Energy

The conversion of C5-C6 sugars into 2-furfural (FA) and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) have been considered as key intermediate step in the production of transportation fuels and chemicals from ligno-cellulosic biomass. Typically, the process involves the dehydration reaction of the sugars catalyze...

Enzyme-catalyzed reduction of CO2 will not only help to lessen greenhouse effect, but also to obtain valuable chemicals. The sequential reduction of CO2 to methanol under mild reaction conditions has been reported to be feasible by using sol-gel encapsulated or nanoparticle-attached dehydragenases...

Presented is a novel gasification application where biomass is steam-gasified and natural gas is steam-reformed simultaneously in a solar reactor. Solar-driven gasification is a proven technology, and can augment the biofuel industry as a domestic fuel source. Gasification performed in an...

The objective of this work is to use thermal pretreatment to separate the complex bio-oil mixture to produce less complex vapor streams of products from 1. light oxygenates (small aldehydes, acids) , 2. furan derivatives, and 3. phenolics. The selective production of products by thermal treatment...

Hydrolysis of sodium borohydride (NaBH 4 ) over metal catalyst is being accepted as a potential technology to deliver H 2 for portable fuel cells. However, unresolved issues such as minimizing the amount of water and nature of hydration by-product limit the hydrogen storage capacities of NaBH 4 ...

Energy efficient capture of CO 2 released from coal based power plants is a major challenge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The existing commercial technologies require substantial energy inputs in the form of heat and vacuum which leads to around 30 % parasitic energy loss. To overcome this...

Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, major contributors to the greenhouse effect, are considered as the main cause of global warming. So, decrease of CO 2 emitted by large industrial combustion sources or power plants, is an important scientific goal. One of the approaches is based on CO...

Fischer Tropsch (FT) synthesis is a polymerization process where a CH X species is added to a growing aliphatic chain. There are several models of the catalytic chain propagation rate and the termination of the chain growth (e.g. Anderson – Schulz – Flory model). The exact methodology for the...

Current-voltage characterization was carried out on dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with different photoanode areas ranging from 0.01 cm 2 to 1 cm 2 . Surprisingly, we found that the short-circuit current density and the efficiency of the solar cells increased exponentially as the photoaonode...

Hydrolysates from dilute acid pretreatment of biomass contain various biomass degradation products which are inhibitory to enzymes and toxic to microorganisms. One of the main inhibitory compounds is acetic acid which is released from the lignin-hemicellulose matrix in the biomass. Acetic acid at...