Anaerobic digestion and gasification of seaweed

The potential of algal biomass as a source of liquid and gaseous biofuels is a highly topical theme, with over 70 years of sometimes intensive research and considerable financial investment. A wide range of unit operations can be combined to produce algal biofuel, but as yet there is no successful commercial system producing such biofuel. This suggests that there are major technical and engineering difficulties to be resolved before economically viable algal biofuel production can be achieved. Both gasification and anaerobic digestion have been suggested as promising methods for exploiting bioenergy from biomass, and two major projects have been funded in the UK on the gasification and anaerobic digestion of seaweed, MacroBioCrude and SeaGas. This chapter discusses the use of gasification and anaerobic digestion of seaweed for the production of biofuel

Clinical applications of gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry of steroids

This review article underlines the importance of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for determination of steroids in man. The use of steroids labelled with stable isotopes as internal standard and subsequent analysis by GC-MS yields up to now the only reliable measurement of steroids in serum. Isotope dilution GC-MS is the reference method for evaluation of routine analysis of serum steroid hormones. GC-MS is an important tool for detection of steroid hormone doping and combined with a combustion furnace and an isotope ratio mass spectrometer the misuse of testosterone by athletes can be discovered. Finally the so called urinary steroid profile by GC and GC-MS is the method of choice for detection of steroid metabolites in health and disease. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved