Ultrasound and sonochemistry enhance education outcomes: From fundamentals and applied research to entrepreneurial potential

\ua9 2024 The Author(s)With this manuscript we aim to initiate a discussion specific to educational actions around ultrasonics sonochemistry. The importance of these actions does not just derive from a mere pedagogical significance, but they can be an exceptional tool for illustrating various concepts in other disciplines, such as process intensification and microfluidics. Sonochemistry is currently a far-reaching discipline extending across different scales of applicability, from the fundamental physics of tiny bubbles and molecules, up to process plants. This review is part of a special issue in Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, where several scholars have shared their experiences and highlighted opportunities regarding ultrasound as an education tool. The main outcome of our work is that teaching and mentorship in sonochemistry are highly needed, with a balanced technical and scientific knowledge to foster skills and implement safe protocols. Applied research typically features the use of ultrasound as ancillary, to merely enhance a given process and often leading to poorly conceived experiments and misunderstanding of the actual effects. Thus, our scientific community must build a consistent culture and monitor reproducible practices to rigorously generate new knowledge on sonochemistry. These practices can be implemented in teaching sonochemistry in classrooms and research laboratories. We highlight ways to collectively provide a potentially better training for scientists, invigorating academic and industry-oriented careers. A salient benefit for education efforts is that sonochemistry-based projects can serve multidisciplinary training, potentially gathering students from different disciplines, such as physics, chemistry and bioengineering. Herein, we discuss challenges, opportunities, and future avenues to assist in designing courses and research programs based on sonochemistry. Additionally, we suggest simple experiments suitable for teaching basic physicochemical principles at the undergraduatelevel. We also provide arguments and recommendations oriented towards graduate and postdoctoral students, in academia or industry to be more entrepreneurial. We have identified that sonochemistry is consistently seen as a ‘green’ or sustainable tool, which particular appeal to process intensification approaches, including microfluidics and materials science. We conclude that a globally aligned pedagogical initiative and constantly updated educational tools will help to sustain a virtuous cycle in STEM and industrial applications of sonochemistry

Batch and Continuous Ultrasonic Reactors for the Production of Methyl Esters from Vegetable Oils

International audienc

High Temperature conversion of fats: Cracking, gasification, esterification and transesterification

Burning fossil fuels increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Alternative sources of energy are necessary to control global warming. Diverse synthetic methods transform vegetable oils and animal fats, inexpensive carbon sources to biofuels. This chapter reviews the main chemical and thermal processes that transform triglycerides into fuels. We collected the most cited and recent scientific publications about transesterification, thermal and catalytic cracking, and gasification reactions and their respective technologies

Robust kinetic modelling of heterogeneously catalyzed free fatty acids esterification in (monophasic liquid)/solid packed-bed reactor: rival model discrimination

Biofuels are key products for the sustainability of the world energy consumption in the next years. Biodiesel in particular is a non-toxic, biodegradable, environmentally friendly alternative diesel fuel. Nowadays, the main problem for the commercialization of biodiesel is its final cost, that is strongly dependent (about 85 % of the total) by the feedstock used. A possible way to lower the biodiesel production costs is using raw oils, which contain a higher amount of Free Fatty Acids (FFA) that should be eliminated before the transesterification reaction to avoid soaps formation. In this work the regression of kinetic parameters of heterogeneously catalyzed esterification with a packed-bed reactor was made. Robust techniques for kinetic parameters estimation and simultaneous discrimination of rival models were adopted and combined with a dedicated differential-algebraic equation (DAE) model that characterizes the system. The main kinetic parameters were regressed using kinetic models other than literature models in considering the activity (UNIQUAC model was used to calculate the activity coefficients) of the components instead of the concentration because the oil/methanol/water/FAME system is highly non ideal. The kinetic parameters were obtained using equilibrated resins, i.e. using the catalyst after having let it to adsorb reactants and products at the operative conditions. The regressed parameters allow to represent the system in a wide range of operating conditions with a little residual error

Process intensification education contributes to sustainable development goals. Part 1

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