Search results for "lcsh:Chemical engineering"
showing 10 items of 107 documents
Cholera Toxin Subunit B for Sensitive and Rapid Determination of Exosomes by Gel Filtration.
2020
We developed a sensitive fluorescence-based assay for determination of exosome concentration. In our assay, Cholera toxin subunit B (CTB) conjugated to a fluorescence probe and a gel filtration technique (size-exclusion chromatography) are used. Exosomal membranes are particularly enriched in raft-forming lipids (cholesterol, sphingolipids, and saturated phospholipids) and in GM1 ganglioside. CTB binds specifically and with high affinity to exosomal GM1 ganglioside residing in rafts only, and it has long been the probe of choice for membrane rafts. The CTB-gel filtration assay allows for detection of as little as 3 × 108 isolated exosomes/mL in a standard fluorometer, which has a sensitivit…
High temperature solid-catalized transesterification for biodiesel production
2010
Biodiesel has become more attractive recently because of its environmental benefits and the fact that it is made from renewable resources. Biodiesel is a mixture of monoalkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from renewable feed stock like vegetable oils and animal fats, mainly made of fatty acid glycerides. It is produced by transesterification processes in which oil or fat are reacted with a monohydric alcohol in the presence of a catalyst. The transesterification process is affected by reaction conditions, alcohol to oil molar ratio, type of alcohol, type and amount of catalysts, temperature and purity of reactants. Heterogeneous acid catalysts are quite efficient in promoting the…
Batch Test Evaluation of Four Organic Substrates Suitable for Biological Groundwater Denitrification
2014
Nitrates pollution represents nowadays a serious issue related to the quality of groundwater; continuous growth of industrial-scale agricultures lead to an increase of nitrates content in groundwater in the last years. Several technologies have been validated as capable to promote in situ biological nitrates remediation, such as permeable reactive barriers (PRB), biotrench, biobarriers etc. These technologies are all characterised by the use of organic substrate that act as a slow release carbon source. In free dissolved oxygen absence, such organic carbon is further oxidised, by heterotrophic bacteria naturally present in soil, in compliance to anoxic metabolism by using nitrates bound oxy…
Agronomic Evaluation of Ethiopian Mustard (brassica Carinata A. Braun) Germplasm and Physical-energy Characterization of Crop Residues in a Semi-arid…
2017
Brassica carinata A. Braun is one of the most interesting oilseed crops suited to arid and semi-arid areas for energy purposes. Several studies have highlighted the possibility of introducing this species into cropping systems, typical of Mediterranean region. The aims of this study were to evaluate the agronomic performance of Brassica carinata germplasm under Mediterranean climatic conditions and to assess the physical and energy characteristics of crop residues and pellets made from the residues. A total of 20 different accessions of Brassica carinata were compared in a semi-arid area of Sicily (Italy). In the two-year test period, the main morphological and yield parameters of the acces…
Formation of Hematite Nanotubes by Two-Step Electrochemical Anodization for Efficient Degradation of Organic Pollutants
2016
[EN] Nowadays, hematite (alpha-Fe2O3) has emerged as a promising photocatalyst for efficient degradation of organic pollutants due to its properties such as suitable band-gap (similar to 2.1 eV), stability against photocorrosion, abundance and low cost. However, some drawbacks such as low carrier mobility and short hole diffusion length limit its efficiency. In order to overcome these issues, self-ordered nanotubes can be synthetized. Anodization is one of the simplest and most economic techniques to produce nanostructures with high control. In the present study, self-ordered hematite nanotubes were synthetized by two-step electrochemical anodization. In two-step anodization, a first-step w…
Influence of the Heating Rate on the Annealing Treatment of Iron Oxide Nanostructures Obtained by Electrochemical Anodization under Hydrodynamic Cond…
2017
[EN] Iron oxide nanostructures are promising materials for photoelectrochemical applications such as water splitting. In this work, electrochemical anodization of iron is used to form different iron oxide nanostructures, and the influence of different anodization parameters was studied in order to find the most suitable nanostructure for photocatalysis applications. On the one hand, hydrodynamic conditions were evaluated by stirring the electrode at different rotation speeds during the electrochemical anodization to check their influence on the formation of the nanostructures. On the other hand, different heating rates during the annealing treatment were studied for obtaining efficient iron…
Improvement of membrane performances to enhance the yield of vanillin in a pervaporation reactor.
2014
In membrane reactors, the interaction of reaction and membrane separation can be exploited to achieve a “process intensification”, a key objective of sustainable development. In the present work, the properties that the membrane must have to obtain this result in a pervaporation reactor are analyzed and discussed. Then, the methods to enhance these properties are investigated for the photocatalytic synthesis of vanillin, which represents a case where the recovery from the reactor of vanillin by means of pervaporation while it is produced allows a substantial improvement of the yield, since its further oxidation is thus prevented. To this end, the phenomena that control the permeation of bot…
Synthesis of dimethyl carbonate in supercritical carbon dioxide
2006
The reactivity of carbon dioxide with methanol to form dimethyl carbonate was studied in the presence of the n-butylmethoxytin compounds n-Bu3SnOCH3, n-Bu2Sn(OCH3)2 , and [n-Bu2(CH3O)Sn]2 O. The reaction occurred under solventless conditions at 423 K and was produced by an increase in CO2 pressure. This beneficial effect is primarily attributed to phase behavior. The mass transfer under liquid-vapor biphasic conditions was not limiting when the system reached the supercritical state for a CO2 pressure higher than 16 MPa. Under these conditions, CO2 acted as a reactant and a solvent.
Evaluation of Permeate Quality in Pilot Scale Membrane Distillation Systems
2019
In this work, the salinity of permeate obtained with membrane distillation (MD) in pilot scale systems was analyzed. Experiments were performed with three different spiral-wound commercial modules, one from Solar Spring with 10 m2 surface membrane area and two from Aquastill with 7.2 and 24 m2. Intermittent operation meant that high permeate conductivity was measured in the beginning of each experiment, which was gradually decreasing until reaching a constant value (3&ndash
A Novel System for Measuring Damaging Impacts on Table Olives
2015
The consumer today demands high quality products; fruit with defects or in poor condition generate dissatisfaction and a consequent reduction in consumption. In recent years, interesting systems have been used (i. e. "artificial fruit") in order to identify the cause of damage during mechanical harvesting and/or post-harvest operations. In this paper, the authors present a new system designed to measure the impacts received by table olives in the processing stages from harvesting to packaging. The device is an instrumented sphere designed and implemented by the Agricultural Mechanics Section of the Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy. It contains a t…