Exploring the Role of Female Successor “Amrah Bint Abd Al-Raḥmān” in Narration of Prophetic Traditions

Although several studies have investigated the contribution of Muslim women about their lives and works in large corpus of the ḥadīth sciences until now, but much are needed to be explored. Doubtlessly 'Amrah bint 'Abd al-Raḥmān had contributed to the large corpus of the ḥadīth sciences and also the core of Islamic knowledge parallel to her male counterparts. By highlighting her efforts for learning and her struggle for transmission of fundamental text, reveals how a female successor acquired exemplary reputations in her era. Particularly, her rich insight, deep knowledge in ḥadīth sciences and exemplary piety attracted students and placed parallel to her male counterparts in Islamic knowledge of her time. In sum, this study not merely sheds light upon the prolific contribution of an eminent female successor 'Amrah bint 'Abd al-Raḥmān in ḥadīth narrations, but argues that these scholarly females should be given more credit for being interacting educators and not just transmitters. Doubtlewssly, the study would be helpful to revise our understandings of Islamic knowledge during early period of Islam regarding gendered dynamics and their great contribution to dissemination and transmission of classical text and Islamic knowledge.

Production of Biodiesel Using Heterogeneous Catalyst and Super Critical Fluid Extraction

Biodiesel is the only possible reciprocal to petro diesel and a boon to the fast depleting fossil fuel resources. Biofuel is produced from different feedstock including Algae, seeds of some terrestrial plants like Jatropha curcas, pongamia, castor, palm and oily wastes. The thesis addresses the multi-dimensional areas associated with the biodiesel production processes, covering the entire scope from seed based to non-terrestrial microalgae feedstock cultivation, extraction and its efficient conversion into liquid fuels. Design and development of efficient screw press expeller for oil expression from jatropha curcas seeds was the first investigation. This study is aimed to make efficient screw expeller to cater massive Jatropha biomass and its oil extraction. Experimental validation of the simulation is used to improve oil expeller for Jatropha seed by fabricating the expeller following the design and analysis by ANSYS FLUENT codes. An oil yield in excess of 98%, as compared to a maximum 75% for existing screw expellers, was achieved in practical runs which is very promising. An innovative airlift tubular photobioreactor was developed for growing algae in simulated conditions. Algal strain Chlorella sp was inoculated in photobioreactor which was sparged with air and carbon dioxide. The novel photobioreactor recorded a maximum experimental average yield of 0.65 g/L.day (13.3 g/m2.day) as compared to theoretical modeled yield of 0.82 g/L.day (14.26 g/m2.day), suggesting the device can be efficiently and cost-effectively employed in the production of algal biomass for biofuels. Supercritical Carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) fluid extraction (SCFE) was carried out to extract oil from Jatropha Curcas L. and microalgae (Chlorella Vulgaris) for biofuel production. The extraction was performed at temperature ranges of 40-80 oC and pressure of 4000-9000 psi in-order to investigate the optimum process parameters for Jatropha Curcas and microalgae biomass. The optimum yield for Jatropha was found to be 30.6 wt% and for microalgae it was 17.7 wt% (based on total oil contents present in the biomass) which was in close agreement with the time consuming traditional n-hexane based solvent extraction. The algal oil was then transesterified into biodiesel using nano-photo heterogeneous catalyst. The biodiesel produced using photosensitive catalyst was then characterized by using analytical techniques like GCMS and NMR and results are discussed. The physical properties of biodiesel are also analyzed according to ASTM standards.