Novel Reactor for Exothermic Heterogeneous Reaction Systems: Intensification of Mass and Heat Transfer and Application to Vegetable Oil Epoxidation

Enhanced fabrication of size-controllable chitosan-genipin nanoparticles using orifice-induced hydrodynamic cavitation: Process optimization and performance evaluation

Chitosan nanoparticles (NPs) possess great potential in biomedical fields. Orifice-induced hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) has been used for the enhancement of fabrication of size-controllable genipin-crosslinked chitosan (chitosan-genipin) NPs based on the emulsion cross-linking (ECLK). Experiments have been performed using various plate geometries, chitosan molecular weight and under different operational parameters such as inlet pressure (1-3.5 bar), outlet pressure (0-1.5 bar) and cross-linking temperature (40-70 °C). Orifice plate geometry was a crucial factor affecting the properties of NPs, and the optimized geometry of orifice plate was with single hole of 3.0 mm diameter. The size of NPs with polydispersity index of 0.359 was 312.6 nm at an optimized inlet pressure of 3.0 bar, and the maximum production yield reached 84.82 %. Chitosan with too high or too low initial molecular weight (e.g., chitosan oligosaccharide) was not applicable for producing ultra-fine and narrow-distributed NPs. There existed a non-linear monotonically-increasing relationship between cavitation number (Cv) and chitosan NP size. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) test indicated that the prepared NPs were discrete with spherical shape. The study demonstrated the superiority of HC in reducing particle size and size distribution of NPs, and the energy efficiency of orifice type HC-processed ECLK was two orders of magnitude than that of ultrasonic horn or high shear homogenization-processed ECLK. In vitro drug-release studies showed that the fabricated NPs had great potential as a drug delivery system. The observations of this study can offer strong support for HC to enhance the fabrication of size-controllable chitosan-genipin NPs.

Hydrodynamic cavitation: A feasible approach to intensify the emulsion cross-linking process for chitosan nanoparticle synthesis

Chitosan nanoparticles (NPs) exhibit great potential in drug-controlled release systems. A controlled hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) technique was developed to intensify the emulsion crosslinking process for the synthesis of chitosan NPs. Experiments were performed using a circular venturi and under varying operating conditions, i.e., types of oil, addition mode of glutaraldehyde (Glu) solution, inlet pressure (P_in), and rheological properties of chitosan solution. Palm oil was more appropriate for use as the oil phase for the HC-intensified process than the other oil types. The addition mode of water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion containing Glu (with Span 80) was more favorable than the other modes for obtaining a narrow distribution of chitosan NPs. The minimum size of NPs with polydispersity index of 0.342 was 286.5 nm, and the maximum production yield (P_y) could reach 47.26%. A positive correlation was found between the size of NPs and the droplet size of W/O emulsion containing chitosan at increasing P_in. Particle size, size distribution, and the formation of NPs were greatly dependent on the rheological properties of the chitosan solution. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis indicated that the molecular structure of palm oil was unaffected by HC-induced effects. Compared with ultrasonic horn, stirring-based, and conventional drop-by-drop processes, the application of HC to intensify the emulsion crosslinking process allowed the preparation of a finer and a narrower distribution of chitosan NPs in a more energy-efficient manner. The novel route developed in this work is a viable option for chitosan NP synthesis.

Scale-up of vortex based hydrodynamic cavitation devices: A case of degradation of di-chloro aniline in water

Hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) is being increasingly used in a wide range of applications. Unlike ultrasonic cavitation, HC is scalable and has been used at large scale industrial applications. However, no information about influence of scale on performance of HC is available in the open literature. In this work, we present for the first time, experimental data on use of HC for degradation of complex organic pollutants in water on four different scales (~200 times scale-up in terms of capacity). Vortex based HC devices offer various advantages like early inception, high cavitational yield and significantly lower propensity to clogging and erosion. We have used vortex based HC devices in this work. 2,4 dichloroaniline (DCA) - an aromatic compound with multiple functional groups was considered as a model pollutant. Degradation of DCA in water was performed using vortex-based HC devices with characteristic throat dimension, dt as 3, 6, 12 and 38 mm with scale-up of almost 200 time based on the flow rates (1.3 to 247 LPM). Considering the experimental constraints on operating the largest scale HC device, the experimental data is presented here at only one value of pressure drop across HC device (280 kPa). A previously used per-pass degradation model was extended to describe the experimental data for the pollutant used in this study and a generalised form is presented. The degradation performance was found to decrease with increase in the scale and then plateaus. Appropriate correlation was developed based on the experimental data. The developed approach and presented results provide a sound basis and a data set for further development of comprehensive multi-scale modelling of HC devices.

Catalytic developments in the epoxidation of vegetable oils and the analysis methods of epoxidized products

Functionalization of vegetable oils (VOs) including edible, non-edible, and waste cooking oil (WCOs) to epoxides (EVOs) is receiving great attention by many researchers from academia and industry because they are renewable, versatile, sustainable, non-toxic, and eco-friendly, and they can partially or totally replace harmful phthalate plasticizers. The epoxidation of VOs on an industrial scale has already been developed by the homogeneous catalytic system using peracids. Due to the drawbacks of this method, other systems including acidic ion exchange resins, polyoxometalates, and enzymes are becoming alternative catalysts for the epoxidation reaction. We have reviewed all these catalytic systems including their benefits and drawbacks, reaction mechanisms, intensification of each system in different ways as well as the physicochemical properties of VOs and EVOs and new findings in recent years. Finally, the current methods including titrimetric methods as well as ATR-FTIR and 1H NMR for determination of conversion, epoxidation, and selectivity of epoxidized vegetable oils (EVOs) are also briefly described.

Room-temperature production of bio-based aldehydes from vegetable oil-derived epoxide via H2WO4@Al-MCM-41 as recyclable catalyst

The oxidative cleavage of vegetable oils and their derivatives to produce bio-based aldehydes is a potentially useful process, although the aldehyde products are readily oxidized to carboxylic acids and thus seldom obtained in high yields. The present study developed a room-temperature method for the synthesis of bio-aldehydes via the oxidative cleavage of vegetable oil-derived epoxides, using H₂WO₄ as the catalyst, H₂O₂ as the oxidant, and t-BuOH as the solvent. Reactions were carried out at temperatures ranging from 25 to 35 °C for 3.5–10.5 h, and provided >99% conversion and >90% aldehyde yield. In particular, an approximately 97% yield was obtained at 25 °C after 10.5 h. As the reaction proceeded, the H₂WO₄ dissolved to form a W-containing anion. Several mesoporous Al-MCM-41 materials having different Si/Al ratios were hydrothermally synthesized and used as adsorbents to recover the catalyst by adsorbing these anions. The adsorption capacity of the Al-MCM-41 was found to increase with decreases in the Si/Al ratio. The Al-MCM-41 had little effect on the oxidative cleavage reaction at 25 °C, and thus could be directly added to the reaction system. The excellent anion adsorption performance of the Al-MCM-41 greatly improved the reusability of the H₂WO₄ catalyst. When using the Al-MCM-41 with the best adsorption performance, there was no significant decrease in the activity of the catalyst following five reuses.

>90% bio-aldehydes yield was obtained from H₂WO₄-catalyzed epoxy vegetable oil at room-temperature; Al-MCM-41 was added to recover catalyst via adsorption.