The application of heterogeneous catalysts in dimethyl carbonate (DMC) synthesis from methanol is hindered by low activation efficiency of methanol to methoxy intermediates (CH3O*), which is the key intermediate for DMC generation. Herein, a catalyst of alkali metal K anchored on the CuO/ZnO oxide is rationally designed for offering Lewis acid-base pairs as dual active centers to improve the activation efficiency of methanol. Characterizations of CO2-TPD, NH3-TPD, XPS, and DRIFTS revealed that the addition of Lewis base K observably boosted the dissociation of methanol and combined with Lewis acid CuO/ZnO oxide to adsorb the formed CH3O* stably, thus synergistically promoted the transesterification. Finally, the CuO/ZnO-9%K2O catalyst exhibited the optimal catalytic activity, achieving a high yield of 74.4% with an excellent selectivity of 98.9% for DMC at a low temperature of 90 °C. The strategy of constructing Lewis acid-base pairs provides a reference for the design of heterogeneous catalysts.

The exploration of efficient and environmentally friendly oxidation method is highly desirable to overcome the critical problems of poor selectivity and heavy metal contamination for the fine chemicals industry. Herein, a self-supported 3D Se-Ni5P4 nanosheet electrocatalyst was rationally designed and fabricated. Benefiting from the synergistic effect of aminoxyl radical and mesoporous Se-Ni5P4/GF, an excellent performance of ≥98% selectivity and 33.12 kg/(m3·h) space-time yield was obtained for sterol intermediate oxidation with the enhanced mass transfer effect of the continuous flow system. The doping of anionic selenium and phosphorus modulated the electronic structure of Se-Ni5P4, and the oxyhydroxides generated by surface reconstruction accelerated the turnover of TEMPO, thereby enhancing the intrinsic electrocatalytic activity. A scale-up experiment was conducted with stacked-flow electrolyzer demonstrated the application potential. This work provided an efficient synergistic electrocatalytic strategy to facilitate rapid electron and mass transfer for electrochemical alcohol oxidation and highlighted the potential for practical electrosynthesis applications.

Economical uranium adsorption from seawater remains a crucial task for energy and environmental safety. Aiming for improving the mass transfer rate of uranium adsorption. Herein, a novel 2D porous aromatic framework(PAF) based on nucleophilic substitution of 2,5-dichloro benzonitrile was synthesized, with an ordered prous structure, excellent stability and selectivity of uranium extraction from seawater. PAF shows excellent uranium adsorption capacity of 637 mg/g and 3.22 mg/g in simulated and real seawater because of highly accessible pores on the walls of open channels. In addition, benefiting from the super-hydrophilicity due to the presence of amidoxime groups attributes high selectivity and ultrafast kinetics with an uptake rate of 0.43±0.03 mg/g.day and allowing half-saturation within 1.35±0.09 day. This strategy demonstrates a potential of PAF not only in uranium trap but also possess a power to monitor water quality. This technique can be extended in other applications by sensible planning target ligands

Accurately constructing membranes based on two-dimensional (2D) materials on commercial porous substrates remains a significant challenge for H2 purification. In this work, a series of tubular 2D MXene membranes are prepared on commercial porous stainless steel substrates via fast electrophoretic deposition. Compared with other methods, such as filtration or drop coating, etc. such preparation route shows the advantages of simple operation, high efficiency for membrane assembly (within 5 min) with attractive reproducibility, and ease for scale-up. The tubular MXene membranes present excellent gas separation performance with hydrogen permeance of 1290 GPU and H2/CO2 selectivity of 55. Furthermore, the membrane displays extremely stable performance during the long-term test for more than 1250 h, and about 93% of the membranes from one batch have exceeded the DOE target for CO2 capture. Most importantly, this work provides a valuable referential significance for other types of 2D materials-based membranes for future application development.

A document by Guillaume Hopsort. Click on the document to view its contents.

Classical molecular dynamics simulations were used to study the separation of carbon dioxide from methane by three formulations of the deep eutectic solvent (DES) ethaline (choline chloride: ethylene glycol at 1:2, 1:4 and 1:8 molar ratios), in the bulk and confined inside carbon and titania slit pores of two different pore widths, 2 nm and 5 nm. The highest permselectivities (~20) are observed for 1:2 ethaline in a 5 nm carbon pore, followed by the 1:4 DES in a 5 nm graphite pore, 1:2 ethaline in a 2 nm carbon pore and the 1:8 bulk DES. Our results indicate that variations in the ratio of ethylene glycol, which in turn affect the interactions of all DES species with the gas molecules and the different pore walls, plus confinement effects resulting from varying the pore sizes, can affect the gas separation performance of these systems in complex ways.

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As key components of antifouling material surfaces, the design and screening of polymer molecules grafted on the substrate are critical. However, current experimental and computational models still retain an empirical flavor due to the complex structure of polymers. Here, we report a simple and general strategy that enables multi-scale design and screening of easily synthesized functional polymer molecules to address this challenge. Specifically, the required functions of the antifouling material are decomposed and assigned to different modules of the polymer molecules. By designing different modules, a novel bio-inspired polymer with three zwitterionic poly (sulfobetaine methacrylate) (PSBMA) chains, three catechol (DOPA) anchors (tri-DOPA-PSBMA), and a tris(2-aminoethyl) amine (TREN) scaffold were screened out. Moreover, it was successfully synthesized via an atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The excellent performance of tri-DOPA-PSBMA with a versatile and convenient grafting strategy makes it a promising material for marine devices, biomedical devices, and industrial applications.

Chaotic flow inside porous media accelerates the transport, mixing, and reaction of molecules and particles in widespread natural and factitious processes. Current macroscopic models based on the average pore-scale variations show obvious limitations in the prediction of many chemical processes. In this paper, we reconstruct microscopic foam structures using Micro Computed Tomography to simulate fluid flow in structured ZSM-5@SiC foam catalyst. Moreover, we propose a conceptual model based on the microscopic mean square displacement theory to characterize the effective dispersion inside an open-cell foam. This model will explain the flow characteristics of confined fluid inside the porous media from fluid elements perspective. Particularly, dispersion factor and structure factor, as key parts of this model, perfectly interpret the driving characteristics of pressure drop, velocity different, and reaction in continuous foam media flow. This work also provides a unique means of predicting reaction kinetics of confined fluid in structured foam catalyst.

Molecular imprinting technology has gained increasing attention and application in protein adsorption and separation. Bacterial growth on the imprinted material would reduce the adsorption selectivity of the imprinted cavity, contaminate the isolation products and shorten the service life of the material. To solve the above problems, carrier materials with dual antibacterial ability are constructed for the first time and novel surface protein imprinted microspheres (GO-PEI/MXene@MIPs) are manufactured. Thanks to the large exterior surface area, the saturation adsorption amount of GO-PEI/MXene@MIPs reaches 312.63 mg/g with an imprinting factor (IF) value of 3.16 within 90 min. Meanwhile, this imprinted material also exhibits a high ability to separate real samples as well as reusability. In addition, this material has excellent broad-spectrum antibacterial effects, which will significantly extend its service life in real-world environments. This study provides a feasible solution for the application of surface protein imprinted materials in real-world environments.

A robust aluminum-based metal-organic framework (Al-MOF) MIL-120Al with 1D rhombic ultra-microporous was reported. The non-polar porous walls composed of para-benzene rings with a comparable pore size to the kinetic diameter of methane allow it to exhibit a novel thermodynamic-kinetic synergistic separation of CH4/N2 mixtures. The CH4 adsorption capacity was as high as 33.7 cm3/g (298 K, 1 bar), which is the highest uptake value among the Al-MOFs reported to date. The diffusion rates of CH4 were faster than N2 in this structure as confirmed by time-dependent kinetic adsorption profiles. Breakthrough experiments confirm that this MOF can completely separate the CH4/N2 mixture and the separation performance is not affected in the presence of H2O. Theoretical calculations reveal that pore centers with more energetically-favorable binding sites for CH4 than N2. The results of pressure swing adsorption (PSA) simulations indicate that MIL-120Al is a potential candidate for selective capture coal-mine methane.

In the present work, a series of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) based on organic amine as hydrogen bond acceptors (HBAs), and ethylene glycol (EG) as hydrogen bond donor (HBD) were prepared for the H2S absorption. Thermal decomposition temperature, HBA mass ratios, alkalinity and structure effect on absorption behavior were systematically investigated. The reaction mechanism was demonstrated by FT-IR and 1H NMR spectroscopy. The reaction equilibrium constants, Henry constant, enthalpy and entropy change were calculated based on the thermodynamic model to reveal the interactions between DESs and H2S. It is found that H2S absorption capacities of the most of DESs with HBA/HBD mass ratio of 1:4 were close to 1mol /mol at 303.15K and 0.2 bar. The absorption capacity of DESs depends on the alkalinity and structure of HBAs; Additionally, a good linear correlation between the alkalinity of HBA and the absorption equilibrium constant (lnK) of DESs to H2S was found

We built a molecular-level kinetic model for hydrocarbon catalytic cracking, incorporating the catalyst acidity as the parameter to estimate the reaction rates. The n-decane and 1-hexene co-conversion catalytic cracking process was chosen as the studying case. The reaction network was automatically generated with a computer-aided algorithm. A modified linear free energy relationship was proposed to estimate the activation energy in a complex reaction system. The kinetic parameters were initially regressed from the experimental data under various reaction conditions. On this basis, the product composition was evaluated for three catalytic cracking catalysts with different Si/Al. The Bronsted acid and Lewis acid as the key catalyst properties were correlated with the kinetic parameters. The built model can calculate the product distribution, and molecular composition at different reaction conditions for different catalysts. The sensitive study shows that it will facilitate the model-based optimization of catalysts and reaction conditions according to product demands.

Mo-based catalysts are widely used for the SO2 hydrogenation process. However, the detailed reaction mechanism is still unclear and some details should be further supplemented. In this paper, the SO2 hydrogenation processes over the Mo-based catalyst were systematically studied. Several technologies including temperature-programmed experiments, isotope-tracing experiment, FTIR spectra and switching experiment were adopted to investigate the reaction steps. The results indicated that during the SO2 hydrogena

Error-in-variables model (EVM) methods are used for parameter estimation when independent variables are uncertain. During EVM parameter estimation, output measurement variances are required as weighting factors in the objective function. These variances can be estimated based on data from replicate experiments. However, conducting replicates is complicated when independent variables are uncertain. Instead, pseudo-replicate runs may be performed where the target values of inputs for repeated runs are the same, but the true input values may be different. Here, we propose a method to estimate output-measurement variances for use in multivariate EVM estimation problems, based on pseudo-replicate data. We also propose a bootstrap technique for quantifying uncertainties in resulting parameter estimates and model predictions. The methods are illustrated using a case study involving n-hexane hydroisomerization in a well-mixed reactor. Case-study results reveal that assumptions about input uncertainties can have important influences on parameter estimates, model predictions and their confidence intervals.

The suitability of phenyl–based deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as absorbents for toluene absorption was investigated by means of thermodynamic modeling and molecular dynamics (MD). The thermodynamic models PC–SAFT and COSMO–RS were used to predict the vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) of DES–toluene systems. PC–SAFT yielded quantitative results even without using any binary fitting parameters. Among the DESs consisting of three different HBAs and three different HBDs (phenol, levulinic acid, ethylene glycol), [TEBAC][PhOH] was considered as the most suitable absorbent. Systems with [TEBAC][PhOH] had lowest equilibrium pressures of the considered DES–toluene mixtures, the best thermodynamic characteristics (i.e., Henry’s law constant, excess enthalpy, free energy of solvation of toluene), and the highest self–diffusion coefficient of toluene. The molecular–level mechanism was explored by MD simulations, indicating that [TEBAC][PhOH] has the strongest interaction of HBA–/HBD–toluene compared to the other DESs under study. This work provides guidance to rationally design novel DESs for efficient aromatic VOCs absorption.

The experimental and simulation results indicate that the reverse Brazil nut effect (RBNE)-Brazil nut effect (BNE) segregation inversion happens faster in the circular-bottom container than that in the flat-bottom container. The starting location of the sinkage of heavier grains at the top layer is triggered with certain randomness in the latter, whereas it first occurs at either of the lateral bottom edges in the former. The occurrence of standing-wave resonant spots of higher and lower granular temperature accelerates the RBNE-BNE transition. From the elastic collision model of single grain, the bottom with a larger angle leads to more energy transfer from the vertical direction. The simulation results of a monodisperse granular bed confirm that the circular-bottom container possesses a higher granular temperature and a lower packing density at the lateral edges of the circular bottom, whereas the flat-bottom container has a uniform standing-wave distribution with a period.

Lamellar membranes, especially assembled by microporous framework nanosheets, have excited interest for fast molecular permeation. However, the underlying molecular dissolution behaviors on membrane surface, especially at pore entrances, remain unclear. Here, hierarchical metal-organic framework (MOF) lamellar membranes with 7 nm-thick surface layer and 553 nm-thick support layer are prepared. Hydrophilic (–NH2) or hydrophobic (–CH3) groups are decorated at pore entrances on surface layer to manipulate wettability, while –CH3 groups on support layer provide comparable, low-resistance paths. We demonstrate that molecular dissolution behaviors are determined by molecule-molecule and molecule-pore interactions, derived from intrinsic parameters of molecule and membrane. Importantly, two dissolution model equations are established: for hydrophobic membrane surface, dissolution activation energy (ES) obeys ES=Kmln[(γL-γC)μd2], while turns to ES=Kaln[(γL-γC)δeμd2] for hydrophilic one. Particularly, hydrophilic pore entrances exert strong interaction with polar molecules, thus compensating the energy consumed by molecule rearrangement, giving fast permeation (> 270 L m-2 h-1 bar-1).