Thermal degradation kinetics and heat properties of cellulosic cigarette paper: influence of potassium carboxylate as combustion improver

Accurate determination of the thermal properties of cellulose is of particular significance in studying the mechanism of cellulosic cigarette paper combustion. This paper probes into the influence of four kinds of potassium carboxylates on the thermal degradation kinetics and the heat properties of cigarette paper through simultaneous thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) coupled with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement under air atmosphere. Reduced mass loss and mass loss rate, and increased solid residue for samples containing four potassium salts implied that potassium carboxylates may retard the formation of levoglucosan and volatiles by inhibiting the depolymerization reaction and simultaneously accelerate char formation by catalyzing the dehydration reaction. Kinetic parameters were analyzed based on three non-isothermal models available in literature. The results indicated that three modeling methods exhibit good consistency. A global activation energy range of 106–155 kJ mol^?1 was proposed for cigarette paper with potassium carboxylates. The four potassium salts studied considerably reduced the activation energy in the following descending order: potassium 1,2,3,4-butane tetracarboxylate (PBTCA) > citrate > gluconate > ascorbate. The heat properties of cigarette paper were also determined by integrating the DSC curves. The results demonstrated that both cellulose degradation and char oxidation have strong exothermic peaks. Cigarette paper samples with potassium salts have lower exothermic cellulose degradation process and higher exothermic char oxidation process, which were further confirmed by greater differences as the amounts of salt citrate or PBTCA increased.     

A Novel Method for the Determination of Fungicide Residues in Tobacco by Ultra-performance Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry Combined with Pass-Through Solid-Phase Extraction

Chromatographia - A novel method for the rapid simultaneous determination of multiple fungicide residues in tobacco was established using ultra-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass...     

Dynamic release process of pollutants during suspended sediment transport in aquatic system

Pollutants release is highly consistent with suspended sediment concentration （SSC） in water column, especially during re-suspension and transport events. The present research focuses on pollutant dynamic release from re-suspended sediment, especially the vertical distribution relationship between them. The sediment erosion experiments on a series of uniform flow are conducted in a circulate flume. Reactive tracer （phosphorus） is used as the contaminant in fine-grained sediments to identify the release characteristic length and time. Experimental results show that the flow condition near-bed depends on the sediment surface roughness. The region with high turbulent intensities corresponds to a high concentration sediment layer. In addition, the SSC decreases with the distance, water depth, and particle grain size. The sediment in a smaller grain size takes much more time to reach equilibrium concentration. Total phosphorus （TP） concentration changes along the water depth as SSC in the initial re-suspension stage, appearing in two obvious concentration regimes： the upper low-concentration layer and the high-concentration near-bottom layer. This layered phenomenon remains for about 3 hours until SSC distri- bution tends to be uniform. Longitudinal desorption plays an important role in long-way transport to reduce the amount of suspended sediment in water column.