Sorption characteristics of water,oil and diesel in cellulose nanofiber reinforced corn starch resin/ramie fabric composites

Nowadays, utilisation of biodegradable materials has become necessary in order to maintain global environmental and ecological balance. Fully biodegradable nano 'Green' textile composites have been prepared from cellulose nanofibers reinforced corn starch resin and ramie fabric. Nanofibers having dimensions of approximately 1 μm long and 20–30 nm in diameter are used in the study. The nanofibers were incorporated in corn starch resin via ball mill mixing using ceramic balls. Textile composites were fabricated by pasting the reinforced resin onto the ramie fabric and by hot compression molding technique. Interactions at the fiber–matrix interface and the compatibility between cellulose and corn starch resin molecules will affect the properties of the system. The well dispersed cellulose nanofibers contribute higher interfacial area and good fiber networking within the matrix resin. This will lead to better barrier properties. Sorption characteristics of water, oil and diesel in the textile composites were analysed and the influence of nano fibers and macro fibers on the transport phenomena was investigated. The kinetics of sorption-diffusion process was investigated. Kinetic parameters such as n, k, diffusion coefficient, permeability, solubility parameter, % swelling index, etc., were analysed. The presence of cellulose nanofibers influences the sorption mechanism. The water sorption mechanism in the nanocomposites was found to exhibit slight deviation from Fickian mode. Structure–property relationships of the nanocomposites were evaluated.     

DIESEL-MP2: a new program to perform large-scale multireference-MP2 computations

This article presents a new MR‐MP2 code (Multi‐Reference Møller–Plesset 2nd order) suitable for the computation MR‐MP2 energies of extended systems with strong near degeneracy effects (e.g., open shell systems). It is based on the DIESEL program package developed by Hanrath and Engels. Due to improved algorithms the new code is able to handle systems with 400–500 basis functions and more than 100 electrons. The code is made for parallel computers with distributed memory, but can also be run on local machines. It possesses two integral interfaces (MOLCAS, TURBOMOLE). The algorithms are briefly introduced and timings for the Neocarzinostatin chromophore are presented. The efficiencies of the codes obtained with Intel or GNU compilers are compared. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 27: 1055–1062, 2006