.4–5.7), followed by...