Behaviour of several solid adsorbents for sampling tetraalkyllead compounds in air

The behaviour of various solid adsorbents for collecting tetraalkyllead compounds has been studied. A synthetic atmosphere containing a known concentration of tetraethyllead was produced and the tetraethyllead compound was trapped in a glass tube containing the solid adsorbent. The trapped compound was extracted with hexane in an ultrasonic bath, and the resulting solution was analysed by GC-MS. Porapak and Tenax, with retention efficiencies of 92 and 96%, respectively, were shown to be the more efficient at trapping this alkyllead compound than Chromosorb, active charcoal, Amberlites and polyurethane foam. The behaviour of both Porapak and Tenax for trapping other tetraalkyllead compounds in the presence of gasoline vapour was also studied.     

Determination of Organic Contaminants in Landfill Leachates: A Review

Leachates derived from landfills constitute a potential risk of groundwater pollution because a variety of contaminants can be released by leaking from the contention system. Therefore, the leachate composition is of interest of their appropriate management. Although the leachate characterisation is usually carried out by global parameters (i.e. DOC, BOD, COD, AOX, etc), its characterisation at molecular level is of increasing interest and will be reviewed in the present article. Sample handling and determination techniques for a variety of organic contaminants is discussed and pitfalls as well as limitations of each analytical technique will be highlighted.     

Pulsed laser deposition of TiO<Subscript>2</Subscript>: diagnostic of the plume and characterization of nanostructured deposits

Promising applications of TiO₂ nanostructures include the development of optical devices, sensors, photocatalysts and self-cleaning coatings. In view of their importance, research on the synthesis of nanosized TiO₂ is a particularly active field. In this work we report on the investigation of the effect of laser irradiation wavelength (Q-switched Nd:YAG laser at 532, 355 and 266 nm), the temperature of the substrate and the atmosphere of deposition (vacuum, Ar and O₂) that are suitable for obtaining nanostructured deposits from TiO₂ sintered targets. The ablation plume emission is characterized with spectral and temporal resolution by optical emission spectroscopy (OES), while the surface morphology and chemical states of the material deposited on a Si (100) substrate are examined by environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) and by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. Deposits with nanostructured morphology with grain size down to 40 nm and keeping the stoichiometry of the targets were obtained at high temperature, while the highest concentration of particulates was observed at the longest laser wavelength of 532 nm on a substrate heated up to 650°C. In situ characterization of the ablation plume, carried out by OES, indicated the presence of emissions assigned to Ti I, Ti II and O I.     

Efficient implementation of symplectic implicit Runge-Kutta schemes with simplified Newton iterations

We are concerned with the efficient implementation of symplectic implicit Runge-Kutta (IRK) methods applied to systems of Hamiltonian ordinary differential equations by means of Newton-like iterations. We pay particular attention to time-symmetric symplectic IRK schemes (such as collocation methods with Gaussian nodes). For an s-stage IRK scheme used to integrate a \(\dim \)-dimensional system of ordinary differential equations, the application of simplified versions of Newton iterations requires solving at each step several linear systems (one per iteration) with the same \(s\dim \times s\dim \) real coefficient matrix. We propose a technique that takes advantage of the symplecticity of the IRK scheme to reduce the cost of methods based on diagonalization of the IRK coefficient matrix. This is achieved by rewriting one step of the method centered at the midpoint on the integration subinterval and observing that the resulting coefficient matrix becomes similar to a skew-symmetric matrix. In addition, we propose a C implementation (based on Newton-like iterations) of Runge-Kutta collocation methods with Gaussian nodes that make use of such a rewriting of the linear system and that takes special care in reducing the effect of round-off errors. We report some numerical experiments that demonstrate the reduced round-off error propagation of our implementation.     

A chiral acrylate equivalent for metal-free Diels-Alder reactions: endo-2-acryloylisoborneol

The principle of metal-free activation of enones toward the Diels-Alder reaction with dienes is demonstrated by exploiting the capability of Br?nsted acids to activate alpha'-hydroxyenones through hydrogen bonding. The diastereoselective application of such a principle is nicely realized by using a newly designed family of camphor-based chiral enones, which upon catalytic action of either trifluoroacetic or triflic acid lead to the corresponding cycloadducts with high chemical and stereochemical efficiency.     

Catalytic enantioselective aza-Henry reaction with broad substrate scope

In situ generated azomethines from readily available precursors react with nitromethane in the presence of 120 mol % of CsOH.H2O and 12 mol % of quinine- and cinchonidine-derived quaternary ammonium chlorides to provide the corresponding aza-Henry adducts in good yields and very high selectivities. It represents the first general enantioselective aza-Henry method for azomethines derived from enolizable aldehydes, giving rise to enantiomeric excesses above 94%. In addition, the reactions with nitroethane afforded high diastereo- and enantioselectivities (syn:anti up to 95:5; up to 98% ee for syn).     

Design and synthesis of a novel class of sugar-peptide hybrids: C-linked glyco beta-amino acids through a stereoselective "acetate" Mannich reaction as the key strategic element

A new type of sugar-amino acid hybrid, which is comprised of a sugar unit (gluco-, galacto-, or mannopyranose) linked through a C-glycosidic linkage to the beta-position of an alpha-unsubstituted beta-amino acid unit, is presented. It is hypothesized that these new compounds, or the oligomeric peptides derived therefrom, might possess the structural features of beta-amino acid oligomers and the chemical and enzymatic resistance of C-glycosides to hydrolysis. The synthetic strategy is based on a new Mannich-type reaction between a chiral acetate enolate equivalent and alpha-amido sulfones derived from the corresponding sugar-C-glycoside aldehydes. While the sugar-C-glycoside aldehyde partner is prepared from well-established transformations on known sugar precursors, the lithium enolate derived from (1R)-endo-2-acetylisoborneol 3 is employed as the key element. This Mannich approach proceeds with essentially perfect diasteromeric control leading to the new beta-amino carbonyl adducts in good yields. Further, cleavage of the camphor auxiliary is smoothly performed by oxidative treatment with ammonium cerium nitrate (CAN). Complementarily, direct peptide-type coupling of the beta-amino carbonyl Mannich adducts with an alpha- or beta-amino acid residue and subsequent CAN-promoted detachment of the auxiliary yields dipeptide fragments bearing a sugar-containing aliphatic side chain and is a process that can be iterated. A preliminary conformational study based on the combination of experimental NMR data and molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics (MD) of one particular adduct is also provided.     

Metal doped silica membrane reactor: Operational effects of reaction and permeation for the water gas shift reaction

In this work, we investigate the performance of metal (Cobalt) doped silica membranes in a membrane reactor (MR) configuration for the low temperature water gas shift (WGS) reaction. The membranes were hydrostable and showed activated transport even after 2 weeks exposure to steam. High CO conversions resulted in the H₂ and CO partial pressures in the reaction chamber moving in opposite directions, thus favouring H₂/CO separation to treble (5–15) from 150 to 250 °C. On the other hand, the separation of H₂/CO₂ remained relatively low (2–4) as the driving force for diffusion or partial pressure of these gases remained equal in the reaction chamber irrespective of the extent of conversion. Below approximately 40% CO conversion, the MR is ineffective as the H₂ driving force for permeation was so low that H₂/CO selectivity was below unity. Operating under equilibrium limited conversion (space velocities 7500 h⁻¹) conditions, very high conversions in excess of 95% were observed and there were no significant advantages of the MR performance over the packed bed reactor (PBR). However, for higher throughputs (space velocities 38000 and 75000 h⁻¹) conversion is affected by the reaction rate, and relatively enough H₂ is removed from the reactor through the membrane. Increasing temperature to 250 °C as a function of the space velocity (75000 h⁻¹) allowed for the CO conversion in the MR to shift up to 12% as compared to the PBR.