A novel technological blue hydrogen production process: industrial sorption enhanced autothermal membrane (ISEAM)

A novel technological industrial blue hydrogen production process – the Industrial Sorption Enhanced Autothermal Membrane (ISEAM) process, with the potential to produce constant fuel cell grade hydrogen with a purity of 99.99%, regardless of upstream process upsets, has been modelled using an Aspen Plus simulator and MATLAB (including both thermodynamics and kinetics analysis). The process exhibits a very high hydrogen yield (99%), and methane conversion (99.9%), with a low carbon monoxide footprint (at ppm levels). The results were validated by comparing against experimental data published in the literature. Parametric evaluations were later conducted to identify the optimal operating conditions for the developed blue hydrogen ISEAM process. The required reforming heat is provided by the exothermic carbonation reaction of a sorbent, while chemical looping of the oxygen carrier (metal oxides) provides the regeneration heat required for the saturated sorbent, in a novel multi-tubular packed shell and tube reactor. Pinch analysis shows that the process is auto thermal (so it does not need any external heating utility) and can achieve an extremely high 97.5% thermal and hydrogen production efficiency. The ISEAM process was benchmarked against an industrial steam methane reforming (SMR) plant and the result shows ≥32% improvements in most of the technical parameters that were evaluated. Economic evaluation shows a levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) of $2.6 per kg-H2 for the baseline SMR plant compared with$1.3 per kg-H2 for the ISEAM process (a 50% cost reduction). The cost of CO2 removal (CCR) was calculated as $180 per tonneCO2 for the baseline SMR process compared with$33.2 per tonneCO2 (81.6% cost reduction) for the novel process. The novel ISEAM process utilizes mature and existing industry technologies such as desulphurization, pre-reforming, adsorption, membranes, waste heat boilers, and pressure swing adsorption. Because of this, scale-up is easier and some of the challenges associated with the SMR process and integrated sorption enhanced membrane reforming (SEMR) processes are addressed. These include thermodynamic constraints, a high energy penalty, overall process integration, optimization, membrane contamination, carbon deposition and unsteady state operation

Free volume, molecular grains, self-organisation, and anisotropic entropy : machining materials

In this article, the relationship between molecular architecture and the formation of twist-bend phases is reviewed under the context of shape dependency. We conclude that the twist-bend phase is a universal phenomenon, which occurs in a wide variety of materials, for dimers through to main chain polymers. In the process, the chemical information on molecular design is effectively lost or irrelevant, and molecular topology takes precedence over electrostatic interactions in mesophase formation. As a consequence of this macro-scale material, engineering by shape alone becomes a possibility, potentially more phases may be realised, and entropy is anisotropic

Molecular structure and the twist-bend nematic phase : the role of terminal chains

Peer reviewedPostprin

Conformational landscapes of bimesogenic compounds and their implications for the formation of modulated nematic phases

The twist-bend phase (NTB) is most commonly observed in materials with a gross-bent shape: dimers; bent-cores; bent-oligomers. We had suggested previously that the bend-angle of such systems effectively dictates the relative thermal stability of the NTB phase. However, our earlier paper relied on the use of a single energy-minimum conformer and so failed to capture any information about flexibility and conformational distribution. In the present work, we revisit our hypothesis and examine a second set of dimers with varying linking groups and spacer composition. We have improved on our earlier work by studying the conformational landscape of each material, allowing average bend-angles to be determined as well as the conformer distribution. We observe that the stability of the NTB phase exhibits a strong dependence not only on the Boltzmann-weighted average bend-angle (rather than just a static conformer), but also on the distribution of conformers. To a lesser extent, the flexibility of the spacer appears important. Ultimately, this work satisfies both theoretical treatments and our initial experimental study and demonstrates the importance of molecular bend to the NTB phase

Combined Microscopy, Calorimetry and X-ray Scattering Study of Fluorinated Dimesogens

The material FDO11DFCB3 (compound 2 in this work) remains the only example of a liquid-crystalline material to exhibit a phase transition from the heliconical twist-bend phase into a lamellar smectic A mesophase, additionally this material exhibits a previously unidentified mesophase. We have prepared and characterised several homologues of this compound, with each material subjected to an in-depth analysis by optical microscopy, calorimetry and small angle X-ray scattering studies. Despite FDO11DFCB3 being similar in chemical structure to the novel materials presented herein its liquid-crystalline behaviour is rather different, indicating an unexpected sensitivity of the twist-bend phase to molecular structure

A network-based target overlap score for characterizing drug combinations: High correlation with cancer clinical trial results

Drug combinations are highly efficient in systemic treatment of complex multigene diseases such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis and hypertension. Most currently used combinations were found in empirical ways, which limits the speed of discovery for new and more effective combinations. Therefore, there is a substantial need for efficient and fast computational methods. Here, we present a principle that is based on the assumption that perturbations generated by multiple pharmaceutical agents propagate through an interaction network and can cause unexpected amplification at targets not immediately affected by the original drugs. In order to capture this phenomenon, we introduce a novel Target Overlap Score (TOS) that is defined for two pharmaceutical agents as the number of jointly perturbed targets divided by the number of all targets potentially affected by the two agents. We show that this measure is correlated with the known effects of beneficial and deleterious drug combinations taken from the DCDB, TTD and Drugs.com databases. We demonstrate the utility of TOS by correlating the score to the outcome of recent clinical trials evaluating trastuzumab, an effective anticancer agent utilized in combination with anthracycline- and taxane-based systemic chemotherapy in HER2-receptor (erb-b2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2) positive breast cancer. © 2015 Ligeti et al

Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and the Incidence of Acute Viral Respiratory Tract Infections in Healthy Adults

Declining serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D seen in the fall and winter as distance increases from the equator may be a factor in the seasonal increased prevalence of influenza and other viral infections. This study was done to determine if serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations correlated with the incidence of acute viral respiratory tract infections.In this prospective cohort study serial monthly concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D were measured over the fall and winter 2009-2010 in 198 healthy adults, blinded to the nature of the substance being measured. The participants were evaluated for the development of any acute respiratory tract infections by investigators blinded to the 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations. The incidence of infection in participants with different concentrations of vitamin D was determined. One hundred ninety-five (98.5%) of the enrolled participants completed the study. Light skin pigmentation, lean body mass, and supplementation with vitamin D were found to correlate with higher concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. Concentrations of 38 ng/ml or more were associated with a significant (p<0.0001) two-fold reduction in the risk of developing acute respiratory tract infections and with a marked reduction in the percentages of days ill.Maintenance of a 25-hydroxyvitamin D serum concentration of 38 ng/ml or higher should significantly reduce the incidence of acute viral respiratory tract infections and the burden of illness caused thereby, at least during the fall and winter in temperate zones. The findings of the present study provide direction for and call for future interventional studies examining the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in reducing the incidence and severity of specific viral infections, including influenza, in the general population and in subpopulations with lower 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations, such as pregnant women, dark skinned individuals, and the obese

Characterization of Genome-Wide Association-Identified Variants for Atrial Fibrillation in African Americans

Despite a greater burden of risk factors, atrial fibrillation (AF) is less common among African Americans than European-descent populations. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for AF in European-descent populations have identified three predominant genomic regions associated with increased risk (1q21, 4q25, and 16q22). The contribution of these loci to AF risk in African American is unknown.We studied 73 African Americans with AF from the Vanderbilt-Meharry AF registry and 71 African American controls, with no history of AF including after cardiac surgery. Tests of association were performed for 148 SNPs across the three regions associated with AF, and 22 SNPs were significantly associated with AF (P<0.05). The SNPs with the strongest associations in African Americans were both different from the index SNPs identified in European-descent populations and independent from the index European-descent population SNPs (r(2)<0.40 in HapMap CEU): 1q21 rs4845396 (odds ratio [OR] 0.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.13-0.67, P = 0.003), 4q25 rs4631108 (OR 3.43, 95% CI 1.59-7.42, P = 0.002), and 16q22 rs16971547 (OR 8.1, 95% CI 1.46-45.4, P = 0.016). Estimates of European ancestry were similar among cases (23.6%) and controls (23.8%). Accordingly, the probability of having two copies of the European derived chromosomes at each region did not differ between cases and controls.Variable European admixture at known AF loci does not explain decreased AF susceptibility in African Americans. These data support the role of 1q21, 4q25, and 16q22 variants in AF risk for African Americans, although the index SNPs differ from those identified in European-descent populations