Starch–metal complexes and metal compounds

Recently, metal derivatives of starch evoked considerable interest. Such metal derivatives can take a form of starch compounds bearing metal atoms and metal carrying moieties either covalently bound or complexed. Starch metal complexes may have a character of either Werner, inclusion, sorption or capillary complexes. In this publication, preparation, structure, properties and numerous current and potential applications of those compounds as well as benefits resulting from the application and formation of the complexes are presented. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry     

Correction to: The Effect of Aging on the Microstructure of Selective Laser Melted Cu-Ni-Si

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - In the Experimental Methods section, second paragraph, last sentence of the original article the value for the resistivity of pure copper is incorrect....     

Modelling adaptation of the coal industry to sustainability conditions

Fossil fuels still constitute an important source of energy in the world, but they need to comply with more strict environmental requirements. The coal industry, the basic primary energy supplier to the Polish economy, not only faces new environmental regulations but also restructuring and changes in the industry's organisational structure. The issues of primary importance are the medium and long-term prospects of achieving a suitable quantity and quality of coal supplied, as well as suitable costs. The structure of power generation needs to adjust to emissions limits with given fuel supplies. The paper discusses the construction of a coal supply balancing system which has been developed and applied as a decision support for rational planning of the development of the Polish coal industry. It consists of two linked groups of models: coal supply and coal balancing. Such a structure allows it to respond to the problems emerging for the most part from new environmental regulations, and to select policies that will lead to sustainability in the industry.     

Generation of a Multicomponent Library of Disulfide Donor-Acceptor Architectures Using Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry

We describe here the generation of new donor-acceptor disulfide architectures obtained in aqueous solution at physiological pH. The application of a dynamic combinatorial chemistry approach allowed us to generate a large number of new disulfide macrocyclic architectures together with a new type of [2]catenanes consisting of four distinct components. Up to fifteen types of structurally-distinct dynamic architectures have been generated through one-pot disulfide exchange reactions between four thiol-functionalized aqueous components. The distribution of disulfide products formed was found to be strongly dependent on the structural features of the thiol components employed. This work not only constitutes a success in the synthesis of topologically- and morphologically-complex targets, but it may also open new horizons for the use of this methodology in the construction of molecular machines.     

Can ‘negative net CO2 emissions’ from decarbonised biogas-to-electricity contribute to solving Poland’s carbon capture and sequestration dilemmas?

The article analyses to what extent ‘negative net CO₂ emissions’ from decarbonised biogas-to-electricity can contribute to solving Poland’s carbon capture and sequestration dilemmas. From the criteria-based evaluation of low-carbon power technologies it is found, that biogas-to-electricity is among technologies having increasing production potential in Poland. Therefore, in future biogas will be able to contribute to solving Poland’s CCS dilemmas, because it offers carbon-neutral electricity. Moreover, by applying CCS into biogas-to-electricity the ‘negative net CO₂ emissions’ can be achieved. The article examines three biogas-to-electricity technologies involving CO₂ capture, i.e. biogas-to-biomethane, biogas-to-CHP and biogas-to-electricity via the ORFC cycle. It is emphasised that the ORFC cycle offers low-cost CO₂ separation from a CO₂-H₂ mixture, low O₂-intensity, and the opportunities for advanced mass and energy integration of involved processes. Besides, energy conversion calculations show that the ORFC cycle can offer comparable cycle efficiency with air- and oxy-combustion combined cycles. In regard to the design of biogas-based energy systems it is recommended to include (i) distributed production of biogas in order to avoid costs of long-distance transportation of high-moisture content biomass and (ii) centralised large-scale decarbonised biogas-to-electricity power plants since costs of pipeline transportation of gases are low but large-scale plants could benefit from increased energy and CCS efficiencies.     

Thermo-climatic cost of the domestic consumption products

The thermo-climatic cost (TCC) expresses the cumulative emission of CO₂ burdening all the steps of production processes connected with the fabrication of particular consumption products. The TCC of the considered product results from the consumption of semi-finished products and energy carriers. The TCC of hydrocarbon fuels contains three components: the immediate emission of CO₂ resulting from the combustion of carbon, the TCC of delivery and processing and the TCC resulting from import of fuels. The TCC-component connected with import results from the TCC of the domestic products exported in order to gain the financial means for import.     

Temporal and null-space filter for the material point method

This paper presents algorithm improvements that reduce the numerical noise and increase the numerical stability of the material point method formulation. Because of the linear mapping required in each time step of the material point method algorithm, a possible mismatch between the number of material points and grid nodes leads to a loss of information. These null-space related errors may accumulate and affect the numerical solution. To remove the null-space errors, the presented algorithm utilizes a null-space filter. The null-space filter shown removes the null-space errors, resulting from the rank deficient mapping and the difference between the number of material points and the number of nodes. The presented algorithm enhancements also include the use of the explicit generalized-α integration method, which helps optimizing the numerical algorithmic dissipation. This paper demonstrates the performance of the improved algorithms in several numerical examples.     

Correction to: Fractional strain energy and its application to the free vibration analysis of a plate

Microsystem Technologies - In the original article, one of the co-author’s (Ghader Rezazadeh) surname has been published incorrectly. The correct surname should be Rezazadeh.