There is an old saying in the biorefining industry that“You can make anything from lignin except money.”This bio-based compound is abundant and full of potential,but commercializing it remains a challenge.This may no longer be the case soon with an innovative approach by chemists from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics(DICP)of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their colleagues to harness lignin condensation–often considered a nuisance–for efficient utilization of lignocellulose.
A time series model is used in this paper to describe the progress of circulating direct condensation heat recovery of the compound condensing process (CCP) which is made of two water cooling condensing processes in series for a centrifugal chiller in the paper. A finite-time thermodynamics method is used to set up the time series simulation model. As a result, an upper bound of recoverable condensation heat for the compound condensing process is obtained which is in good agreement with experimental result. And the result is valuable and useful to optimization design of condensing heat recovery.
In order to obtain liquefied products with higher yields of aromatic molecules to produce mesophase pitch,a good understanding of the relevant reaction mechanisms is required.Reactive molecular dynamics simulations were used to study the thermal reactions of pyrene,1-methylpyrene,7,8,9,10-tetrahydrobenzopyrene,and mixtures of pyrene with 1-octene,cyclohexene,or styrene.The reactant conversion rates,reaction rates,and product distributions were calculated and compared,and the mechanisms were analyzed and discussed.The results demonstrated that methyl and naphthenic structures in aromatics might improve the conversion rates of reactants in hydrogen transfer processes,but their steric hindrances prohibited the generation of high polymers.The naphthenic structures could generate more free radicals and presented a more obvious inhibition effect on the condensation of polymers compared with the methyl side chains.It was discovered that when different olefins were mixed with pyrene,1-octene primarily underwent pyrolysis reactions,whereas cyclohexene mainly underwent hydrogen transfer reactions with pyrene and styrene,mostly producing superconjugated biradicals through condensation reactions with pyrene.In the mixture systems,the olefins scattered aromatic molecules,hindering the formation of pyrene trimers and higher polymers.According to the reactive molecular dynamics simulations,styrene may enhance the yield of dimer and enable the controlled polycondensation of pyrene.
Fan XiWang ChunluLuo YangRen QiangShen HaipingLong Jun
The oxidative condensation between renewable furfural and fatty alcohols is a crucial avenue for producing high-quality liquid fuels and valuable furan derivatives.The selectivity control in this reaction process remains a significant challenge.Herein,we report the strategy of confining well dispersed gold species within ZSM-5 structure to construct highly active Au@ZSM-5 zeolite catalysts for the oxidative condensation of furfural.Characterization results and spectroscopy analyses demonstrate the efficient encapsulation of isolated and cationic Au clusters in zeolite structure.Au@ZSM-5(K)catalyst shows remarkable performance with 69.7%furfural conversion and 90.2%furan-2-acrolein selectivity as well as good recycle stability.It is revealed that the microstructure of ZSM-5 zeolite can significantly promote oxidative condensation activity through confinement effects.This work presents an explicit example of constructing zeolite encaged noble metal catalysts toward targeted chemical transformations.