Production of biodiesel from waste fryer grease using mixed methanol/ethanol system

Transesterification of waste fryer grease (WFG) containing 5–6 wt.% free fatty acid (FFA) was carried out with methanol, ethanol, and mixtures of methanol/ethanol maintaining the oil to alcohol molar ratio of 1:6, and initially with KOH as a catalyst. Mixtures of methanol and ethanol were used for transesterification in order to use the better solvent property of ethanol and rapid equilibrium using methanol. Formation of soap by reaction of FFA present in WFG with KOH instigated difficulty in the separation of glycerol from biodiesel ester. To untangle this problem, two-stage (acid and alkali catalyzed) method was used for biodiesel synthesis. More than 90% ester was obtained when two-stage method was used compared to ∼ 50% ester in single stage alkaline catalyst. In the case of mixed alcohol, a relatively smaller amount of ethyl esters was formed along with methyl esters. Acid value, viscosity, and cetane number of all the esters prepared from WFG were within the range of the ASTM standard. Esters obtained from WFG showed good performance as a lubricity additive.     

Synthesis of Biodiesel from Canola Oil Using Heterogeneous Base Catalyst

A series of alkali metal (Li, Na, K) promoted alkali earth oxides (CaO, BaO, MgO), as well as K₂CO₃ supported on alumina (Al₂O₃), were prepared and used as catalysts for transesterification of canola oil with methanol. Four catalysts such as K₂CO₃/Al₂O₃ and alkali metal (Li, Na, K) promoted BaO were effective for transesterification with >85 wt% of methyl esters. ICP-MS analysis revealed that leaching of barium in ester phase was too high (~1,000 ppm) when BaO based catalysts were used. As barium is highly toxic, these catalysts were not used further for transesterification of canola oil. Optimization of reaction conditions such as molar ratio of alcohol to oil (6:1–12:1), reaction temperature (40–60 °C) and catalyst loading (1–3 wt%) was performed for most efficient and environmentally friendly K₂CO₃/Al₂O₃ catalyst to maximize ester yield using response surface methodology (RSM). The RSM suggested that a molar ratio of alcohol to oil 11.48:1, a reaction temperature of 60 °C, and catalyst loading 3.16 wt% were optimum for the production of ester from canola oil. The predicted value of ester yield was 96.3 wt% in 2 h, which was in agreement with the experimental results within 1.28%.     

Polyester nanocomposite fibers with improved flame retardancy and thermal stability

Polyester (PET) nanocomposite fibers were spun by adding master batches of linear low‐density polyethylene (LLDPE) loaded with Montmorillonite (MMT) nanoclay after compatibilizing the PET and LLDPE. The spun fibers showed increased thermal stability as well as flame retardancy, which increased progressively with the amount of nanoclay loaded into the fiber. There is slight decrease in tensile strength of the fiber accompanied by decrease in elongation % indicating addition of nanoclay makes the filaments stiffer. The onset of crystallization temperature occurred at higher temperature in case of composite fibers than on the neat PET fiber because of nucleating effect of nanoclay. The dyeability of the fibers was not affected and also had very little impact on the flame retardancy of the fiber. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2012. © 2012 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Formulation and characterisation of nanosuspensions of BCS class II and IV drugs by combinative method

Drug nanocrystals are known to increase the solubility of Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) class II and IV drugs. SmartCrystals are the second generation nanocrystals with particle size of less than 100 nm and increased the stability and solubility of drug and drug product. The combinative methods adopted for the preparation of SmartCrystals are reported to shorten the processing time to reduce the particle size of the drug. This study was carried out with the aim to prepare nanosuspensions of aprepitant and ibuprofen using two pretreatment methods, precipitation and ball milling in a combination of high-pressure homogenisation (HPH). Ball milling and precipitation resulted in nanosuspensions having a particle size less than 1 µ, which were subjected to high HPH. HPH further led to a reduction in the particle size. However, the precipitation method failed to reduce the size of ibuprofen particles to 1 µ.     

Simplified loss analysis and comparison of full-bridge,full-range-ZVS DC-DC converters

The loss of zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) of active switches has been a serious limitation of full-bridge (FBZVS) converters. Many techniques have been proposed in the past to extend the range of ZVS operation over the wider and also the full range of operation. However, in these techniques ZVS is achieved at the expense of additional conduction loss in active switches and losses in the auxiliary components. In this paper, the analysis for the additional losses in various full-range FBZVS DC-DC converters and their comparative evaluation is reported. Closed form expressions are derived for average value of device currents and losses. The loss curves for various topologies are plotted and compared. The analytical results are found to be consistent with the experimental efficiency tests performed on 500 W, 100 kHz prototype. It is concluded that a recently proposed new topology has the least penalty of additional losses.     

Single-step synthesis of novel chloroaluminate ionic liquid for green Friedel–Crafts alkylation reaction

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Friedel–Crafts alkylation reactions constitute a very important class of reactions which are usually catalysed in the liquid phase using Lewis...     

Multiple orifice synthetic jet for improvement in impingement heat transfer

Synthetic jet is potentially useful for cooling of electronic components and its utility has been investigated in previous studies. Synthetic jet will become further attractive if additional cooling can be obtained without a corresponding increase in the input power. In this context, we explore the use of multiple orifice single-cavity synthetic jet employed in direct impingement mode of cooling. Experiments are conducted for different configurations with a center orifice surrounded by multiple satellite orifices. The Reynolds number is in the range of 1000–2600 while the normalized axial distance is varied in the range of 1–30 in this study. The maximum heat transfer coefficient with multiple orifice synthetic jet is approximately 12 times that of the natural heat transfer coefficient and up to 30% more as compared to that obtained with a conventional single orifice jet. Interestingly, the average Nusselt number gets maximized at two axial distances-the two peaks can be of comparable magnitude. The appearance, location and magnitude of the two peaks depend on the number of satellite orifices and the pitch circle radius on which the satellite holes lie. It is proposed that a transition in flow behavior from multiple-jet to a combined-jet occurs, which leads to the appearance of this additional peak. The additional peak (at the smaller axial distance) can be utilized in the design of cooling solutions for compact devices. The input power reduces slightly in the multi-orifice case with respect to the conventional design. The average velocity at the surface is also obtained with the help of hot-wire anemometry. The use of multiple orifice synthetic jet does not appear to have been explored earlier and the results are expected to be useful in several practical applications.     

Application of functionalized coir fibre as eco-friendly oil sorbent

Synthetic polymers are based on the use of crude oil as their raw material. Oil spillage takes place during production, storage, transportation and usage at the water bodies and land surfaces. This may be due to tanker disasters, wars, operation failures, equipment breaking down, accidents and natural disasters. The spilled oil into land, river or ocean imposes a major threat to the environment and endangers the aquatic life. To overcome this problem, oil sorbents are commonly used for cleaning the oil spills. In this paper, coir fibre which was obtained as a waste from coconut fruit was functionalized to increase its hydrophobicity and oil sorption capacity. The product so formed was characterized by FT-IR, TGA and SEM which confirmed grafting of butyl acrylate monomer onto the coir fibres. The effects of time, temperature and monomer concentration on the grafting of coir fibre and oil absorption capacity have also been investigated. Results demonstrated that the modified coir fibre absorbed fair amount of crude oil and studies also indicate that a simple squeezing was sufficient to remove most of the oil sorbed by the fibres so that the sorbents can be reused several times for oil spill clean-up.