Current Trends in Pretreatment and Fractionation of Lignocellulose as Reflected in Industrial Patent Activities

The pretreatment process to disintegrate lignocellulose and to fractionate its three main components hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin, is a crucial step to enable sustainable and economic value chains based on biomass feedstock. This review provides an overview of the recent patenting activities on pretreatment. Most of these activities focus on optimization of different known processes to improve economics, such as increased catalyst efficiency, effluents recirculation, or lignin valorization. However, also a number of patents and demonstration activities based on emerging concepts for pretreatments are observed.     

Effect of glucose oxidase and mixing time on soluble and insoluble wheat flour protein fractions: Changes on SH groups and H2O2 consumption

Glucose oxidase (GOX) has been recognized as an alternative to substitute chemical oxidants in bread making, however the action exerted on wheat flour proteins by the H₂O₂ produced is still unclear. Looking for a better understanding of the role of GOX and H₂O₂ in the bread making process, the effect of varying GOX levels and mixing time on soluble and insoluble wheat flour protein fractions was studied. Results showed that GOX promoted a decrement in free SH groups in both proteins, being the most evident effect on the soluble fraction at the beginning of the mixing process, remaining almost constant afterwards. H₂O₂ was continuously produced during mixing, showing its largest consumption during the first 6 min without significant SH changes afterwards. Results suggest that H₂O₂ must be involved in other reactions as it remains in the sample; this also suggests that oxygen is not a limiting factor in this reaction.     

Solution‐Controlled Dissolution of Supplementary Cementitious Material Glasses at pH 13: The Effect of Solution Composition on Glass Dissolution Rates

Supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) are widely used to partially replace portland clinker in blended cements. Reducing clinker contents further without compromising the development of early strength necessitates a better assessment and enhancement of the reactivity of the available SCMs. To this purpose, the reactivity of synthesized calcium aluminosilicate glasses covering a compositional range from blast‐furnace slags (BFS) over fly ashes to silica fume was analyzed by dissolution experiments. Initial glass dissolution rates were measured at 20°C and pH 13, and with varying initial concentrations of aqueous Al, Ca, and Si. At pH 13, glass dissolution rates were observed to scale linearly with the glass Ca/(Al + Si) molar ratio. Ca‐rich blast‐furnace type glass dissolution was shown to be up to one order of magnitude faster than tectosilicate fly ash and silica fume type glass dissolution, supporting different pathways to dissolution. In solutions that are strongly undersaturated with respect to hydrous glass and hydration products, glass dissolution rates are independent of changes in solution undersaturation and aqueous Si activity. In contrast, dissolution rates decrease with aqueous Ca concentration for all glasses and with aqueous Al concentration for tectosilicate‐type glasses. The insights gained are instrumental in finding ways to enhance SCM reactivity.     

On the microstructure of single wall carbon nanotubes reinforced ceramic matrix composites

A microstructural modelling of the microstructure in single wall carbon nanotubes reinforced alumina ceramics has been developed. The model accounts for the main microstructural features, being quite useful to describe the carbon nanotube distribution along the ceramic matrix. The microstructural analysis derived from this model is found to give a deeper insight into the high-temperature creep of these composites.     

Methods for Conceptual Thermal Design

This article describes three generic models and application methods that can be used to analyze temperature development in an electronic product during conceptual design. The models are based on generally known heat transfer and resistor–capacitor network theory and are theoretically and numerically approximated. The result is three easy-to-use tools for conceptual thermal design. Application of the models in design practice has been assessed using a usability experiment and several in-depth interviews with industrial design engineers from the field.     

Rheokinetic of a gelled resol resin curing by dynamic‐temperature rheometry based on rectangular torsion strain

The rheological behavior of a phenolic resol resin during its curing process was studied through a rheological dynamic‐temperature analysis. Two heating ramps from 0 to 120°C (1°C/min) and from 0 to 150°C (5°C/min) were performed. The resin's complex viscosity data were obtained by applying a rectangular torsion strain. The overall change of complex viscosity with temperature was due to a combination of thermal softening, described by the Andrade equation, and the resin crosslinking process. The four‐ and six‐parameter Arrhenius rheokinetic model was applied to the profiles obtained for the resin's complex viscosity, and the viscous flow and activation energies of curing kinetics were established. Two calculation methods are proposed to obtain the flow and curing parameters of the material. The six‐parameter Arrhenius model was more suitable for predicting changes in the resin's complex viscosity, obtaining an activation energy of ～ 38.0 kJ/mol for the resol resin curing process. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011     

Empirical calibration of a roadside hazardousness index for Spanish two-lane rural roads

Crash records and roadside data from Spanish two-lane rural roads were analyzed to study the effect of roadside configuration on safety. Four indicators were used to characterize the main roadside features that have an influence on the consequences of roadway departures: roadside slope, non-traversable obstacles distance from the roadway edge, safety barrier installation, and alignment. Based on the analysis of the effect of roadside configuration on the frequency and severity of run-off-road injury crashes, a categorical roadside hazardousness scale was defined. Cluster analysis was applied to group the combinations of the four indicators into categories with homogeneous effects on run-off-road injury crashes frequency and severity. As a result a 5-level Roadside Hazardousness Index (RHI) was defined. RHI can be used as reference to normalize the collection of roadside safety related information. The index can also be used as variable for inclusion of roadside condition information in multivariate crash prediction models.     

Single-frame super-resolution in remote sensing: a practical overview

Image acquisition technology is improving very fast from a performance point of view. However, there are physical restrictions that can only be solved using software processing strategies. This is particularly true in the case of super resolution (SR) methodologies. SR techniques have found a fertile application field in airborne and space optical acquisition platforms. Single-frame SR methods may be advantageous for some remote-sensing platforms and acquisition time conditions. The contributions of this article are basically two: (1) to present an overview of single-frame SR methods, making a comparative analysis of their performance in different and challenging remote-sensing scenarios, and (2) to propose a new single-frame SR taxonomy, and a common validation strategy. Finally, we should emphasize that, on the one hand, this is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that such a review and analysis of single SR methods is made in the framework of remote sensing, and, on the other hand, that the new single-frame SR taxonomy is aimed at shedding some light when classifying some types of single-frame SR methods.     

Reconciling continuum and non-continuum data with industrial application

In order to perform data reconciliation, it is important that noises in the data have well-defined distributions. The motivation behind this study was to enable the comparison between a discrete and continuous data set so that means can be compared for gross error over the short term; this required that local variables exhibit similar distributions.A case study was done on a system where non-continuum loads from a dump truck were to be reconciled with two downstream continuum weightometers. An algorithm was developed using the binomial distribution and time delay in order to simulate the effect of the dump pocket.Regression analysis based on principal components was used to evaluate the performance of the smoothing algorithm and to determine the most likely maximum hopper capacity that locates between the two weightometers.