Co-Hydrothermal Liquefaction of algal and lignocellulosic biomass: Status and perspectives

Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) effectively converts biomass to biofuels, thereby limiting the endless reliance on petroleum products derived from fossil fuels. However, the conversion is based on individual feedstock in the HTL process. In order to, further boost the conversion, HTL can be done by blending various feedstock, mainly algal and lignocellulosic biomass. Bibliometric analysis was carried out, and it was observed that there have been very few studies on Co-Hydrothermal Liquefaction (Co-HTL). There still exist several crucial gaps in process optimization when co-reactants are used due to their synergistic effects. The reaction kinetics and mechanism, catalyst screening and by-products application require further studies. Therefore, R&D is necessary to optimize the process to completely utilize the complementarity of the feedstocks under study resulting in better quality of products which require minor/ no upgradation steps.

Antioxidative mechanisms in chlorogenic acid

Although chlorogenic acid (5CQA) is an important ingredient of various foods and beverages, mechanisms of its antioxidative action have not been fully clarified. Besides electron spin resonance experiment, this study includes thermodynamic and mechanistic investigations of the hydrogen atom transfer (HAT), radical adduct formation (RAF), sequential proton loss electron transfer (SPLET), and single electron transfer - proton transfer (SET-PT) mechanisms of 5CQA in benzene, ethanol, and water solutions. The calculations were performed using the M06-2X/6-311++G(d,p) level of theory and CPCM solvation model. It was found that SET-PT is not a plausible antioxidative mechanism of 5CQA. RAF pathways are faster, but HAT yields thermodynamically more stable radical products, indicating that in acidic and neutral media 5CQA can take either HAT or RAF pathways. In basic environment (e.g. at physiological pH) SPLET is the likely antioxidative mechanism of 5CQA with extremely high rate.

Mathematical modeling of autotrophic denitrification (AD) process with sulphide as electron donor

Autotrophic denitrification (AD) plays a critical role in nitrate removal from organic carbon-deficient wastewaters with a high level of nitrogen oxides. However, the AD process is not included in the current denitrification models, which limits the application of AD technology for wastewater treatment. In this work, a kinetic model for AD process involved 4 processes and 5 components with 9 parameters is established to describe the sulphide biooxidation and nitrite removal process. In this model, 4 oxidation-reduction reactions using sulphide as electronic donor in the AD process are taken into account. The model parameters are optimized by fitting data from the experiments with different combinations of sulphide, sulphur, sulphate, nitrate and nitrite at various concentrations. Model calibration and validation results demonstrate that the developed model is able to reasonably describe the removal rates of nitrate, nitrite, sulphide and sulphur in the AD process. The model simulation results also show that the sulphur term (η(S)) in the kinetic equations of nitrate, nitrite, sulphur and sulphate remains constant, rather than being controlled by its own concentration. Furthermore, with this model the products of sulphide biooxidation in the AD process, sulphur and sulphate, and their concentrations can be accurately predicted. Therefore, this model provides a strategy to control the sulphate concentration below the discharge limits or recover sulphur as the main end product from sulphide biooxidation.

A novel approach to the theory of homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation

A new approach to the theory of nucleation, formulated relatively recently by Ruckenstein, Narsimhan, and Nowakowski (see Refs. [7-16]) and developed further by Ruckenstein and other colleagues, is presented. In contrast to the classical nucleation theory, which is based on calculating the free energy of formation of a cluster of the new phase as a function of its size on the basis of macroscopic thermodynamics, the proposed theory uses the kinetic theory of fluids to calculate the condensation (W(+)) and dissociation (W(-)) rates on and from the surface of the cluster, respectively. The dissociation rate of a monomer from a cluster is evaluated from the average time spent by a surface monomer in the potential well as obtained from the solution of the Fokker-Planck equation in the phase space of position and momentum for liquid-to-solid transition and the phase space of energy for vapor-to-liquid transition. The condensation rates are calculated using traditional expressions. The knowledge of those two rates allows one to calculate the size of the critical cluster from the equality W(+)=W(-) as well as the rate of nucleation. The developed microscopic approach allows one to avoid the controversial application of classical thermodynamics to the description of nuclei which contain a few molecules. The new theory was applied to a number of cases, such as the liquid-to-solid and vapor-to-liquid phase transitions, binary nucleation, heterogeneous nucleation, nucleation on soluble particles and protein folding. The theory predicts higher nucleation rates at high saturation ratios (small critical clusters) than the classical nucleation theory for both solid-to-liquid as well as vapor-to-liquid transitions. As expected, at low saturation ratios for which the size of the critical cluster is large, the results of the new theory are consistent with those of the classical one. The present approach was combined with the density functional theory to account for the density profile in the cluster. This approach was also applied to protein folding, viewed as the evolution of a cluster of native residues of spherical shape within a protein molecule, which could explain protein folding/unfolding and their dependence on temperature.