Comparative Analysis of Naira/US Dollar Exchange Rate Volatility using GARCH Variant Modeling

This paper employed This paper employed the GARCH variance models to examine the return volatilities of official bank, interbank and Bureau de change. Using the monthly exchange rate of Naira/USD from January 2004 to September 2020 (2004:1-2020:9), it was observed that the returns were not normally distributed and were stationary at level. The power statistics of Ljung-Box Q and Ljung-Box Q2 transformed, using the powers 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 for conditional heteroscedasticity and lags of 6, 12 and 20 to indicate conditional heteroscedascity in all returns. The study also found exchange rate volatility in official, interbank and Bureau de change, observing that exchange rate returns were persistent. However, Bureau de change return was relatively more persistent while official exchange rate return was the least persistent. Also, it can be said that leverage effect exists in all the three exchange rate returns; while asymmetric model was the best model to estimate the exchange rate, IGARCH was not a suitable model to estimate the exchange rate return in Nigeria. There is also a need to incorporate the impact of news when developing an exchange rate policy by the monetary authority in Nigeria.&nbsp

Determinant of Foreign Direct Investment and Its Effect on Economics Growth: Evidence from Nigeria

The Paper focus on the determinant of FDI in Nigeria, it covered the period of 1980-2013, using OLS to determine the effect of independent variable on the dependent variable, the variables are integrated of order one I(1). Per capita, economic growth, education and trade openness has positive impact in attracting FDI, significant and has expected signs, wage rate is significant but not consistent with priori expectation, infrastructure has negative effect on FDI and significant and depreciation of Naira also has negative effect on FDI, has expected sign and significant. The independent variables has 86 percent (R2) 86 percent explanatory power on dependent variable, the residual is stable and white noise, the model is stable, no functional form misspecification, no serial correlation (autocorrelation) in the regression, the residual is homogenous and normally distributed. We proffered the following recommendation; (1) Government should try to improved or speed up the economic growth rate as it has positive in attracting FDI into the economic (2) Policy to encourage flow of FDI in other sectors of the economy other than resource sector should put in place (3) Infrastructure facilities should be put in place to promote business and reduce the cause of doing business in the country (4) Exchange rate policy that aims at stabilizing the value of the Naira will improve the FDI inflow into the economy (5) Government should continue to increase  on the education of the populace and improve the quality of the education in the economy. Keywords: FDI Determinant, Effect on Economic Growth, evidence Nigeria. JEL CLASSIFICATION CODE: F21

Heterogeneous catalyst screening for biodiesel production from Moringa oil

The production of biodiesel as an alternative to fossil fuels has gained world interest nowadays due to global energy crisis and environmental awareness. Biodiesel is the preferred choice because it is environmental friendly as it decreases the possibility of acid rain and greenhouse effect by reducing the emission amount of COx, SOx and hydrocarbons that are incompletely burned during fuel combustion compared to diesel1. The strict regulations made by the environmental protection agency (EPA) to reduce the noxious emissions and the governmental legislations have motivated the biodiesel industry to formulate the new makeup diesel/biodiesel blends (B10 and B20)2. According to research by US Geological Oil and Gas Journal (1995-2000), Malaysia petroleum resources only can last for less than 50 more years3. Despite new oil reservoir discoveries in areas such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Tupi and Guara fields off South-East Brazil, Sudan, the Caspian Sea, Sakhalin, and in the Artic4, fossil fuels is no longer reliable as it is expensive and depleting sources. Biodiesel sources are renewable as it can be produced from vegetable oil, tallow, lard and waste cooking oil5. Vegetable oil can be categorized into two, edible and non-edible. Numerous research of biodiesel has been made using edible feedstock like palm, soybean, and sunflower oils. However, considering that edible vegetable oils are expensive, researchers has prompted to establish a cheap feedstock for biodiesel from non-edible crops. This study reports a catalyst screening process for biodiesel production from Moringa oil via transesterification process using various heterogeneous catalysts with methanol. The reaction condition is fixed throughout the process which are 3wt.% catalyst loading, 9:1 methanol to oil ratio, reaction temperature of 60oC and 60 min reaction duration to determine the best catalyst for the biodiesel conversion from Moringa oil

Foreign direct investment in China: It's sectoral and aggregate impact on Economic growth.

This study focuses on the impact of foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the economic growth of China via selected sector of the economy. The time frame used is from 1995 to 2010. Times series data drawn from the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy are used for the analyses. Ordinary least Square multiple linear regression Econometrics models are specified and estimated using E-views statistical software (version7). The Kwiatkowski-Philips-Schmidt-Shin (SPSS) unit root tests for stationary indicates that the variables are stationary at level. The result indicate that there is a negative relationship between FDI and Economic Growth in the primary sector but show a positive relationship in both the secondary and tertiary sectors. However, the aggregate FDI and economic growth shows a positive relationship. We recommend (1) FDI attracting economic policies with greater attention to the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy; (2) FDI attracting economic policies should pay more emphasis on the secondary sector at the early stage of such policies as this sector exerts growth enhancing spillover effects on other sectors and industries is the economy; (3) Economic policies that de-emphasise FDI into the primary sector as this may exert negative influence on economics growth; (4) Human resource capacity building economic policies that would take advantage of technology transfers and managerial skills acquisition occasioned by such FDI, moreso that some corporations technically deprive the host economies ready access to their advance technologies

Foreign direct investment in China: It's sectoral and aggregate impact on Economic growth.

This study focuses on the impact of foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the economic growth of China via selected sector of the economy. The time frame used is from 1995 to 2010. Times series data drawn from the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy are used for the analyses. Ordinary least Square multiple linear regression Econometrics models are specified and estimated using E-views statistical software (version7). The Kwiatkowski-Philips-Schmidt-Shin (SPSS) unit root tests for stationary indicates that the variables are stationary at level. The result indicate that there is a negative relationship between FDI and Economic Growth in the primary sector but show a positive relationship in both the secondary and tertiary sectors. However, the aggregate FDI and economic growth shows a positive relationship. We recommend (1) FDI attracting economic policies with greater attention to the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy; (2) FDI attracting economic policies should pay more emphasis on the secondary sector at the early stage of such policies as this sector exerts growth enhancing spillover effects on other sectors and industries is the economy; (3) Economic policies that de-emphasise FDI into the primary sector as this may exert negative influence on economics growth; (4) Human resource capacity building economic policies that would take advantage of technology transfers and managerial skills acquisition occasioned by such FDI, moreso that some corporations technically deprive the host economies ready access to their advance technologies

Experimental and modelling studies on continuous synthesis and refining of biodiesel in a dedicated bench scale unit using centrifugal contactor separator technology

Continuous synthesis and refining of biodiesel (FAME) using a laboratory scale bench scale unit was explored. The unit consists of three major parts: (i) a continuous centrifugal contactor separator (CCCS) to perform the reaction between sunflower oil and methanol; (ii) a washing unit for the crude FAME with water/acetic acid consisting of a mixer and a liquid-liquid separator; and (iii) a FAME drying unit with air. The continuous setup was successfully used for a 4 h runtime without any operational issues. The CCCS was operated at an oil flow rate of 32 mL/min, rotational speed of 35 Hz, 60 degrees C, a catalyst concentration of 1.2% w/w and a methanol flow rate of 10 mL/min. The flow rate of water (containing 1% w/w acetic acid) for the biodiesel washing unit was 10 mL/min (20 degrees C); the air flow rate (5% humidity) was set at 12 L/min. After 4 h runtime, approximately 7 kg of refined FAME was produced from a cumulative sunflower oil feed of 7.07 kg. The ester content of the refined FAME was 98% w/w (GC). Other relevant product properties were also determined and most were shown to meet the ASTM specifications. The refining section was modelled and optimised using ASPEN software.Practical applications: Synthesis and refining of sunflower biodiesel was successfully performed in a dedicated bench scale unit using centrifugal contactor separator technology. Besides for large scale biodiesel production, this technology has particularly potential to be applied in small mobile biodiesel units due to the compact size, robustness, flexibility in operation and high volumetric productivity of the CCCS devices.</p

Integration of Unmanned Aerial Systems in Class E Airspace: The Effect on Air Traffic Controller Workload

As technology rapidly advances and our imagination is no longer fantasy but instead reality, the aviation community needs to concentrate on the harsh truth of airspace safety. In the situation of integrating unmanned aerial systems (UASs) into the National airspace, UASs outside of terminal areas would generally be permitted to fly their preferred routes, and self-separate, with minimal intervention from air traffic control. From an air traffic control perspective, the integration could raise a number of human performance problems including workload extremes and passive-monitoring demands. One fundamental requirement for operation in the National Air Space is to preserve the safety of the general public. This paper describes an experimental evaluation of the effect different levels of UAS intent information has on air traffic controller workload. The simulation specifically manipulates intent sharing, that is, whether unmanned aerial vehicles provided advance notice of their intended maneuvers. The Effects on air traffic controller workload when control capability is altered were also explored

Simulation of the Oxidation and Combustion of Mixed Diesel-Biodiesel Fuel

A comparative simulation-based research has been set up to obtain valid kinetic models of the oxidation and combustion of biodiesel surrogate and diesel surrogate, as well as mixed diesel-biodiesel surrogates which is used to predict their ignition delay times (IDT). The research consists of the development of the detailed kinetic models of the oxidation and combustion of biodiesel surrogate and diesel surrogate, the validation of the two models with the corresponding experimental IDT data, the merging and the validation of the two models for mixed diesel-biodiesel surrogates. The biodiesel surrogate kinetic model was validated with the experimental IDT data of methyl 9-decenoate at 20 atm and three equivalence ratios. The diesel surrogate kinetic model was validated with the experimental IDT data of n-hexadecane at the pressure ranging from 2 atm to 5 atm and the equivalence ratio of 1.0. The diesel-biodiesel surrogate kinetic model was validated with the experimental IDT data of real diesel-biodiesel fuels for four compositions and at 1.18 atm. The validation results of all models show that the models and the experiments are in good agreement