Stripping voltammetry of thorium based on adsorptive accumulation

A sensitive stripping voltammetric procedure for quantifying thorium is described. The chelate of thorium with the azo dye Mordant Blue 9 is adsorbed on the hanging mercury drop electrode, and the reduction current of the accumulated chelate is measured during a negative-going potential scan. Cyclic voltammetry is used to characterize the interfacial and redox behaviors. The effects of pH, dye concentration and accumulation potential are discussed. The detection limit is 4 × 10^?10 M (4-min accumulation), a linear current-concentration relationship is observed up to 1.3 × 10^?7 M, and the relative standard deviation (at the 6 × 10^?8 M level) is 3.1%. Possible interferences by trace metals and organic surfactants are investigated. Simultaneous quantitation of thorium and nickel is illustrated.     

A study of peroxyoxalate-chemiluminescence of acriflavine

The chemiluminescence arising from the reaction of bis(2,4,6-trichlorophenyl)oxalate (TCPO) with hydrogen peroxide in the presence of acriflavine has been studied. The relationship between the chemiluminescence intensity and concentrations of TCPO, H2O2, acriflavine and the base sodium salicylate are reported. The kinetic parameters for the peroxyoxalate-chemiluminescence (PO-CL) of acriflavine were evaluated from the computer fitting of the corresponding chemiluminescence intensity-time plots.     

Aromatization of Hantzsch 1,4-Dihydropyridines with Al(NO3)3·9H2O and/or Fe(NO3)3·9H2O in the Presence of Silica Sulfuric Acid Under Mild and Heterogeneous Conditions

A simple and convenient method for the aromatization of Hantzsch 1,4-dihydropyridines to the corresponding pyridines is achieved via combination of aluminum or ferric nitrates and silica sulfuric acid as environmentally friendly and novel oxidizing media. This oxidation was carried out in dichloromethane under heterogeneous conditions with good to excellent yields.     

Overcoming acid–base copolymer neutralization using mesoporous carbon and its catalytic activity in the tandem deacetalization–Knoevenagel condensation reaction

Research on Chemical Intermediates - Acid–base copolymer materials are of considerable interest because of their fundamental implications for acid–base bifunctional catalysis...     

Simulation of conjugate radiation–forced convection heat transfer in a porous medium using the lattice Boltzmann method

In this paper, a lattice Boltzmann method is employed to simulate the conjugate radiation–forced convection heat transfer in a porous medium. The absorbing, emitting, and scattering phenomena are fully included in the model. The effects of different parameters of a silicon carbide porous medium including porosity, pore size, conduction–radiation ratio, extinction coefficient and kinematic viscosity ratio on the temperature and velocity distributions are investigated. The convergence times of modified and regular LBMs for this problem are 15 s and 94 s, respectively, indicating a considerable reduction in the solution time through using the modified LBM. Further, the thermal plume formed behind the porous cylinder elongates as the porosity and pore size increase. This result reveals that the thermal penetration of the porous cylinder increases with increasing the porosity and pore size. Finally, the mean temperature at the channel output increases by about 22% as the extinction coefficient of fluid increases in the range of 0–0.03.

     

Modification of an implicit approach based on nonstandard rules for structural dynamics analysis

The present study aims to modify a recently suggested implicit approach consisted of the approximate Euler method and closed-form exponential mapping (herein referred to as the Liu scheme) for the dynamic analysis of structures. Such modification has been developed based upon nonstandard rules. The equation of motion is formulated in the augmented dynamic space to apply the exponential mapping as a group preserving scheme. The formulation of the proposed method involves the hyperbolic sine and cosine functions. The method is therefore prone to divergence due to the behavior of the hyperbolic functions in structures with a high ratio of stiffness to mass. In the present study, to consider the properties of the structural equation into the formulation of the time step size and thereby avoid the divergence, a parameter, known as stability parameter, is thus derived from the exact solution of the equation of motion based on nonstandard rules. Embedding this parameter into the proposed method improves its stability. Afterward, for evaluating the performance of the proposed method, it is applied to several structures with different loading patterns while implemented in programing environment of the Matlab software. The results are compared to those of several commonly used numerical methods in structural applications. It is found that the proposed method has acceptable convergence and accuracy, and low time consumption compared to several commonly used methods. Furthermore, its stability is guaranteed by embedding the stability parameter into the proposed method.     

Electrocatalytic activity of porous nanostructured Fe/Pt-Fe electrode for methanol electrooxidation in alkaline media

An electrochemical approach to fabricate a nanostructured Fe/Pt-Fe catalyst through electrodepo-sition followed by galvanic replacement is presented. An Fe/Pt-Fe nanostructured electrode was prepared by deposition of Fe-Zn onto a Fe electrode surface, followed by replacement of the Zn by Pt at open-circuit potential in a Pt-containing alkaline solution. Scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray techniques reveal that the Fe/Pt-Fe electrode is porous and contains Pt. The electrocatalytic activity of the Fe/Pt-Fe electrode for oxidation of methanol was examined by cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. The electrooxidation current on the Fe/Pt-Fe catalyst is much higher than that on flat Pt and smooth Fe catalysts. The onset potential and peak potential on the Fe/Pt-Fe catalyst are more negative than those on flat Pt and smooth Fe electrodes for methanol electrooxidation. All results show that this nanostructured Fe/Pt-Fe electrode is very attractive for integrated fuel cell applications in alkaline media.     

Synthesis of <Emphasis Type=Italic>N</Emphasis>-hydroxy-imidamide-functionalized graphene: an efficient metal-free electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction

Metal-free electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) are key to the development of efficient, durable, and low-cost alternatives to noble-metal-based electrocatalysts in fuel cell cathodes. In recent years, many efforts are directed to the metal-free catalyst based on heteroatom-doped graphene. In this work, we demonstrate that the graphene surface can be converted into the catalyst for the oxygen reduction by chemical functionalization. In this context, we first synthesized malononitrile-functionalized graphene oxide. Amidoximation of nitrile group and reduction in graphene oxide were then carried out by hydroxylamine in one step. The electrochemical behavior of functionalized graphene-modified electrode for the reduction in oxygen was studied. The results showed that the electrocatalyst fabricated by this method exhibited striking catalytic activities in alkaline solution. In alkaline solution, this catalyst showed a competitive activity to the commercial Pt catalyst via four-electron transfer pathway with better ORR selectivity and stability. In addition, this metal-free electrocatalyst exhibited tolerance to methanol crossover effect. Based on its outstanding performance, this functionalized graphene electrocatalyst showed the promising prospect of a metal-free catalyst for fuel cell with much lower cost than currently used Pt/C catalyst.     

Starch nanoparticles as a bio-nanocatalyst in synthesis of diheteroaryl thioethers

Nanostarch is shown to be a highly efficient, eco-friendly and heterogenous organocatalyst for the synthesis of the diheteroaryl thioethers via one-pot reaction of methylcarbonyls, thiourea and iodine in DMSO. This method offers significant advantages such as available starting materials, higher purity and excellent yield of products, very easy reaction conditions and absence of any tedious purification. Furthermore, because of employing eco-friendly catalyst without using transition metal catalysts, this novel method emerges as a green-approach leading to less harmful residues. Moreover, a mechanism was proposed to rationalize the reaction and the role of starch nanoparticles was also investigated in these transformations.     

Hydrodesulfurization unit for natural gas condensate

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - Nowadays, most of the world’s energy consumption is from fossil fuels. One of these fossil fuels is natural gas condensate which consists of...