Abstract: Coal tar is a liquid by-product of the process of coal
gasification and carbonation. This liquid oil mixture contains various
kinds of useful compounds such as phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol.
These compounds are widely used as raw material for insecticides,
dyes, medicines, perfumes, coloring matters, and many others.
This research needed to be done that given the optimum conditions
for the separation of phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol from the coal tar
by solvent extraction process. The aim of the present work was to
study the effect of two kinds of aqueous were used as solvents:
methanol and acetone solutions, the effect of temperature (298, 306,
and 313K) and mixing (30, 35, and 40rpm) for the separation of
phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol from coal tar by solvent extraction.
Results indicated that phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol in coal tar
were selectivity extracted into the solvent phase and these
components could be separated by solvent extraction. The aqueous
solution of methanol, mass ratio of solvent to feed, Eo/Ro=1,
extraction temperature 306K and mixing 35 rpm were the most
efficient for extraction of phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol from coal tar.
Abstract: Macrophomina phaseolina is a devastating soil-borne
fungal plant pathogen that causes charcoal rot disease in many
economically important crops worldwide. So far, no registered
fungicide is available against this plant pathogen. This study was
planned to examine the antifungal activity of an allelopathic grass
Cenchrus pennisetiformis (Hochst. & Steud.) Wipff. for the
management of M. phaseolina isolated from cowpea [Vigna
unguiculata (L.) Walp.] plants suffering from charcoal rot disease.
Different parts of the plants viz. inflorescence, shoot and root were
extracted in methanol. Laboratory bioassays were carried out using
different concentrations (0, 0.5, 1.0, …, 3.0 g mL-1) of methanolic
extracts of the test allelopathic grass species to assess the antifungal
activity against the pathogen. In general, extracts of all parts of the
grass exhibited antifungal activity. All the concentrations of
methanolic extracts of shoot and root significantly reduced fungal
biomass by 20–73% and 40–80%, respectively. Methanolic shoot
extract was fractionated using n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate
and n-butanol. Different concentrations of these fractions (3.125,
6.25, …, 200 mg mL-1) were analyzed for their antifungal activity.
All the concentrations of n-hexane fraction significantly reduced
fungal biomass by 15–96% over corresponding control treatments.
Higher concentrations (12.5–200 mg mL-1) of chloroform, ethyl
acetate and n-butanol also reduced the fungal biomass significantly
by 29–100%, 46–100% and 24–100%, respectively.
Abstract: This study presents a simulation model for converting coal to methanol, based on gasification technology with the commercial chemical process simulator, Pro/II® V8.1.1. The methanol plant consists of air separation unit (ASU), gasification unit, gas clean-up unit, and methanol synthetic unit. The clean syngas is produced with the first three operating units, and the model has been verified with the reference data from United States Environment Protection Agency. The liquid phase methanol (LPMEOHTM) process is adopted in the methanol synthetic unit. Clean syngas goes through gas handing section to reach the reaction requirement, reactor loop/catalyst to generate methanol, and methanol distillation to get desired purity over 99.9 wt%. The ratio of the total energy combined with methanol and dimethyl ether to that of feed coal is 78.5% (gross efficiency). The net efficiency is 64.2% with the internal power consumption taken into account, based on the assumption that the efficiency of electricity generation is 40%.
Abstract: Alpinia galanga is rhizome, generally known as
Greater galangal and is selected for isolation of newer constituents
accountable for various therapeutic activities. Present study is
intended to isolate glycoside from Alpinia galanga rhizomes. Alpinia
galanga methanolic extract was column chromatograph and eluted
with ethyl acetate-methanol (99:1) to isolate compound β-Sitosterol
Diarabinoside. Herein, the isolation and structural elucidation of new
compound is described. Chemical investigation of methanolic extract
of rhizomes of Alpinia galanga furnished a new compound β-
Sitosterol Diarabinoside. The IR, NMR and MASS investigations of
isolated compound confirmed its structure as β-Sitosterol
Diarabinoside, which is isolated for the first time from a medicinal
plant or any synthetic source.
Abstract: Recent years have instance that there is a invigoration
of interest in drug discovery from medicinal plants for the support of
health in all parts of the world . This study was designed to examine
the in vitro antimicrobial activities of the flowers and leaves
methanolic and ethanolic extracts of Chenopodium album L.
Chenopodium album Linn. flowers and leaves were collected from
East Esfahan, Iran. The effects of methanolic and ethanolic extracts
were tested against 4 bacterial strains by using disc,well-diffusion
method. Results showed that flowers and leaves methanolic and
ethanolic extracts of C.album don-t have any activity against the
selected bacterial strains. Our study has indicated that ,there are
effective different factors on antimicrobial properties of plant extracts
Abstract: Present study summarizes the control of Vibrio
alginolyticus infection in hatchery reared Clownfish, Amphiprion
sebae with the extract of the mangrove plant, Avicennia marina.
Fishes with visible symptoms of hemorrhagic spots were chosen and
the genomic DNA of the causative bacterium was isolated and
sequenced based on 16S rDNA gene. The in vitro assay revealed that
a fraction of A. marina leaf extract elucidated with ethyl acetate:
methanol (6:4) showed a high activity (28 mm) at 125 μg/ml
concentrations. About 4 % of the fraction fed along with live V.
alginolyticus was significantly decreased the cumulative mortality
(P
Abstract: Combustion, emission and performance
characterization of a single cylinder diesel engine using methanol
diesel blends was carried out. The blends were 5% (v/v) methanol in
diesel (MD05) and 10% (v/v) methanol in diesel (MD10). The
problem of solubility of methanol and diesel was addressed by an
agitator placed inside the fuel tank to prevent phase separation. The
results indicated that total combustion duration was reduced by15.8%
for MD05 and 31.27% for MD10compared to the baseline data.
Ignition delay was increased with increasing methanol volume
fraction in the test fuel. Total cyclic heat release was reduced by
1.5% for MD05 and 6.7% for MD10 as compared to diesel baseline.
Emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons along with smoke were
reduced and that of nitrogen oxides were increased with rising
methanol contents in the test fuel. Full load brake thermal efficiency
was marginally reduced with increased methanol composition in the
blend.
Abstract: A sensitive and specific method for quantitative
determination of aflatoxins(B1, B2, G1,G2), deoxynivalenol,
fumonisin(B1,B2), ochratoxin A, zearalenone, T-2 and HT-2 in
roasted and ground grains using liquid chromatography combined
with tandem mass spectrometry. A double extraction using a
phosphate buffer solution followed by methanol was applied to
achieve effective co extraction of 11 mycotoxins. A multitoxin
immunoaffinity column for all these mycotoxins was used to clean up
the extract. The LODs of mycotoxins were 0.1~6.1 μg/kg, LOQs were
0.3~18.4 μg/kg. Forty seven samples collected from Seoul (Korea) for
mycotoxin contamination monitoring. The results showed that the
occurrence of zearalenone and deoxynivalenol were frequent.
Zearalenone was detected in all samples and deoxynivalenol was
detected in 80.9 % samples in the range 0.626 ~ 29.264 μg/kg and N.D
~ 48.332 μg/kg respectively. Fumonisins and ochratoxin A were
detected in 46.8% samples and 17 % samples respectively, aflatoxins
and T-2/HT-2 toxins were not detected all samples.
Abstract: Broccoli has been widely recognized as a wealthy
vegetable which contains multiple nutrients with potent anti-cancer
properties. Lamb’s lettuce has been used as food for many centuries
but only recently became commercially available and literature is
therefore exiguous concerning these vegetables. The aim of this work
was to evaluate the influence of the extraction conditions on the yield
of phenolic compounds and the corresponding antioxidant capacity of
broccoli and lamb’s lettuce. The results indicate that lamb’s lettuce,
compared to broccoli, contains simultaneously a large amount of total
polyphenols as well as high antioxidant activity. It is clearly
demonstrated that extraction solvent significantly influences the
antioxidant activity. Methanol is the solvent that can globally
maximize the antioxidant extraction yield. The results presented
herein prove lamb’s lettuce as a very interesting source of
polyphenols, and thus a potential health-promoting food.
Abstract: We present an Electronic Nose (ENose), which is
aimed at identifying the presence of one out of two gases, possibly
detecting the presence of a mixture of the two. Estimation of the
concentrations of the components is also performed for a volatile
organic compound (VOC) constituted by methanol and acetone, for
the ranges 40-400 and 22-220 ppm (parts-per-million), respectively.
Our system contains 8 sensors, 5 of them being gas sensors (of the
class TGS from FIGARO USA, INC., whose sensing element is a tin
dioxide (SnO2) semiconductor), the remaining being a temperature
sensor (LM35 from National Semiconductor Corporation), a
humidity sensor (HIH–3610 from Honeywell), and a pressure sensor
(XFAM from Fujikura Ltd.).
Our integrated hardware–software system uses some machine
learning principles and least square regression principle to identify at
first a new gas sample, or a mixture, and then to estimate the
concentrations. In particular we adopt a training model using the
Support Vector Machine (SVM) approach with linear kernel to teach
the system how discriminate among different gases. Then we apply
another training model using the least square regression, to predict
the concentrations.
The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed
multiclassification and regression scheme is effective in the
identification of the tested VOCs of methanol and acetone with
96.61% correctness. The concentration prediction is obtained with
0.979 and 0.964 correlation coefficient for the predicted versus real
concentrations of methanol and acetone, respectively.
Abstract: An HPLC-UV analytical method was developed to
determine ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) in dairy
wastewater and surface water. The optimizing separation was achieved
by reversed–phase ion-pair liquid chromatography on a C18 column
using methanol as mobile phase solvent, tetrabutylammonium bromide
as the ion-pair reagent in pH 3.3 formate buffer solution at a flow rate
of 0.9 mL min-1 with a UV detector at 265 nm. No interference of Ca,
Mg or NO3
- was detected. Method performance was evaluated in terms
of linearity, repeatability and reproducibility. The method detection
limit was 5 μg L-1. The contents of EDTA in dairy effluents were 72 ~
261 μg L-1 at a large dairy site. A change of EDTA concentration was
observed downstream of the dairy effluent discharge, but this was well
under the predicted no effect concentration for aquatic ecosystem.
Abstract: Dehydration of methanol to dimethyl ether (DME)
over a commercial Al2O3 catalyst was studied in an isothermal integral
fixed bed reactor. The experiments were performed on the temperature
interval 513-613 K, liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV) of 0.9-2.1h-1,
pressures between 0.1 and 1.0 MPa. The effect of different operation
conditions on the dehydration of methanol was investigated in a
laboratory scale experiment. A new intrinsic kinetics equation based
on the mechanism of Langmuir-Hinshelwood dissociation adsorption
was developed for the dehydration reaction by fitting the expressions
to the experimental data. An activation energy of 67.21 kJ/mol was
obtained for the catalyst with the best performance. Statistic test
showed that this new intrinsic kinetics equation was acceptable.
Abstract: There is a growing interest in the food industry and in preventive health care for the development and evaluation of natural antioxidants from medicinal plant materials. In the present work, extracts of three medicinal plants (Tilia argentea, Crataegi folium leaves and Polygonum bistorta roots) used in Turkish phytotheraphy were screened for their phenolic profiles and antioxidant properties. Crude extracts were obtained from different parts of plants, by solidliquid extraction with pure water, 70% acetone and 70% methanol aqueous solvents. The antioxidant activity of the extracts was determined by ABTS.+ radical cation scavenging activity. The Folin Ciocalteu procedure was used to assess the total phenolic concentrations of the extracts as gallic acid equivalents. A modified liquid chromatography-electro spray ionization-mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS) was used to obtain chromatographic profiles of the phenolic compounds in the medicinal plants. The predominant phenolic compounds detected in different extracts of the plants were catechin, protocatechuic and chlorogenic acids. The highest phenolic contents were obtained by using 70% acetone as aqueous solvent, whereas the lowest phenolic contents were obtained by water extraction due to Folin Ciocalteu results. The results indicate that acetone extracts of Tilia argentea had the highest antioxidant capacity as free ABTS radical scavengers. The lowest phenolic contents and antioxidant capacities were obtained from Polygonum bistorta root extracts.
Abstract: A techno-economic evaluation for efficient use of
energy in a large scale industrial plant of methanol is carried out.
This assessment is based on integration of a gas turbine with an
existing plant of methanol in which the outlet gas products of
exothermic reactor is expanded to power generation. Also, it is
decided that methanol production rate is constant through addition of
power generation system to the existing methanol plant. Having
incorporated a gas turbine with the existing plant, the economic
results showed total investment of MUSD 16.9, energy saving of 3.6
MUSD/yr with payback period of approximately 4.7 years.
Abstract: In this study, oxidative steam reforming of methanol (OSRM) over a Au/CeO2–Fe2O3 catalyst prepared by a depositionprecipitation (DP) method was studied to produce hydrogen in order to feed a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC). The support (CeO2, Fe2O3, and CeO2–Fe2O3) were prepared by precipitation and co-precipitation methods. The impact of the support composition on the catalytic performance was studied by varying the Ce/(Ce+Fe) atomic ratio, it was found that the 1%Au/CF(0.25) calcined at 300 °C exhibited the highest catalytic activity in the whole temperature studied. In addition, the effect of Au content was investigated and 3%Au/CF(0.25) exhibited the highest activity under the optimum condition in the temperature range of 200 °C to 400 °C. The catalysts were characterized by various techniques: XRD, TPR, XRF, and UV-vis.
Abstract: The antimicrobial, antiplasmid and cytotoxic activities of marine algae Halimeda opuntia and Sarconema filiforme were investigated. Antimicrobial bioassay against some human pathogenic bacteria and yeast were conducted using disc diffusion method. Halimeda extract exhibited antibacterial activity against six species of microrganisms, with significant inhibition against Staphylococcus aureus. While Sarconema extract was better potent as antifungal against Candida albicans. Comparative antibacterial studies showed that Halimeda extract showed equivalent or better activity as compared with commercial antibiotic when tested against Staphylococcus aureus. Further tests conducted using dilution method showed both extracts as having bacteriostatic mode of action against the tested microorganisms. Methanol extract of two species showed significant cytotoxicity (LC50
Abstract: This study investigates CO2 mitigation by methanol
synthesis from flue gas CO2 and H2 generation through water
electrolysis. Electrolytic hydrogen generation is viable provided that
the required electrical power is supplied from renewable energy
resources; whereby power generation from renewable resources is yet
commercial challenging. This approach contribute to zero-emission,
moreover it produce oxygen which could be used as feedstock for
chemical process. At ZPC, however, oxygen would be utilized
through partial oxidation of methane in autothermal reactor (ATR);
this makes ease the difficulties of O2 delivery and marketing. On the
other hand, onboard hydrogen storage and consumption; in methanol
plant; make the project economically more competitive.
Abstract: Alternative energy is any energy source that is an alternative to fossil fuel. These alternatives are intended to address concerns about such fossil fuels. Today, because of the variety of energy choices and differing goals of their advocates, defining some energy types as "alternative" is highly controversial. Most of the recent and existing alternative sources of energy are discussed below
Abstract: In this study, the transesterification of palm oil with methanol for biodiesel production was studied by using CaO–ZnO as a heterogeneous base catalyst prepared by incipient-wetness impregnation (IWI) and co-precipitation (CP) methods. The reaction parameters considered were molar ratio of methanol to oil, amount of catalyst, reaction temperature, and reaction time. The optimum conditions–15:1 molar ratio of methanol to oil, a catalyst amount of 6 wt%, reaction temperature of 60 °C, and reaction time of 8 h–were observed. The effects of Ca loading, calcination temperature, and catalyst preparation on the catalytic performance were studied. The fresh and spent catalysts were characterized by several techniques, including XRD, TPR, and XRF.
Abstract: In this paper, naturally immobilized lipase, Carica
papaya lipase, catalyzed biodiesel production from fish oil was
studied. The refined fish oil, extracted from the discarded parts of
fish, was used as a starting material for biodiesel production. The
effects of molar ratio of oil: methanol, lipase dosage, initial water
activity of lipase, temperature and solvent were investigated. It was
found that Carica papaya lipase was suitable for methanolysis of fish
oil to produce methyl ester. The maximum yield of methyl ester
could reach up to 83% with the optimal reaction conditions: oil:
methanol molar ratio of 1: 4, 20% (based on oil) of lipase, initial
water activity of lipase at 0.23 and 20% (based on oil) of tert-butanol
at 40oC after 18 h of reaction time. There was negligible loss in
lipase activity even after repeated use for 30 cycles.