Liquid-vapor equilibrium of the systems butylmethylimidazolium nitrate-CO2 and hydroxypropylmethylimidazolium nitrate-CO2 at high pressure: influence of water on the phase behavior

Ionic liquids (IL) are receiving increasing attention due to their potential as "green" solvents, especially when used in combination with SC-CO2. In this work liquid-vapor equilibria of binary mixtures of CO2 with two imidazolium-based ionic liquids (IL) with a nitrate anion have been experimentally determined: butylmethylimidazolium nitrate (BMImNO3) and hydroxypropylmethylimidazolium nitrate (HOPMImNO3), using a Cailletet apparatus that operates according to the synthetic method. CO2 concentrations from 5 up to 30 mol % were investigated. It was found that CO2 is substantially less soluble in HOPMImNO3 than in BMImNO3. Since these ILs are very hygroscopic, water easily can be a major contaminant, causing changes in the phase behavior. In case these Ils are to be used in practical applications, for instance, together with CO2 as a medium in supercritical enzymatic reactions, it is very important to have quantitative information on how the water content will affect the phase behavior. This work presents the first systematic study on the influence of water on the solubility of carbon dioxide in hygroscopic ILs. It was observed that the presence of water reduces the absolute solubility of CO2. However, at fixed ratios of CO2/IL, the bubble point pressure remains almost unchanged with increasing water content. In order to explain the experimental results, the densities of aqueous mixtures of both ILs were determined experimentally and the excess molar volumes calculated.     

Femtosecond evolution of the pyrrole molecule excited in the near part of its UV spectrum

The evolution of the isolated pyrrole molecule has been followed after excitation in the 265-217 nm range by using femtosecond time delayed ionization. The transients collected in the whole excitation range show the vanishing of the ionization signal in the femtosecond time scale, caused by the relaxation along a πσ(?) type state (3s a(1)←π 1a(2)), which is the lowest excited electronic state of the molecule. This surface is dissociative along the NH bond, yielding a 15 ± 3 fs lifetime that reflects the loss of the ionization cross-section induced by the ultrafast wavepacket motion. Although a weak πσ(?) absorption is detected, the state is mainly reached through internal conversion of the higher bright ππ(?) transitions, which occurs with a 19 ± 3 fs lifetime. In addition to its resonant excitation, the intense ππ(?) absorption extending in the 220-190 nm interval is also out-of-resonance populated at energies far to the red from its absorption onset. This coherent adiabatic excitation of the ππ(?) transition should follow the excitation pulse (coherent population return effect), but instead the system relaxes toward the lower πσ(?) surface through a conical intersection during the interaction time, leading to the population of πσ(?) state at wavelengths as long as 265 nm. According to the observed behavior, the time evolution of the system in the full excitation range studied is modeled by a coherent treatment that provides key insights on the photophysical properties of the molecule.     

Mass-resolved infrared spectroscopy of complexes without chromophore by nonresonant femtosecond ionization detection

Mass-resolved excitation spectroscopic techniques are usually limited to systems with a chromophore, that is, a functional group with electronic transitions in the Vis/UV, with lifetimes from hundreds of picoseconds to some microseconds. In this paper, we expand such techniques to any system, by using a combination of nanosecond IR pulses with nonresonant ionization with 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the technique can achieve conformational specificity introducing an additional nanosecond IR laser. As a proof-of-principle, we apply the technique to the study of phenol(H(2)O)(1), propofol(H(2)O)(1) γ-butyrolactone(H(2)O)(n), n = 1-3, and (H(2)O)(2) complexes. While monohydrated phenol and propofol clusters permit a direct comparison with a well-studied system including an aromatic chromophore, γ-butyrolactone is a cyclic nonaromatic molecule, whose mass-resolved spectroscopy cannot be tackled by conventional techniques. Finally, we further demonstrate the potential of the technique by obtaining the first mass-resolved IR spectrum of the neutral water dimer, a nice example of a system whose ionization-based detection had not been possible to date.     

Eight-channel ultrasonic device for non-invasive quality evaluation in packed milk

An eight-channel ultrasonic detecting device for microbiological quality evaluation of packed liquid foods is presented in this paper. This device makes possible a non-invasive detection of the microbial growth in liquid foods with no need to open the carton-based packages where they are contained. Thermal and humidity stabilization are required inside the measuring chamber. The changes in the liquid media produced by the microorganism growth induce variations in the ultrasonic propagation parameters giving a non-invasive evidence of the developing contamination. For that purpose, the amplitude and time of flight of an ultrasonic 800 kHz tone burst travelling through an UHT milk pack are analysed. Inoculated and sterile packs were tested to evaluate the performance of this new non-invasive ultrasonic microbiological quality sensor.     

Computational study of noncovalent complexes between formamide and formic acid

The geometries and binding energies of 1:1, 1:2, and 1:4 formic acid-formamide complexes (FA-FMA) are calculated by quantum chemical procedures. Vibrational spectra and intermolecular distances of the most stable FA-FMA dimers as well as the influence of the basis set superposition error (BSSE) on the geometries and energies of the dimers are also discussed. All FA-FMA dimers are optimized at the B3LYP/cc-pVTZ, the MP2/cc-pVDZ, aug-cc-pVDZ, cc-pVTZ, and aug-cc-pVTZ levels of theory to study the influence of the level of theory on the calculated geometries and energies. CCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ single-point calculations at the MP2/aug-cc-pVTZ-optimized geometries were performed as reference for estimating the quality of lower level calculations. These calculations allow us to qualitatively describe the competition between different types of hydrogen-bonding interactions in FA-FMA complexes. FA-FMA dimers are compared to other formamide complexes and to the FA-FMA crystal structure.