Transesterification of Palm-based Methyl Palmitate into Esteramine Catalyzed by Calcium Oxide Catalyst

The technology for transesterification reactions between methyl esters and alcohols is well established by using classical homogeneous alkaline catalysts, which provide high conversion of methyl esters to specialty or nonindigenous esters. However, in certain products where the purity of the esters is of concern, the removal of homogeneous catalysts after the completion of the reaction is a challenge in terms of production cost and water footprint. Therefore, a study to investigate the potential of heterogeneous catalysts was conducted on reactions between methyl palmitate and triethanolamine. The degree of basicity and active surface area of calcium oxide (CaO), zinc oxide (ZnO), and magnesium oxide (MgO) were first characterized by using temperature-programmed desorption (TPD-CO₂) and Brunauere–Emmett–Teller (BET), respectively. Among the metal oxides investigated, the CaO catalyst showed the best catalytic activity toward the transesterification process as it gave the highest conversion of methyl palmitate and yielded fatty esteramine compositions similar to the conventional homogeneous catalyst. The optimum transesterification condition by using the CaO catalyst utilized a lower vacuum system of approximately 200 mbar, which could minimize a considerable amount of energy consumption. Furthermore, low CaO dosage of 0.1% was able to give a conversion of 94.5% methyl ester and formed esteramine at 170 °C for 2 h. Therefore, the production of esterquats from esteramine may become more economically feasible through the methyl ester route by using the CaO catalyst, which can be recycled three times.     

Thermomechanical behaviour of composites

This paper derives the governing equations for the thermomechanical behaviour of composites. When the basic equations for the thermoelastic behaviour of solids were first derived in the nineteenth century several approximations were made. The effect of these assumptions are discussed and illustrated by the results of a simple laboratory test. The implications of this work on the analysis of impact damaged laminates are then discussed.     

Development of Stretch Solder Interconnections for Wafer Level Packaging

A wafer level packaging technique has been developed with an inherent advantage of good solder joint co-planarity suitable for wafer level testing. A suitable weak metallization scheme has also been established for the detachment process. During the fabrication process, the compliancy of the solder joint is enhanced through stretching to achieve a small shape factor. Thermal cycling reliability of these hourglass-shaped, stretch solder interconnections has been found to be considerably better than that of the conventional spherical-shaped solder bumps.     

Analysis of composite laminates with transverse cracks

The analysis of the behaviour of composite laminates with general balanced lay-up sequences and containing distributed transverse cracks is discussed and demonstrated in this paper. It is shown that a constitutive model of damage for composites, which has been successfully used to analyse the effects of uniformly distributed transverse cracks in cross-ply laminates, can be readily extended to the analysis of uniformly distributed transverse cracks in more general symmetric laminates. The further extension of the theory to non-uniformly distributed damage can be achieved by finite element analysis. It is shown that the finite element implementation of the theory is particularly simple since the contribution of the damage to the overall behaviour can be incorporated into the force vectors.     

Swelling properties of chemically modified oil palm empty fruit bunch based polyurethane composites

In this study, the diffusion of various types of solvent in oil palm empty fruit bunch/polyurethane composites, produced from chemically modified empty fruit bunches, was investigated. The solubility parameters and polymer–solvent interaction parameters of the produced composites were determined. The void contents of the composites were also determined before swelling tests to eliminate the free solvent present in the system. From the results obtained, we found that the diffusion of the solvents was dependent on the compatible group available and the voids present in the system. The solubility parameters of the empty fruit bunch/polyurethane composites with different degrees of chemical modification were 11.6 and 11.7 (cal/cm^?3)^1/2. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

Application of the T-integral and S criteria in finite element analysis of impact damage at fastener holes in graphite/epoxy laminates under compression

This paper illustrates the application of two fracture criteria, Atluri's T^*-integral and Sih's strain energy density factor S for estimating the residual strength of an impact damaged fastener hole in a composite laminate. Finite element analyses are performed, and the magnitude and distribution of T^* and S are determined around the delamination. It is found that the profiles of these distributions are extremely complex and sensitive to the modelling of the stress fields close to the delamination. The effects of local closure, shear moduli and cracktip singularity are investigated. It is also shown that the representation of the stress singularity in the finite element model has a strong effect on the distribution of T^* and S. The distribution of both T^* and S is such that three local maxima occur and are situated at the same locations around the delamination. These locations approximately coincide with the points of maximum growth as revealed by ultrasonic C-scan of the damage growth of several specimens. The T^*-integral is shown to be more sensitive to the values of interlaminar shear moduli than S. The results of the analyses suggest that both the T^*-integral and S criteria may be successfully employed in the prediction of residual strength. However, S is better at predicting the direction of damage growth provided the stress fields near the delamination can be accurately modelled.     

Design of Filter Banks/Wavelets Using TROV: A Survey

The design problem of multirate filter banks can be divided into two parts. The first part involves the issue of reconstruction error of the signal which consists of three components—aliasing, magnitude, and phase. The second part of the design problem involves the issue of designing good-quality subband filters. There has been a lot of research addressing the first part but there are relatively few good and simple design techniques for the second part. There is a class of techniques which we will refer to as TROV (TRansformation Of Variables) which satisfactorily addresses the two parts of the design problem. Techniques which fall under this class include the McClellan Transformation, Generalized Transformation of Variables, and Frequency Rotation. A survey of the design techniques proposed by different authors in the literature which falls under this class is presented here. First, the similarity and differences of the approaches adopted by different authors is studied. Second, it is shown that the different approaches can be unified. An extension to the design technique is presented which will enhance its flexibility and effectiveness.     

A gas chromatography–mass spectrometry method for the detection of chlorpyrifos contamination in palm-based fatty acids

Chlorpyrifos is a Malaysian Pesticide Board-approved organophosphate insecticide, which may become concentrated during fractionation. The objective of this project was to develop and validate a method to detect and quantify chlorpyrifos in food-grade fatty acids ingredients, e.g. caprylic-capric acid mixture and oleic acid (OLA) used to synthesize triacylglyceride based food additives and in the cosmetic industry. A selective ion monitoring gas chromatography–mass spectrometry method with a matrix-matched calibration curve calibration was selected. The method involved the direct injection of chlorpyrifos spiked into the fatty acids matrix. The percentage recoveries at spiking levels of 0.5, 0.75, 2.5, and 4.0 μg g⁻¹ of chlorpyrifos in OLA and caprylic-capric acid ranged from 85.7%–101.1% to 97.2%–112%, respectively, with a relative standard deviation of within 11%. The intra-day and inter-day precision were deemed acceptable as indicated by an relative SD value of within 10%. A good linear relationship with a coefficient of correlation >0.99 for the matrix-matched calibration was achieved between 0.5 and 5 μg g⁻¹. The limit of detection and limit of quantification corresponded to 0.5 μg g⁻¹ for OLA and 0.55 μg g⁻¹ for caprylic-capric acid.