Microwave-Assisted Enzymatic Esterification Production of Emollient Esters

Currently, esterification production of isopropyl myristate (IPM) or isopropyl palmitate (IPP) uses a homogeneous or heterogeneous acid substance as a catalyst and is conducted at high temperatures and pressures. Utilization of this type of catalyst requires an additional postproduction process (neutralization and purification), which burdens the production cost. Microwave enzymatic esterification is a simple and fast method. The results showed that reaction time, ratio molar of fatty acids to isopropyl alcohol, catalyst weight, and microwave power have a significant effect on the IPM or IPP conversion. Further, the energy consumption of this process is less than other enzymatic esterification and is certainly more energy efficient, which could save 99 and 29% of processing time.

The sono-photocatalytic performance of a novel water based Ti+4 coated Al(OH)3-MWCNT’s hybrid nanofluid for dye fragmentation

The present study investigates the efficiency of a novel 3D artificially illuminated sono-photocatalytic reactor filled with the suspension of Ti+4 coated Al(OH)3-MWCNT's hybrid nanofluid in removing toxic fragments from the industrial wastewater. Within 40 min of reaction time, the synergistic effect of sonication induced photocatalysis achieved 99 percent dye degradation. Using response surface methodology (RSM-CCD) and artificial neural network (ANN) methods, the behaviour of the process in terms of reactor independent variables on dye removal was investigated and optimised. Both approaches proved to have a very good performance in modelling of the process and from RSM model, the optimum experimental conditions were at 0.5 vol% nanofluid concentration, 60 °C nanofluid temperature, and 60 min reaction time. Besides that, a quadratic polynomial equation (R 2 = 0.984) well describes the equilibrium data. Furthermore, the study of variance (ANOVA) approach revealed that the input parameters and their interactions had a substantial impact on the response variable. With an R 2 value of 0.999, the engineered multilayer perceptron ANN successfully validated the experimental findings. Given the significant improvement in photocatalytic degradation of industrial wastewater, the current research can be viewed as a promising pre-treatment step for producing low toxic intermediates.