Porous properties of activated carbons from waste newspaper prepared by chemical and physical activation

Activated carbons were prepared from old newspaper and paper prepared from simulated paper sludge by chemical activation using various alkali carbonates and hydroxides as activating reagents and also by physical activation using steam. In the chemical activation, the influence of oxidation, carbonization, and activation on the porous properties of the resulting activated carbons was investigated. The specific surface areas (S(BET)) of the activated carbons prepared by single-step activation (direct activation without oxidation and carbonization) were higher than those resulting from two-step activation (oxidation-activation and carbonization-activation) and three-step activation (oxidation-carbonization-activation) methods. The S(BET) values were strongly dependent on the activating reagents and the activating conditions, being >1000 m(2)/g using K(2)CO(3), Rb(2)CO(3), Cs(2)CO(3), and KOH as activating reagents but <1000 m(2)/g using Li(2)CO(3), Na(2)CO(3), and NaOH. These differences in S(BET) values are suggested to be related to the ionic radii of the alkalis used as activating reagents. The microstructures of the higher S(BET) samples show a complete loss of fiber shape but those of the lower S(BET) samples maintain the shape. In the physical activation, the porous properties of the activated carbons prepared by the single-step method were examined as a function of the production conditions such as activation temperature, activation time, steam concentration, and flow rate of the carrier gas. The maximum S(BET) and total pore volume (V(P)) were 1086 m(2)/g and 1.01 ml/g, obtained by activation at 850 degrees C for 2 h, flowing 20 mol% of steam in nitrogen gas at 0.5 l/min. A correlation was found between S(BET) and the yield of the product, the maximum S(BET) value corresponding to a product yield of about 10%. This result is suggested to result from competition between pore formation and surface erosion. Compared with chemically activated carbons using K(2)CO(3), the porous properties of the physically activated carbons have lower S(BET) and V(P) values because of the smaller size and lower volume of their micropores. On the other hand, they retain the original fiber shape and the paper sheet morphology after activation.     

Self-aggregation inhibits the photonuclease activity of porphyrins

A series of tentacle porphyrins having four aminoalkyl groups at the periphery was synthesized, and the DNA binding properties were investigated by absorption and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopic methods. The aminopropyl chain was found to facilitate binding, and bisignate induced CD spectra revealed that the porphyrins are self-stacked on the DNA surface. The photonuclease activity of the tentacle porphyrins was also studied, and the aminopropylporphyrin showed the highest activity. The activity increased in proportion to the porphyrin load, but higher loads resulted in the decrease of activity. This inhibitory step corresponded to aggregation of the porphyrin. Thus, the aggregation was suggested to shield the inner porphyrin from the solvent, the production of active oxygen species being suppressed.     

Regioreversed reactions of trimethylsilyl or phenylselenyl allylic carbanion with carbonyl compounds via allylic aluminum “ate” complexes

Triethylaluminum “ate” complexes of trimethylsilyl and phenylselenyl allylic carbanion react with carbonyl compounds at the α-position either exclusively or predominantly.     

Spectrophotometric determination of iron(III) with o-hydroxyhydroquinonephthalein after preconcentration on a membrane filter

Application of xanthene derivatives in analytical chemistry. Part LXXXVIII. Part LXXXVII see ref. [1]     

Asymptotic Improvement of the Usual Confidence Set in a Multivariate Normal Distribution with Unknown Variance

We consider confidence sets for the mean of a multivariate normal distribution with unknown covariance matrix of the formσ²I. The coverage probability of the usual confidence set is shown to be improved asymptotically by centering at a shrinkage estimator.     

Synthesis of 4-o-(N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminyl)-6-o-acyl-N-acetylmuramyl-L-alanyl-D-isoglutamine

Long-chain acyl derivatives of the disaccharide dipeptide, which is a common building unit of bacterial cell walls, were synthesized in order to test their immunostimulating activity.     

A bound for the pressure integral in a plasma equilibrium

An interpolation inequality for the total variation of the gradient of a composite function is derived by applying the coarea formula. A bound for the pressure integral is studied by establishing ana priori estimate for a solution of the Grad-Shafranov equation of plasma equilibrium. A weak formulation of the Grad-Shafranov equation is given to include singular current profiles.