Extracting and trapping biogenic volatile organic compounds stored in plant species

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), released by practically all plants, have important atmospheric and ecological consequences. Because BVOC-emission measurements are especially tedious, complex and extremely variable between species, two approaches have been used in scientific studies to try to estimate BVOC-emission types and rates from plant species. The first, which has known little success, involves grouping species according to plant-taxonomy criteria (typically, genus and family). The second involves studying the correlation between BVOC content and emission (i.e. how leaf content could be used to estimate emissions). The latter strategy has provided controversial results, partly because BVOCs are amazingly chemically diverse, and, as a result, techniques used to study plant BVOC content, which we review, cannot be equally adequate for all analytes.In order to choose an adequate technique, two patterns must be distinguished. Specifically stored compounds - mainly monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes that dominate the essential oil obtained from a plant - are permanently and massively present in specific storage structures (e.g., secretory cavities, trichomes) of the order of μg/g-mg/g and usually allow emissions to occur during stress periods when terpenes are weakly synthesized. These BVOCs can be studied directly through traditional extraction techniques (e.g., hydrodistillation) and novel techniques (e.g., application of microwaves and ultrasound), and indirectly by trapping techniques involving the collection, within adsorbent material, of BVOCs present in the headspace of a plant.Non-specifically stored compounds (e.g., isoprene, 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol, and, in species without storage structures, monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes) can only be temporarily accumulated in leaf aqueous and lipid phases in small concentrations of the order of ng/g. As a result, studying their concentration in leaves requires the use of trapping techniques, more sensitive to trace amounts. Unlike for specifically stored BVOCs, knowledge of the concentration of non-specifically stored BVOCs cannot provide any information regarding the emission potential of a species but, instead, provides crucial information to understand why BVOC emissions may be uncoupled from the physiological processes that drive their synthesis.We describe both extracting and trapping techniques and discuss them in terms of the technical choices that may cause losses of thermolabile constituents, chemical transformations, different volatile recoveries and suitability to represent plant content of BVOCs faithfully. The second part of this review addresses technical shortcomings and biological and environmental factors that may alter the correlations between BVOC content and emission from plants.     

一类次临界Bose-Einstein凝聚型方程组的渐近收敛行为和相位分离

该文利用变分法和椭圆方程理论研究有界光滑区域上次临界Bose-Einstein凝聚型方程组耦合系数趋于负无穷时解的极限产生的相位分离现象.     

On the breakup of bubbles at high Reynolds numbers and subcritical Weber numbers

In this paper we propose a simplified two-dimensional model to describe some aspects of the turbulent breakage of bubbles at subcritical Weber numbers. In particular we focus on the breakup of bubbles owing to their interaction with an array of successive eddies, modeled by a train of straining flows. Our simulations show that, under certain conditions, a bubble accumulates energy due to its interaction with a sequence of turbulent structures until it eventually breaks, even if none of the eddies is sufficiently energetic to split the particle by itself. It is also shown that the different strain directions of the eddies acting on the surface of the bubble, and the resonance effect between their characteristic frequency and the natural oscillation frequency of the bubble immersed into the straining flow are the two key factors in the bubble deformation, and subsequent breakup mechanism. Moreover, the breakup patterns obtained from our simulations seem to agree qualitatively well with the experimental observations.     

Synthesis of nanoscale reaction pits network on zerovalent iron powder surface

A neat and efficient method for controllable and reproducible synthesis of coral-shaped matrix containing abundant nanoscale reaction pits on micrometer-size zerovalent iron powder is described with the study of etching capability of dilute hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acids with concentration ranges from 1 N to 6 N. Characterizations of surface morphology show that the specific surface area of this matrix increases up to 170 times that of the untreated iron powder, and that the reduction efficiency of a PCB congener in subcritical water is enhanced fivefold from 18% for the untreated iron to 92% for that with 170 times its surface area. The nanoscale pits may be a basis for enhancement of reaction cross-section via restriction of molecule mobility in the pits.     

Transmural pressure effects on the stability of clamped cylindrical shells subjected to internal fluid flow: Theory and experiments

An experimental and theoretical parametric study is undertaken to investigate the effect of transmural pressure on the non-linear dynamics and stability of circular cylindrical shells with clamped ends subjected to internal fluid flow. The theoretical structural model is based on the Donnell non-linear shallow shell theory, and potential flow theory is employed to describe the fluid-structure interaction. It is found that, for low transmural pressures in the range investigated, the shell loses stability by static subcritical divergence, while for higher transmural pressures the loss of stability is supercritical. In addition, there are ranges of flow velocity in which the shell exhibits quasi-periodic or even chaotic behaviour.     

Sub- and supercritical glycolysis of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into the monomer bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET)

Sub- and supercritical glycolysis of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) with ethylene glycol (EG) to bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET) was investigated for the purpose of developing a PET recycling process. Supercritical glycolysis was carried out at 450 °C and 15.3 MPa while subcritical glycolysis was carried out at 350 °C and 2.49 MPa or at 300 °C and 1.1 MPa. High yields (gt; 90%) of the monomer BHET were obtained in both super- and subcritical cases. For the same PET/EG weight ratio of about 0.06, the optimum reaction time was 30 min for supercritical glycolysis and 75 and 120 min for two cases of subcritical glycolysis. GPC, RP-HPLC, ¹H NMR and ¹³C NMR, and DSC were used to characterize the polymer and reaction products. Supercritical glycolysis will be suitable to a process requiring a high throughput due to its short reaction time.     

Isolation of ceramide fractions from skin sample by subcritical chromatography with packed silica and evaporative light scattering detection

Separative method of lipid classes from the stratum corneum was developed with packed silica and supercritical CO2 containing 10% of methanol at 15 degrees C, 15 MPa and 3 ml min(-1). The elution order of lipid classes was first esterified cholesterol, triglycerides, squalene co-eluted in a single peak, then free fatty acids, free cholesterol, ceramides and finally glycosylceramides. The ceramides were eluted in several fractions which depended on the number of hydroxyl groups in the molecule, i.e. more hydroxyl groups were contained in ceramides, more important was the retention. Moreover, the retention was not altered by the presence of carbon double bond and variation of the alkyl chain length. The ceramide response with the evaporative light scattering detector was improved by turning the influence of the solvent nature on the response to advantage. Therefore, addition of various solvents with or without triethylamine and formic acid were tested in post-column due to the incompatibility of such modifiers with silica stationary phase. Thereby the solvent conditions for the separation and the detection can be adjusted almost independently. The response was greatly increased by post-column addition of 1% (v/v) triethylamine and its equivalent amount of formic acid in dichloromethane introduced at 0.1 ml min(-1) into the mobile phase. This device had allowed the detection of 400 ng of ceramide with a S/N = 21, whereas no peak was observed in absence of the post-column addition. Finally, the method was applied to the treatment of skin sample which led to highly enriched ceramide fraction.     

Retention characteristics of porous graphitic carbon in subcritical fluid chromatography with carbon dioxide-methanol mobile phases

Numerous relationships usually used in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for describing the retention on porous graphitic carbon (PGC) have been applied in subcritical fluid chromatography, with CO2-methanol mobile phases. As reported in HPLC, octanol-water partition coefficient failed to fit the retention, whereas satisfactory results were obtained with the sum of partial negative charges. A better fit was reached by using the solvation parameter model, allowing a better understanding of the interactions developed between the solute, the stationary and the mobile phases. Results show that the dominant contribution to retention was given by the polarizability (E) and the volume (V), while the hydrogen-bond basicity (B) was not selected in the retention model, whatever the methanol content. The increase in methanol percentage favours the retention decrease, mainly through the volume for hydrophobic compounds, and through the hydrogen-bond acidity for polar compounds.     

Probing a subcritical instability with an amplitude expansion: An exploration of how far one can get

We explore methods to locate subcritical branches of spatially periodic solutions in pattern forming systems with a nonlinear finite-wavelength instability. We do so by means of a direct expansion in the amplitude of the linearly least stable mode about the appropriate reference state which one considers. This is motivated by the observation that for some equations fully nonlinear chaotic dynamics has been found to be organized around periodic solutions that do not simply bifurcate from the basic (laminar) state. We apply the method to two model equations, a subcritical generalization of the Swift–Hohenberg equation and a novel extension of the Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equation that we introduce to illustrate the abovementioned scenario in which weakly chaotic subcritical dynamics is organized around periodic states that bifurcate “from infinity” and that can nevertheless be probed perturbatively. We explore the reliability and robustness of such an expansion, with a particular focus on the use of these methods for determining the existence and approximate properties of finite-amplitude stationary solutions. Such methods obviously are to be used with caution: the expansions are often only asymptotic approximations, and if they converge their radius of convergence may be small. Nevertheless, expansions to higher order in the amplitude can be a useful tool to obtain qualitatively reliable results.