Polypropylene surface modification with stearyl alcohol ethoxylates to enhance wettability

Stearyl alcohol ethoxylated additives were melt‐blended in polypropylene (PP) films, and the characteristics of the modified films were investigated. The melt blending of stearyl alcohol ethoxylates improved the hydrophilicity of the PP films through additive surface segregation. Surface specific techniques, such as X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and time‐of‐flight secondary‐ion mass spectrometry, were used to study the surface compositions of the samples modified with ethoxylated additives. This revealed that the surface concentrations of the additives were significantly higher than the bulk concentrations in all samples. In addition, the surface compositions of the additive‐modified samples continuously changed, even after the films were fully solidified. We also found that the resulting surface characteristics were very dynamic, so the melt‐additive‐containing polymer surfaces responded to water exposure, and their surface properties and morphologies were altered as a result. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011     

Relationship of Sensory Staleness in Two Lagers to Headspace Concentrations of trans‐2‐Nonenal and Three Staling Aldehydes

Key compounds in lager staling include furfural, hexanal, 5‐ hydroxymethyl furfural (5‐HMF), and trans‐2‐nonenal. Quantitative data of headspace concentration in two lagers — one premium at 5% (abv), the other a standard product at 4% (abv) — were obtained by solid phase microextraction (SPME) followed by gas chromatography using a mass selective detector (GCMS). The concentrations of the aldehydes were used to predict overall stale scoring from sensory assessor data, of lagers stored at 4, 12, 30, and 37°C for 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. Concentrations of all four aldehydes increased with time of storage and with higher temperatures. Correlation coefficients for prediction of staleness in the premium lager were similar at 0.81 and 0.84 for partial least square regression (PLS1) and artificial neural network (ANN) modelling respectively, and the latter showed a lower root mean square error (RMS error). For the standard product, the correlation coefficients were 0.72 and 0.86, with ANN showing lower RMS error respectively. In both PLS models, E‐2‐ nonenal had high regression coefficients and 5‐HMF lower coefficients. Furfural and hexanal differed in contributions to the lagers.     

Preparation of pseudocapacitor electrodes via electrodeposition of polyaniline on nonwoven carbon fiber fabrics

Aniline has been polymerized via electrodeposition onto various nonwoven carbon fiber fabric (CFF) substrates for use as a pseudocapacitive electrochemical capacitor. Four types of CFF were initially tested for double layer capacitance before polyaniline deposition, and again for specific capacitance after deposition. A binder‐free CFF was selected for further analysis due to its high capacitance change following PANI deposition (three orders of magnitude). The aniline monomer concentration, deposition potential, and deposition time were varied and resulting materials were characterized using chrono‐potentiometry, cyclic voltammetry, and scanning electron microscopy. The deposition potential range yielding highest capacitance was found to be between 0.744 and 0.777 V. A solution concentration of 0.5M aniline at a 20 min deposition time resulted in the highest specific capacitance (>80 F/g based on total electrode mass and >300 F/g based on PANI mass) within this study. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 43315.     

Electrostatic Capture Efficiency Enhancement of Polypropylene Electret Filters with Barium Titanate

This study reports on the effects of BaTiO₃—a high dielectric constant additive—addition on charging and filtration properties of meltblown polypropylene (PP) electret filters. Since electrostatic capture efficiency of electret filters is mainly dependent on electrical forces, surface potential and aerosol filtration properties were analyzed and compared. Due to quasi-permanent nature of electret property, stability of charging and filtration performance was also investigated via following an isothermal charge decay procedure. Addition of BaTiO₃ did not alter fiber morphology significantly. Particularly, the stability of electrostatic filtration performance was found to be promising with the addition of BaTiO₃. Possible microstructural changes after addition of BaTiO₃ were investigated via wide angle X-ray diffraction. Changes in crystal structure of PP upon addition of BaTiO₃ did not deteriorate electrostatic properties.

Copyright 2015 American Association for Aerosol Research     

Benzyl and Methyl Fatty Hydroxamic Acids Based on Palm Kernel Oil as Chelating Agent for Liquid-Liquid Iron(III) Extraction

Liquid-liquid iron(III) extraction was investigated using benzyl fatty hydroxamic acids (BFHAs) and methyl fatty hydroxamic acids (MFHAs) as chelating agents through the formation of iron(III) methyl fatty hydroxamate (Fe-MFHs) or iron(III) benzyl fatty hydroxamate (Fe-BFHs) in the organic phase. The results obtained under optimized conditions, showed that the chelating agents in hexane extract iron(III) at pH 1.9 were realized effectively with a high percentage of extraction (97.2% and 98.1% for MFHAs and BFHAs, respectively). The presence of a large amount of Mg(II), Ni(II), Al(III), Mn(II) and Co(II) ions did affect the iron(III) extraction. Finally stripping studies for recovering iron(III) from organic phase (Fe-MFHs or Fe-BFHs dissolved in hexane) were carried out at various concentrations of HCl, HNO(3) and H(2)SO(4). The results showed that the desired acid for recovery of iron(III) was 5 M HCl and quantitative recovery of iron(III) was achieved from Fe(III)-MFHs and Fe(III)-BFHs solutions in hexane containing 5 mg/L of Fe(III).     

Lipid profile,lipid ratios,apolipoproteins, and risk of cardiometabolic multimorbidity in men: The Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study

The blood level of lipids, apolipoproteins, and lipid ratios are important predictors of some chronic diseases. However, their association with cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) is less known. We evaluated a wide range of lipid profiles and lipid ratios, including low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), very-low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (VLDL-C), high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), and apoA1 and B, as well triglyceride and total cholesterol with risk of incident CMM. In 1728 men aged 52.5 ± 5.2 years from the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease were included in this study. We defined CMM as coexisting of two or more of stroke, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D), coronary heart disease (CHD). A Cox proportional hazard regression method was applied to evaluate the risk of CMM against the exposures. During the mean follow-up of 22.4 years, 335 men suffered from CMM conditions. Higher serum triglyceride and VLDL concentrations were associated with a higher risk of coexisting T2D-CHD (HRs 1.99 (95% CI, 1.12–3.53) and HRs 1.79 (95% CI, 1.04–3.11), respectively. Whereas higher HDL was associated with lower incident [HRs 0.49 (95% CI, 0.40–1.00)]. The HRs for coexisting T2D-CHD was 2.02 (95% CI, 1.01–3.07) for total cholesterol/HDL-C, 1.85 (95% CI, 1.04–3.29) for triglyceride/HDL-C, 1.69 (95% CI, 1.01–2.31) for Non-HDL-C/HDL-C, and 1.89 (95% CI, 1.03–2.46) for apoB/apoA1. In contrast, serum LDL-C/apoB ratios were inversely associated with the risk of coexisting T2D-CHD [HRs 0.50 (95% CI, 0.28–0.90)]. No associations were observed between our exposures and other CMM conditions. In conclusion, elevated triglyceride, VLDL-C, total cholesterol/HDL-C, TG/HDL-C, apoB/apoA1 as well as lower LDL-C/apoB were independently associated with the higher risk of T2D-CHD coexistence.     

Utilization of RBF-ANN as a novel approach for estimation of asphaltene inhibition efficiency

One of the problematic concerns in petroleum industries is the deposition of heavy fractions of crude oil such as asphaltene fraction during production and transportation. The utilization of inhibitors is known as a relative low cost and effective method for asphaltene inhibition. In this study, Radial basis function artificial neural network (RBF-ANN) was applied to predict asphaltene precipitation reduction in terms of structure and concentration of inhibitor and oil properties. In order to training and testing of RBF-ANN the required data are extracted from reliable sources. The predicted asphaltene precipitation reduction values were compared with the actual data statistically and graphically. The coefficients of determination for training and testing phases of RBF-ANN were determined as 0.995906 and 0.994853 respectively. These evaluations showed that the RBF-ANN as a predictive tool has great capacity to estimate effect of asphaltene inhibitors on reduction of asphaltene precipitation.