Diffusion‐Controlled Particle Growth and its Effects on Nucleation in Stirred Emulsion Polymerisation Reactors

Summary: Particle formation and growth in the batch emulsion homo‐polymerisation of styrene and methyl methacrylate monomers under diffusion‐controlled conditions were studied. The polymerisations started with two stratified layers of a monomer and water containing an initiator and a surfactant, with the water layer being gently stirred. Because of limitations in monomer transport, the rate of particle growth was substantially reduced and as a result a large number of polymer particles formed.

Schematic presentation of the highly diffusion‐controlled polymerisation.     

采用积雪草树叶提取物生物合成二氧化镁纳米粒子负载的铜纳米颗粒用于高效催化还原有机染料和芳香硝基化合物（英文）

本文设计了一个经济、绿色的新型方法,采用积雪草树叶提取物作为自然的还原剂,在不使用稳定剂或表面活性剂的情况下合成了MnO_2纳米粒子负载的Cu纳米颗粒(CuNPs).该合成过程环境友好,且避免使用有毒的还原剂.树叶提取物中的酚羟基将溶液中的Cu~(2+)还原为Cu NPs,后者再稳定在MnO_2 NPs表面.采用X射线衍射、透射电镜、场发射扫描电镜、能量散射谱和红外光谱对所得Cu/MnO_2纳米复合物进行了表征.结果表明,该材料可用作高活性、高效可重复使用的多相催化剂,用于室温水溶液NaBH_4存在下刚果红、罗丹明B和亚甲基蓝,以及硝基化合物,如2,4二硝基苯肼和4-硝基苯酚的催化还原.Cu/MnO_2纳米复合物的高稳定性可使其被分离出来,重复使用数次而活性无明显下降.     

Catastrophic phase inversion of abnormal emulsions in the vicinity of the locus of transitional inversion

This paper deals with the phase behaviour of model abnormal emulsions of cyclohexane/water/polyethoxylated surfactant in the vicinity of the locus of transitional inversion (optimum formulation). Abnormal emulsions are formed under dynamic conditions if the phase containing the soluble surfactant becomes the dispersed phase. Phase maps have been suggested in the literature that define the boundaries of emulsion morphologies. On these maps, only one transformation can be observed for any formulation scan. Furthermore, the morphology of emulsions in the vicinity of the locus of transitional inversion is rather vague. One might assume that by changing the HLB of the surfactant used in an abnormal emulsion to favour the continuous phase, that abnormal emulsion will gradually transform to a normal emulsion of the same type. A new experimental procedure was adopted in which emulsification was started with abnormal emulsions. To transform the abnormal emulsions to the normal emulsion of the same type, they were exposed to variations in temperature, the surfactant HLB, or water–oil phase ratio. As the optimum formulation was approached, the abnormal emulsions became so unstable that could not exist anymore in the un-favoured morphology and inverted to the normal emulsion of the opposite type. Further variation in the formulation along the route led to a transitional inversion to the normal emulsion of the original type. The result indicates an important finding that the transformation of abnormal emulsions to normal ones of the same type occurred via two successive inversions of catastrophic and transitional nature. It appears that the boundaries of catastrophic inversion correspond to the emulsions with the finest drop size. A modification to the phase behaviour maps, to include the locus of catastrophic phase inversion in the vicinity of the transitional inversion, was thus suggested.     

An off-line NMPC strategy for continuous-time nonlinear systems using an extended modal series method

This paper presents a new off-line nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) approach for continuous-time affine-input nonlinear systems. In this approach, the NMPC-related nonlinear two-point boundary value problem derived from the Pontryagin’s maximum principle is solved by the extended modal series method. The resulting suboptimal control law explicitly depends on the initial conditions and is updated by replacing the initial conditions with the new state measurements in future sampling instants. Therefore, there is no need to repeat the recursive online optimization process in each sampling instant. Since the applicability of NMPC is generally restricted by computational burden of the online optimization, we propose an NMPC scheme, which not only reduces the online computational burden significantly, but also can be applied to fast dynamic systems with short prediction horizons. An efficient algorithm is presented which approximates the order of the modal series such that feasibility of the optimization problem is guaranteed. Closed-loop stability of the proposed NMPC approach is shown using the off-line terminal region calculations suggested in quasi-infinite horizon NMPC scheme. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach are illustrated by two numerical examples.     

Composite Polymer Nanoparticles via Transitional Phase Inversion Emulsification and Polymerisation

Summary: A new route was employed to produce composite polymer nanoparticles. First, a model polymer (a low molecular-weight polyisobutene) was dissolved in a model monomer (styrene) and then the solution was emulsified in water containing a pair of nonionic surfactants via a transitional phase inversion route. After phase inversion, which produced an oil-in-water miniemulsion, polymerisation of the vinyl monomer gave composite polymer particles. Low temperature emulsification was not practical because the inverted oil-in-water emulsions reinverted to water-in-oil emulsions upon raising the temperature to the reaction temperature. Miniemulsions prepared at the reaction temperature with low monomer content in the oil phase showed good stabilty in the course of polymerisation and produced latexes with a particle size similar to the size of drops in the initial miniemulsions.     

Particle formation in interval III of the emulsion polymerization of styrene with aerosol‐MA as an emulsifier

Particle nucleation in the seeded emulsion polymerization of styrene in the presence of Aerosol‐MA emulsifier micelles and in the absence of monomer droplets (interval III) was investigated. The seed particles were swollen with different amounts of the styrene monomer before the experiments. A larger number of polymer particles formed in interval III than in the corresponding seeded batch operation in the presence of monomer droplets. The increase in the number of particles could be attributed to the reduced rate of growth of new particles, which retarded the depletion of emulsifier micelles. The number of secondary particles initially increased with the initial polymer weight ratio in the seed particles (w_p0) but decreased at a higher range of w_p0, after reaching a maximum at w_p0 = 0.60, and eventually was reduced to zero. At high values of w_p0 (>0.75), polymerization occurred in the seed particles, whereas few or no new particles were formed despite the presence of micelles. The cessation of particle formation at high conversions was ascertained with a semibatch process in which the neat monomer feed was added to the reaction vessel containing the seed particles and emulsifier micelles. For w_p0 > 0.85, the emulsifier micelles were disintegrated to stabilize the seed particles with no secondary particle formation. The possible reasons for the cessation of particle formation at high w_p0 were examined. The size distribution of secondary particles showed a positive skewness in terms of volume because of the declining rate of growth for particles, together with a low rate of growth for small particles. The distribution breadth of new particles sharpened with increasing w_p0. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 40: 1652–1663, 2002     

Synthesis and application of a novel magnetic SBA-15 nanosorbent for heavy metal removal from aqueous solutions

Journal of Sol-Gel Science and Technology - In this work for the first time, magnetic nanoporous SBA-15 functionalized with isatin groups as a magnetic nanosorbent was applied for the simultaneous...