Cut Purses and Poisoned Paintings: Resisting Gender Objectification

The early modern English stage often portrays gender as polarized, creating an unwelcoming atmosphere toward characters who act exhibit characteristics from both male and female genders. Moll Cutpurse from Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s The Roaring Girl and Alice of Arden of Faversham resist early modern gender boundaries, conflating masculine and feminine attributes as they use objects to navigate their respective social spaces. Critics often describe Moll as a transvestite due to her fashion choice to wear a codpiece, along with her exaggerated, boisterous masculine behavior; however, she consistently defends her biological sex, implicating herself within her arguments concerning female chastity. As she duels with a sword for the honor of women, Moll inhabits a masculine persona. Alice, on the other hand, is often considered solely feminine, yet she exhibits early modern masculine characteristics when she acts within her commodity-driven surroundings to plot her husband’s murder by using poisoned objects and coins. By using objects to exert masculinity, Moll and Alice reveal the early modern concern of women’s abilities to adopt masculine qualities. The male responses within these plays show attempts to contain these women, as both are branded as criminals. Both women act against the law: Moll is a cutpurse, and Alice is an adulteress and, by the conclusion of the play, a murderess. Thus, The Roaring Girl and Arden of Faversham reveal the existence of female characters who defy the gender binary by using objects to adopt masculine characteristics. As they resist polarity, however, Moll and Alice must also exist within the realm of criminality

Screeches from the Red Hen: Public Accommodations Laws and Political Affiliation Discrimination in the United States and Louisiana

The article discusses issues on public accommodations laws and political affiliation discrimination in the U.S. and Louisiana, as well as the provisions of the Louisiana Constitution and the U.S. Constitution on public accommodation

Progress in the CO2 Capture Technologies for Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) Units—A Review

© Copyright © 2020 Güleç, Meredith and Snape. Heavy industries including cement, iron and steel, oil refining, and petrochemicals are collectively responsible for about 22% of global CO2 emissions. Among these industries, oil refineries account for 4–6%, of which typically 25–35% arise from the regenerators in Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) units. This article reviews the progress in applying CO2 capture technologies to FCC units. Post combustion and oxyfuel combustion have been investigated to mitigate CO2 emissions in FCC and, more recently, Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) has received attention. Post combustion capture can readily be deployed to the flue gas in FCC units and oxyfuel combustion, which requires air separation has been investigated in a pilot-scale unit by Petrobras (Brazil). However, in comparison, CLC offers considerably lower energy penalties. The applicability of CLC for FCC has also been experimentally investigated at a lab-scale. As a result, the studies demonstrated highly promising CO2 capture capacities for FCC with the application of post combustion (85–90%), oxyfuel combustion (90–100%) and CLC (90–96%). Therefore, the method having lowest energy penalty and CO2 avoided cost is highly important for the next generation of FCC units to optimize CO2 capture. The energy penalty was calculated as 3.1–4.2 GJ/t CO2 with an avoiding cost of 75–110 €/t CO2 for the application of post combustion capture to FCC. However, the application of oxyfuel combustion provided lower energy penalty of 1.8–2.5 GJ/t CO2, and lower CO2 avoided cost of 55–85 €/t CO2. More recently, lab-scale experiments demonstrated that the application of CLC to FCC demonstrate significant progress with an indicative much lower energy penalty of ca. 0.2 GJ/t CO2

The impact of hydrothermal carbonisation on the char reactivity of biomass

Hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) is an attractive biomass pre-treatment as it produces a coal-like fuel, can easily process wet biomass and wastes, and lowers the risk of slagging and fouling in pulverised fuel (PF) combustion boilers. One of the major factors in determining the suitability of a fuel as a coal replacement for PF combustion is matching the char reactivity and volatile matter content to that of coals, as these significantly affect heat release and flame stability. The char reactivity of wood and olive cake biocoals and their respective drop tube furnace chars have been studied using thermogravimetric analysis in comparison to other biomass fuels and high-volatile bituminous coal. It was found that HTC reduces the reactivity of biomass, and in the case of HTC of wood pellets the resulting biocoal has a char reactivity similar to that of high-volatile bituminous coal. Proximate analysis, X-ray fluorescence analysis, and textural characterisation were used to show that this effect is caused primarily by removal of catalytic alkali and alkaline earth metals. Subsequent torrefaction of the wood biocoals was performed to tailor their volatile matter content to match that of sub-bituminous and high volatile bituminous coals without major impact on char reactivity

Stable polycyclic aromatic carbon (SPAC) content as an improved parameter for determining biochar stability

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Impact of solvent type and condition on biomass liquefaction to produce heavy oils in high yield with low oxygen contents

Bio-oils produced by processes such as slow or fast pyrolysis typically contain high water and oxygen contents, which make them incompatible with conventional fuels. It is therefore necessary to upgrade the bio-oils to reduce their oxygen and water contents. The bio-oil upgrading process can consume up to 84 wt% of the initial bio-oil it is therefore important to develop other alternative approaches to generate high quality bio-oil. Thermolytic liquid solvent extraction (LSE) has been considered as a potential viable process due to the high liquid yield, better product quality and water free nature of the final products. In this study, a novel LSE process of biomass liquefaction has been studied under various conditions of solvent type, temperature, and biomass species. Compared to currently available commercial pyrolysis approaches, this process using tetralin as a solvent is shown to be capable of generating high quality bio-oil with low oxygen contents (ca. 5.9%) at extremely high overall conversions of up to 87 and 92 (%) dry and ash free basis (DAF) from Scotch pine and miscanthus, respectively. Overall, the study has demonstrated the advantages of LSE for bio-oil generation from biomass, in terms of producing high conversions to liquid products that are compatible with existing petroleum heavy feedstocks

Selective low temperature chemical looping combustion of higher alkanes with Cu- and Mn- oxides

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) of n-hexadecane and n-heptane with copper and manganese oxides (CuO and Mn2O3) has been investigated in a fixed bed reactor to reveal the extent to which low temperature CLC can potentially be applicable to hydrocarbons. The effects of fuel to oxygen carrier ratio, fuel feed flow rate, and fuel residence time on the extent of combustion are reported. Methane did not combust, while near complete conversion was achieved for both n-hexadecane and n-heptane with excess oxygen carrier for CuO. For Mn2O3, complete reduction to Mn3O4 occurred, but the extent of combustion was controlled by the much slower reduction to MnO. Although the extent of cracking is relatively small in the absence of cracking catalysts, for the mechanism to be selective for higher hydrocarbons suggests that the reaction with oxygen involves radicals or carbocations arising from bond scission. Sintering of pure CuO occurred after repeated cycles, but this can easily be avoided using a support, such as alumina. The fact that higher hydrocarbons can be combusted selectively at 500 °C and below, offers the possibility of using CLC to remove these hydrocarbons and potentially other organics from hot gas streams

A novel approach to CO2 capture in Fluid Catalytic Cracking-Chemical Looping Combustion

Oil refineries collectively account for about 4–6% of global CO2 emissions and Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) units are responsible for roughly 25% of these. Although post-combustion and oxy-combustion have been suggested to capture CO2 released from the regenerator of FCC units, Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) is also a potential approach. In this study, the applicability of CLC for FCC units has been explored. A refinery FCC catalyst (equilibrium catalyst-ECat) was mixed mechanically with reduced oxygen carriers; Cu, Cu2O, CoO, and Mn3O4. To identify any detrimental effects of the reduced oxygen carriers on cracking, the catalyst formulations were tested for n-hexadecane cracking using ASTM D3907-13, the standard FCC microactivity test (MAT). To investigate the combustion reactivity of coke with physically mixed oxidised oxygen carriers, CuO, Co3O4 and Mn2O3, TGA tests were conducted on a low volatile semi-anthracite Welsh coal, which has a similar elemental composition to actual FCC coke, with various oxygen carrier to coke ratios over the temperature range 750–900 °C.The results demonstrated that, whereas Cu was detrimental for cracking n-hexadecane with the ECat, Cu2O, CoO, and Mn3O4 have no significant effects on gas, liquid and coke yields, and product selectivity. Complete combustion of the model coke was achieved with CuO, Co3O4 and Mn2O3, once the stoichiometric ratio of oxygen carrier/coke was higher than 1.0 and sufficient time had been provided. These results indicate that the proposed CLC-FCC concept has promise as a new approach to CO2 capture in FCC

Study of pyrolysis for biochar production from biomass feedstocks using a simplified Aspen Plus model

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Retardation of oil cracking to gas and pressure induced combination reactions to account for viscous oil in deep petroleum basins: evidence from oil and n-hexadecane pyrolysis at water pressures up to 900bar

This study reports a laboratory pyrolysis experimental study on oil and n-hexadecane to rationalise the thermal stability of oil in deep petroleum reservoirs. Using a 25 ml Hastelloy pressure vessel, a 35° API North Sea oil (Oseberg) and n-hexadecane (n-C16), were pyrolysed separately under non-hydrous (20 bar), low pressure hydrous (175 bar) and high liquid water pressure (500 and 900 bar) at 350°C for 24 h. This study reports a laboratory pyrolysis experimental study on oil and n-hexadecane to rationalise the thermal stability of oil in deep petroleum reservoirs. Using a 25 ml Hastelloy pressure vessel, a 35° API North Sea oil (Oseberg) and n-hexadecane (n-C16), were pyrolysed separately under non-hydrous (20 bar), low pressure hydrous (175 bar) and high liquid water pressure (500 and 900 bar) at 350 °C for 24 h. This study shows that the initial cracking of oil and n-hexadecane to hydrocarbon gases was retarded in the presence of water (175 bar hydrous conditions) compared to low pressures in the absence of water (non-hydrous conditions). At 900 bar water pressure, the retardation of oil and n-hexadecane cracking was more significant compared to 175 bar hydrous and 500 bar water pressure conditions. Combination reactions have been observed for the first time in pressurised water experiments during the initial stages of cracking, resulting in the increased abundance of heavier n-alkane hydrocarbons (> C20), the amount of unresolved complex material (UCM), as well as the asphaltene content of the oil. These reactions, favoured by increasing water pressure provide a new mechanism for rationalising the thermal stability of oils, and for producing heavy oils at temperatures above which biodegradation can occur. Indeed, we demonstrate that bitumen from the high pressure Gulf of Mexico basin has been formed from lighter oil components and it possesses similar characteristics to the laboratory oils generated