Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 

Abstract: Biofuels produced from various lignocellulosic materials, such as wood, agricultural, or forest residues, have the potential to be a valuable substitute for, or complement to, gasoline. Many physicochemical structural and compositional factors hinder the hydrolysis of cellulose present in biomass to sugars and other organic compounds that can later be converted to fuels. The goal of pretreatment is to make the cellulose accessible to hydrolysis for conversion to fuels. Various pretreatment techniques change the physical and chemical structure of the lignocellulosic biomass and improve hydrolysis rates. During the past few years a large number of pretreatment methods have been developed, including alkali treatment, ammonia explosion, and others. Many methods have been shown to result in high sugar yields, above 90% of the theoretical yield for lignocellulosic biomasses such as woods, grasses, corn, and so on. In this review, we discuss the various pretreatment process methods and the recent literature that...

Abstract: A modified SAFT equation of state is developed by applying the perturbation theory of Barker and Henderson to a hard-chain reference fluid. With conventional one-fluid mixing rules, the equation of state is applicable to mixtures of small spherical molecules such as gases, nonspherical solvents, and chainlike polymers. The three pure-component parameters required for nonassociating molecules were identified for 78 substances by correlating vapor pressures and liquid volumes. The equation of state gives good fits to these properties and agrees well with caloric properties. When applied to vapor−liquid equilibria of mixtures, the equation of state shows substantial predictive capabilities and good precision for correlating mixtures. Comparisons to the SAFT version of Huang and Radosz reveal a clear improvement of the proposed model. A brief comparison with the Peng−Robinson model is also given for vapor−liquid equilibria of binary systems, confirming the good performance of the suggested equation of state. ...

Abstract: The effects of solution pH and temperature on the adsorption of fluoride onto bone char made from cattle bones were investigated in this work. It was found that the maximum adsorption took place at pH 3 and the adsorption capacity decreased nearly 20 times augmenting the pH from 3 to 12. This behavior was attributed to the electrostatic interactions between the surface of bone char and the fluoride ions in solution. The adsorption capacity was not influenced by temperature in the range from 15 to 35 °C. A comparison of fluoride adsorption capacities among several adsorbents revealed that the adsorption capacity of the bone char was 2.8 and 36 times greater than those of a commercial activated alumina (F-1) and a commercial activated carbon (F-400). The adsorption capacity is considerably dependent upon the physicochemical properties of the bone char surface and the solution pH.

Abstract: An equation of state for associating liquids is presented as a sum of three Helmholtz energy terms: Lennard-Lones (LJ) segment (temperature-dependent hard sphere + dispersion), chain (increment due to chain formation), and association (increment due to association). This equation of state has been developed by extending Wertheim’s theory obtained from a resummed cluster expansion. Pure component molecules are characterized by segment diameter, segment-segment interaction energy, for example, Lennard-Jones u and E, and chain length expressed as the number of segments. There are also two association parameters, the association energy and volume, characteristic of each site-site pair. The agreement with molecular simulation data is shown to be excellent at all the stages of development for associating spheres, mixtures of associating spheres, and nonassociating chains. The model has been shown to reproduce experimental phase equilibrium data for a few selected real pure compounds.

Abstract: Biodiesel is produced by the transesterification of oil triglycerides with methanol or ethanol, in the presence of a homogeneous or heterogeneous catalyst. This study aims to report the results of the transesterification of sunflower oil with methanol to produce biodiesel using CaO nanoparticles supported on NaX zeolite as catalyst. The effect of the CaO nanoparticles concentration on the NaX zeolite surface was studied in the range of 5−25 wt %. The transesterification reaction was carried out at reflux temperature of methanol, atmospheric pressure, a reaction time of 6 h, and with a 6:1 molar ratio of methanol to sunflower oil. Catalyst characterization was carried out by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It was concluded that methyl esters content is highly influenced by basicity and that the best catalyst was the one holding 16 wt % CaO nanoparticles. The produced biodiesel was 93.5% methyl esters and was found to fulfill the specifications of Europ...