SYNTHESIS AND APPLICATION OF CROWN ETHERS

Mono- and bis-benzo-15-crown-5-ether derivatives have been synthesized and determined their potentiometric K+ selectivity factors. Of bis-crown ether urethanes highly selective Iigands were found some of which was used as active ingredient in potassium selective membrane electrode. Sugar based crown ethers, aza-crowns and cryptands were also prepared and applied as chiral catalyst in enantioselective reactions

On Dipole Moments and Hydrogen Bond Identification in Water Clusters

It is demonstrated that the localized orbitals calculated for a water cluster have small delocalization tails along the hydrogen bonds, that are crucial in determining the resulting dipole moments of the system. (By cutting them, one gets much smaller dipole moments for the individual monomersclose to the values one obtains by using a Bader-type analysis.) This means that the individual water monomers can be delimited only in a quite fuzzy manner, and the electronic charge density in a given point cannot be assigned completely to that or another molecule. Thus, one arrives to the brink of breaking the concept of a water cluster consisting of individual molecules. The analysis of the tails of the localized orbitals can also be used to identify the pairs of water molecules actually forming hydrogen bonds

Simultaneous biohydrogen production and purification in a double-membrane bioreactor system

In this work the establishment of a double-membrane bioreactor was aimed. Initially, a continuous hydrogen fermenter was coupled with a commercial Kubota® microfiltration membrane module and the production performance of the cell-retentive design was evaluated under various hydraulic retention times. As a result, it has been observed that altering HRT influenced the rejection feature of the microfiltration module while had an inverse effect on hydrogen productivity and yield, since shortened HRTs were accompanied by gradually decreasing H2 yields (HY) and progressively increasing volumetric H2 production rates (HPR). The highest HY and HPR were achieved as 1.13 mol H2/mol glucose and 0.24 mol H2/L-d, respectively. Furthermore, a Permselect® (PDMS) gas separation membrane was installed to the anaerobic membrane bioreactor and its ability to separate hydrogen from the raw fermentation gaseous mixture was assessed. The highest purity hydrogen obtained in one-step purification by the PDMS module was 67.3 vol.%, which exceeds 30% enrichment efficiency considering 51.3 vol.% H2 in the feed gas. Hence, it could be concluded that the poly(dimethyl siloxane) membrane has potential to attractively concentrate biohydrogen from fermenter off-gas and may be used for in-situ product recovery

Review on the start-up experiences of continuous fermentative hydrogen producing bioreactors

a b s t r a c t The start-up of continuous biohydrogen fermentations is a complex procedure and a key to acceptable hydrogen production performance and successful long-term operation. In this review article, the experiences gained and lessons learned from relevant literature studies dealing with various aspects of H 2 producing bioreactor start-up are comprehensively surveyed. Firstly, the importance of H 2 -forming biosystem start-up including its main steps is outlined. Afterwards, the role of main influencing factors and methods (e.g. strain selection, seed pretreatment and inocula stimulation, switch-over time, bioreactor design, operating conditions) in avoiding the deterioration of starting a reactor is analyzed and presented in detail. Finally, the so far suggested applicable start-up strategies and the corresponding findings are critically discussed pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy

Potassium acetate solution as a promising option to osmotic distillation for sour cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) juice concentration

Different osmotic agents (OA), such as potassium acetate (CH3COOK), potassium carbonate (K2CO3) and ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3), have been examined as alternatives to the traditionally used calcium chloride (CaCl2) for osmotic distillation concentrating of clarified and pre-concentrated sour cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) juice. Comparison of the process performances based on the permeate fluxes has been carried out. Regarding the permeate flux results, simplified estimation of the overall mass transfer coefficient of the most effective osmotic agent and the reference (CaCl2) solution has been also performed. Furthermore, analytical methods such as total antioxidant activity (TAA) and total polyphenolic content (TPC) using spectrophotometric assays have been also carried out to evaluate the effect of the osmotic distillation on the valuable compounds content of concentrated sour cherry juice. CH3COOK was found to be the most effective, resulted more than 25% higher permeate flux during the sour cherry juice concentration. K2CO3 and NH4NO3 were less effective. The simplified mass transfer estimation showed that the CH3COOK is more effective only at near saturated concentrations compared to the CaCl2. Regarding the TAA and TPC contents, a significant loss was found in case of all OAs during the concentration procedures

The Structure of Hyperalkaline Aqueous Solutions Containing High Concentrations of Gallium - a Solution X-ray Diffraction and Computational Study

Highly concentrated alkaline NaOH/Ga(OH)3 solutions with 1.18 M Ga(III)T 2.32 M and 2.4 M NaOHT 4.9 M (where the subscript T denotes total or analytical concentrations) have been prepared and investigated by solution X-ray diffraction and also by ab initio quantum chemical calculations. The data obtained are consistent with the presence of only one predominant Ga(III)-bearing species in these solutions, that is the tetrahedral hydroxo complex Ga(OH)4–. This finding is in stark contrast to that found for Al(III)-containing solutions of similar concentrations, in which, besides the monomeric complex, an oxo-bridged dimer was also found to form. From the solution X-ray diffraction measurements, the formation of the dimeric (OH)3Ga–O–Ga(OH)32– could not unambiguously be shown, however, from the comparison of experimental IR, Raman and 71Ga NMR spectra with calculated ones, its formation can be safely excluded. Moreover, higher mononuclear stepwise hydroxo complexes, like Ga(OH)63–, that have been claimed to exist by others in the literature, was not possible to experimentally detect in these solutions with any of the spectroscopic techniques used