Recent Patents on Chemical Engineering - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2008

Generating uniform shear stress planes finds a variety of applications in different disciplines such as process engineering, medicine and marine sciences. The focus of this study is to quantify the potential of microcosm chambers, applied in marine applications, in producing shear stress uniformity at the chamber bottom. To do this, computational fluid dynamics was used to simulate the flow pattern, velocity profiles, and shear stress distribution at chamber bottom. The study revealed that the microcosm chambers, such as those presented in the patent of Gust, produce a fully vortical flow, containing acceleration-deceleration zones near the central axis and the outer wall. The results show that the presence of these acceleration-deceleration zones is the major reasons for non-uniform shear stress formation at the chamber bottom. Utilizing a suction-injection mechanism and-or attached skirt provides better bottom shear stress profiles compared to a conventional disk-cylinder. In spite of this partial improvement, the addition of a suction-injection device or a skirt attached to the disk provide a partial shear stress uniformity only over the 72= of the bottom area, and are therefore of limited use.

Organic polymer aerogels and carbon aerogels are important nanoporous materials, of which the nanopore structures can be modified by the chemical reactions. These materials have received considerable attention in fundamentals on materials science and commercial applications. This paper discusses with the current patents involving in synthesis and modifications of nanostructures and surfaces of organic polymer aerogels and carbon aerogels. It emphasizes the recent developments in fabrication pathways of lower cost and their applications for template synthesis and nanostructural assembling.

Niobium-based materials are effective catalysts for many catalytic reactions; the literature reports a significant number of patents and papers describing significant improvement in catalytic performance upon promotion by niobium on the oxidative dehydrogenation of alkanes, on the selective oxidation of alkanes to carboxylic acids and on their ammoxidation to nitriles; they are also efficient for energy, environmental and sustainable-related processes, like the valorization of renewables (glycerol), hydrogen production, fuel cell electrocatalysts, photocatalysis, three-way catalysts and removal of NOx. This contribution reviews recent patents claiming promoting effect of niobium to different catalytic processes, and it also comments research papers providing an insight into the structure-activity relationships of such promoting effect. The uses of niobium as a main component in the formulation of catalysts will not be considered in the present contribution.

The concern over increasing presence of complex refractory compounds in the wastewater streams, the conventional treatment method cannot be used for complete treatment of the effluent. These current problems have provided incentives to develop newer technologies to improve performance of existing technologies. In this paper, photocatalytic process (belonging to the class of advanced oxidation processes) is presented to show the potential of nanosized TiO2 semiconductor photocatalysis towards the refractory compounds into less harmful molecules. The work highlights the basics of this process including the various nanosized TiO2 synthesis methods and a description of the attempts and possibilities to improve its reactivity in the recent years. Besides, information on the photocatalytic reactor design, other aspects with a complete overview of the various applications to wastewater treatment is also provided. The present review paper seeks to offer an overview of the dramatic trend in the use of the nanosized TiO2 photocatalysis for the remediation and decontamination of wastewater, report on recent work done, important achievement and problems. The present article discusses the useful patents in the field of photocatalysis over nanosized titanium dioxide

Solubility is still a challenging subject in drug discovery and development investigations. More studies are ongoing to provide a satisfactory prediction method for solubility of drugs/drug candidates. This work presents a review on published data dealing with these methods as journal articles, patents and computer software.

The manufacturing of any product consumes energy and natural resources and produces multi-media pollution problems. The increasing regulations and better scientific understanding of the manufacturing processes have convinced industry to prevent pollution. Public and corporate interest is increasing, at an alarming rate, on how to apply the concepts of sustainable development to solve pollution problems from manufacturing. This interest has led to inventions and development of sustainable products that contain recycling material, reduced waste, conserved energy, used less packing. All these products are also biodegradable. These products, when compared to traditional products in use, are more socially, economically, and environmentally viable in the long run. They are known as “Green Products.” This article describes the green products as an environmental strategy that focuses on invention, design, and application of new products. A review of patents issued and filed over the last ten years indicate that the number of inventions related to green products are constantly increasing and a significant amount of work is taking place in pharmaceutical and related industries. Included is a discussion of different patents on green products, from different industrial sectors, that have been approved in recent years. The future trends in this area are also discussed.

Nano-SnS2 and TiO2 powders were synthesized with a solution reaction method and a sol-gel method respectively. XRD and AFM and spectrophotometry were used for characterization of the powders. The photodegradation of methyl orange on the TiO2 powders and a mixture of SnS2 and TiO2 powders were studied respectively. Effect of pH value on the degradation of methyl orange solution was studied. The experiment result indicated that degradation rate of methyl orange was larger on the mixture of SnS2 and TiO2 powders than on the TiO2 powders and was larger in high pH value than in low pH value. Benzyl in the methyl orange can be further photodecomposed in the condition of alkaline solution. The present article discuss the useful patents in the field of photocatalytic property of mixture of SnS2 and TiO2 powders.

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