Introduction: Nutritional assessment is a prerequisite for nutritional delivery. Patients in intensive care suffer from under-nutrition and nutritional failure due to poor assessment. Nursing ability to early detect nutritional failure is the key for minimizing imparities in practice and attaining nutritional goals. Aim of this article is to examine the ability of Jordanian ICU nurses to assess the nutritional status of critically ill patients, considering biophysical and biochemical measures.Methods: This cross sectional study recruited nurses from different health sectors in Jordan. ICU nurses from the governmental sector (two hospitals) and private sectors (two hospitals) were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. Nurses' knowledge and responsibility towards nutritional assessment were examined.Results: A total of 220 nurses from both sectors have completed the questionnaire. Nurses were consistent in regard to knowledge, responsibility, and documentation of nutritional assessment. Nurses in the governmental hospitals inappropriately perceived the application of aspiration reduction measures. However, they scored higher in applying physical examination and anthropometric assessment.  Although both nurses claimed higher use of biochemical measurements, biophysical measurements were less frequently used. Older nurses with longer clinical experience exhibited better adherence to biophysical measurement than younger nurses.Conclusion: Nursing nutritional assessment is still suboptimal to attain nutritional goals. Assessment of body weight, history of nutrition intake, severity of illness, and function of gastrointestinal tract should be considered over measuring albumin and pre-albumin levels.  A well-defined evidence-based protocol as well as a multidisciplinary nutritional team for nutritional assessment is the best to minimize episodes of under-nutrition.

This work presents an experimental study that aims at investigating the effect of loading-ratio of coal in a coal-diesel fuel mixture on the combustion characteristics and exhaust emissions. Sub-bituminous coal from El-Maghara coal mine is utilized. It is washed, dried, and grounded to particle sizing of ≤ 30 μm. The experiments are conducted inside a horizontal, segmented water-cooled cylindrical furnace fitted with a coaxial burner having a central air assisted atomizer for oil-coal mixture admittance. All experiments are executed at constant input heat of 350 kW and air to fuel ratio of 15:1 while varying the percentage (mass basis: 5% and 10%) of coal in the fuel mixture. The measurements within the flame zone include mean gas temperatures, dry volumetric analyses of species (CO2, NOx, and O2) concentrations, and the accumulative heat transfer to the cooling jacket along the combustor. All measurements are compared regarding the pure oil flame. The results indicate that increasing the coal- loading ratio up to 5wt% leads to a progressive increase in the accumulated heat transferred and the combustor overall efficiency from 40% to 58% within a percentage increase around 45%. In addition a slight reduction in mean gas temperature within the flame zone when compared with the pure oil flame. The reduced flame temperature due to increasing the coal-loading ratio, caused a decline in the volumetric concentrations of NOx from 100 ppm to 20 ppm as expected.

The current work investigates the use of a coal/oil/water slurry as an alternative fuel in boilers and industrial furnaces. Experiments were carried out on chosen flames with constant input heat throughput and variable air/fuel ratios for three major oil/coal/water mixtures (on a mass basis) as follows: (Case1: pure oil; reference case), (Case2: 80%, 10 %, 10 %) and (Case3: 70%, 15%, 15%). The results showed that case 2 had a significant improvement in both heat transfer to the cooling jacket and combustion efficiency, which was accompanied by a decrease in NOx emissions. Further increase in the ratio of coal and water in the fuel mixture (case 3) produced a significant degradation in the overall combustion characteristics, referring to an upper limit of coal and water loading ratios of only 10%. Oil-coal-water slurries are considered a significant alternative source of energy.

As a result of the global energy crisis, all countries around the world are resorting to burning using the solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels, whichever is available. However, because of the difficulty of solid fuel combustion, the global trend goes to liquid fuel combustion as it is easier than solid fuel combustion, then goes to the gaseous fuel according to its ease of combustion than the other two types. But, because of the gaseous fuel scarcity and high price, the tendency to co-fire liquid and gaseous fuels is gaining more attention to get Higher performance and solve problems related to liquid fuels. Double swirlers are used to improve the atomization of liquid fuel and improve the mixing of air with fuel to achieve the highest performance of combustion, thus obtaining clean combustion with low emissions. The goal of the current research is to use dual fuels, to increase the efficiency of the combustion and to solve the problem of fuel scarcity and the difficulty of liquid fuel combustion by using gaseous fuels, in addition, to figure out the effect of the recirculation zone and excess air on the combustion characteristics and NOx. The results showed that cofiring dual fuels increases the efficiency of burning liquid fuel as the gaseous fuel form a hot shield around the liquid flame that reduces evaporation time and fires falling droplets from liquid flame and increases soot oxidization, in addition cofiring raises the temperature inside the furnace which enhances convective heat transfer and reduces the visual and thermal flame lengths which decrease the heat flux from the flame. However, the overall cumulated heat transfer is better than the liquid case. Finally, cofiring gives the ability to efficiently burn biofuels in the future to generate thermal power for the industry especially for cement factories that need high power.

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