The TiO 2 -pillared montmorillonite nanoparticules (TiO 2 -Mt) were prepared by the sol-gel method, then applied for the elimination of dyes in solution: CI Direct Yellow 106 (DY106) (azo dye) and CI Disperse Violet 1 (DV1) (anthraquinone dye) by the sonocatalytic, photocatalytic and sonophotocatalytic processes, in order to test the efficiency of photocatalysts, while photolysis, sonolysis and sonophotolysis tests have been done previously. The photocatalysts (TiO 2 -Mt) were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) methods, thermal and thermogravimetric analysis (TG) / DTA) and the zero load point (pH pzc ). Aqueous solutions of dye of an initial concentration (50 mg.L -1 ), in the presence of 1 g.L -1 of photocatalyst, were irradiated using a mercury lamp (Hg) of 40 Mw / cm 2 and put in contact with an ultrasonic probe with a frequency of 20 kHz and a power of 750 W, providing the ultrasound. The results obtained indicate that a weak, good and better dye degradation rate has been observed successively by the application of the sonocatalytic, photocatalytic and sonophotocatalytic processes, where the latter has shown a synergistic effect, while the photocatalyst TiO 2 -Mt / MW showed significant efficiency during the degradation, due to the beneficial effect of the microwave calcination mode.

Low molecular weight (LMW) of sulfated polysaccharide such as κ-carrageenan has been shown to exhibit a wide spectrum of biological activities. In this research, the influence of UV irradiation, ozone (O 3 ), and the combination of O 3 /UV methods on the depolymerization of κ-carrageenan was investigated. The kinetics depolymerization of κ-carrageenan by the Advanced Oxidation Process (UV/O 3 ) was studied in this work. The average molecular weight of LMW of κ-carrageenan was determined by intrinsic viscosity methods. A mathematical model was developed in order to predict the kinetic rate constant as a function of ozone dosage and UV irradiation intensity. The physicochemical and morphological properties of the degraded κ-carrageenan were analyzed by FT-IR, SEM, and XRD. This study shows that the intrinsic viscosity of κ-carrageenan decreases due to the increase in UV lamp power and ozone concentration. The combination of UV/O 3 treatment in the degrading of κ-carrageenan was more effective than individual approaches. The highest value of the kinetic rate constant of depolymerization of κ-carrageenan is 1.924 × 10 -4 min-1 with 125 mg/L ozone concentration and 40 mW/cm2 of UV lamp intensity. This research also studied the relationship between the experimental conditions such as the power dissipation of UV lamp and ozone concentration on the reaction kinetics model of depolymerization of κ-carrageenan. The results of the mathematical model suggest that ozone treatment has a higher effect than the UV irradiation intensity. FT-IR spectra show that no significant change of functional properties of treated κ-carrageenan by UV and O 3 process. However, the morphological properties of LMW of κ-carrageenan have rougher and porous than native κ-carrageenan.

A sol-gel method using citric acid has been used to fabricate nano-sized manganese ferrites (MnFe 2 O 4 ) under different calcination temperatures. The microstructure and surface morphology of manganese ferrite powders were characterized by BET, FTIR, XRD, SEM-EDX, and TEM. The nano-sized manganese ferrite was examined for adsorption of congo red (CR). As the results, the BET showed the decreasing surface area of manganese ferrites to 4.47 m 2 /g for calcination temperatures of 800 °C. The XRD pattern also indicated the alteration of amorphous phase to the crystalline structure as the calcination temperature increased. In addition, the EDX analysis of manganese ferrite at 600 °C showed the element distribution of manganese, iron, and oxygen. Beside that, the TEM images of nano-sized manganese ferrites showed a concentrated atomic mass in the exposed region in the bulk structure. Finally, the adsorption experiment showed that the adsorption of CR followed the pseudo-second order, and adsorption equilibrium was best described by the Langmuir model. Therefore, this nano-sized manganese ferrite can be a promising adsorbent for dye and textile industry. Received: 12nd April 2018; Revised: 4h July 2018; Accepted: 13rd July 2018

Hydrocarbon-Selective catalytic reduction (HC-SCR) is a potential method to remove NOx under excess oxygen conditions such as diesel engine exhausts and lean burn engines. Ag-Al 2 O 3 is a good catalyst for HC-SCR of NOx under lean-burn conditions. Further, addition of H 2 is effective for enhancing HC-SCR activity. This effect is unique to silver and to specific Ag/support combinations, namely, Ag/ δ- Al 2 O 3 .Therefore, in the present investigation, Ag/Al 2 O 3 catalyst containing 2.0 wt.% Ag was prepared by wet-impregnation method. The catalysts were characterized by various techniques like low temperature N 2 adsorption, XRD, XPS and SEM. Two different reductants CO and LPG were comparatively studied for SCR of NO over the Ag-Al 2 O 3 catalyst without and with H 2 -assisted. The experiments were performed in a fixed bed tubular down flow reactor under the following conditions: composition of gas mixture was 0.13% NO, 2.50% LPG/CO, 1% H 2 , 10% O 2, rest Ar; total flow rate of 60 ml/min, temperature varied from 50-400 o C and pressure 1 atm. High conversion of NO, around 100%, is achieved using LPG as a reductant with H 2 and without H 2 . Results showed that light off temperature of catalyst significantly reduced by the introduction of H 2 in feed stream with LPG reductant. The maximum conversions of NO with CO and LPG reductants were 35.15 and 97.79 % at 224 and 365 o C respectively. While, the maximum conversions with H 2 -LPG and H 2 -CO reductants were 100 and 99.46% at 117 and 220 o C respectively. Therefore, H 2 -LPG-SCR system can be used to get 100% NO reduction at low temperature. Very few studies are dedicated to LPG as reductant.

Photocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic degradation of Methyl Violet dye using Graphite/PbTiO 3 composites has been conducted. The purposes of this research were to synthesis the Graphite/PbTiO 3 composite electrode and determine its effectiveness on Methyl Violet degradation. Synthesis of Graphite/PbTiO 3 composite was successfully performed via sol-gel method by mixing graphite powder, titanium tetra isopropoxide precursor solution (TTIP) and Pb(NO 3 ) 2 . The Graphite/PbTiO 3 composites were characterized using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform-Infra Red (FT-IR) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The XRD diffractogram and IR spectrum of Graphite/PbTiO 3 composite revealed all characteristic peak of graphite and PbTiO 3 . Photocatalytic degradation process showed that Graphite/PbTiO 3 composite decreased concentrations of Methyl Violet up to 92.20%. While photoelectrocatalytic degradation processed for 30 minutes at neutral pH and 10 V voltage degraded the Methyl Violet until 94%.

This paper is devoted to the production of second generation biodiesel via catalytic hydrodeoxygenation of fatty acids. Pd/C catalysts with different metal loading were used. The palladium catalysts were characterized using low-temperature nitrogen physisorption and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It was revealed that the most active and selective catalyst was 1%-Pd/C which allowed reaching up 97.5% of selectivity (regarding to n-heptadecane) at 100% conversion of substrate. Moreover, the chosen catalyst is more preferable according to lower metal content that leads the decrease of the process cost. The analysis of the catalysts showed that 1%-Pd/C had the highest specific surface area compared with 5%-Pd/C. Copyright © 2016 BCREC GROUP. All rights reserved Received: 31 st July 2015; Revised: 9 th December 2015; Accepted: 30 th December 2015 How to Cite : Stepacheva, A.A., Sapunov, V.N., Sulman, E.M., Nikoshvili, L.Z., Sulman, M.G., Sidorov, A.I., Demidenko, G.N., Matveeva, V.G. (2016). Catalytic Hydrodeoxygenation of Fatty Acids for Biodiesel Production. Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis , 11 (2): 125-132 (doi:10.9767/bcrec.11.2.538.125-132) Permalink/DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.9767/bcrec.11.2.538.125-132 Article Metrics: (click on the button below to see citations in Scopus)

A new and efficient catalyst of Na-Montmorillonite (Na + -MMT) was employed in this paper for α-methylstyrene (AMS) cationic polymerization. Maghnite clay obtained from Tlemcen, Algeria was investigated to remove heavy metal ion from wastewater. “Maghnite - Na” is a Montmorillonite sheet silicate clay, exchanged with sodium as an efficient catalyst for cationic polymerization of many vinylic and heterocyclic monomers (M. Belbachir and A. Bensaoula, U.S. Patent, N° 7, 094-823 B2, 2006). Various techniques, including 1 H NMR, 13 C NMR, IR, DSC and Ubbelohde viscometer were used to elucidate structural characteristics and thermal properties of the resulting polymers. The structure compositions of “MMT”, “H + -MMT” and “Na + -MMT” have been developed. It was found that the cationic polymerization of AMS is initiated by Na + -MMT at 0°C in bulk and in solution. The influences of reaction temperature, solvent, weight ratio of initiator/monomer and reaction time on the yield of monomer and the molecular weight are investigated. The kinetics indicated that the polymerization rate is first order with respect to monomer concentration. A possible mechanism of this cationic polymerization is discussed based on the results of the 1 H NMR Spectroscopic analysis of these model reactions. A cationic mechanism for the reaction was proposed, Mechanism studies showed that monomer was inserted into the growing chains.

The objective of this research was to modify the matrix surfaces to obtain both a hydrophobic and hydrophilic-hydrophobic matrices by the addition of 2-fenilpropionaldehid and the addition of glutaraldehyde, followed by the addition of polyethylenimine, and 2-fenilpropionaldehid, respectively. Matrices were used for the immobilization of lipase. Factors, such as salt concentration and adsorption time were evaluated. The immobilized lipase was used to catalyse the synthesis of fructose oleic ester. The results show that there was an increase in the peak area at wave number 1610 cm-1 after matrix surface modification from FTIR analysis. It indicated that imine groups (C= N) were formed by the reaction between the amine groups of matrix and the aldehyde groups of 2-fenilpropionaldehid. The optimum conditions of lipase immobilization was obtained at buffer pH 7 containing 0.5 M NaCl for hydrophobic matrix (9.27mg lipase / g matrix), whereas lipase adsorption decreased at the presence of salt in buffer on the hydrophilic-hydrophobic matrix. The adsorbed lipase was 9.23 mg lipase/g matrix in buffer pH 7 without salt for the hydrophilic-hydrophobic matrix. The immobilization time was 2 h for both types of matrix. The best immobilized matrix concentration was about 8 % (75.96%) and 6% (57.74%) for the hydrophobic matrix and hydrophilic-hydrophobic matrix, respectively. The optimum time of esterification was 24h (75.96%) and 18h (85.29%) for hydrophobic matrix and hydrophilic-hydrophobic matrix, respectively. Hydrophilic-hydrophobic matrix produced higher sugar ester yield (56.04%) than hydrophobic matrix (31.71%) when using the same amount of lipase on the matrix. The immobilized lipase could be used up to 3 cycle esterification reaction.

In this work, the simple, efficient and convenient method to synthesis of 1,4-dithiane from 1,2-dibromoethane and sodium sulfide under heterogeneous liquid-liquid phase-transfer catalysis (LL-PTC) condition in the presence of ultrasound irradiation (40 kHz, 300W) and multi-site phase-transfer catalyst was reported. The multi-site phase-transfer catalyst namely 1,4-dibenzyl-1,4-diazoniabicyclo[2.2.2]octanium dibromide (MPTC) was successfully prepared and used as a superior catalyst for this synthesis. The combination of both ultrasound and multi-site phase-transfer catalyst are resulted in enhanced reaction rate and efficiency than the individual operations. The reaction was carried out under pseudo-first order condition. The kinetic aspects such as the effect of agitation speeds, ultrasound frequencies, different phase transfer catalysts, various organic solvent, volume of hexane, the amount of prepared MPTC, various temperature, the amount of water, the concentration of 1,2-dibromoethane, on the conversion of 1,2-dibromoethane and the apparent rate constant (K app ) were investigated in detail. The suitable mechanism has been proposed for reaction system.

Kinetic of SO 2 adsorption using adsorbent CuO/g-Al 2 O 3 has been studied with respect to the effect of SO 2 concentration and the amount of active phase on the kinetic of chemical adsorption between SO 2 and CuO. Adsorbent CuO/γ-Al 2 O 3 was prepared using the dry impregnation method with Cu(NO 3 ) 2 .3H 2 O solution on a commercial support, γ-Al 2 O 3 . Four types of the adsorbent CuO/g-Al 2 O 3 were prepared, with CuO contents represented as Cu of: 5, 8, 15 and 22%. Experiments on the adsorption were carried out at a temperature of 300°C. The model gas containing SO 2 with a concentration of 3000 or 18500 ppmv were passed at a constant flow rate in the range of 1.2 - 2.2 mL/sec through the bed of adsorbent for 1 hour. SO 2 adsorbed on CuO were analyzed based on the decrease in concentration of SO 2 between the inlet and the outlet of the adsorption column. The conversion of CuO to CuSO 4 was calculated based on the stoichiometry of reaction between SO 2 and CuO to form CuSO 4 . The increase in Cu content in the adsorbent decreased the conversion of CuO. In the adsorption using the model gas with SO 2 concentrations of 18500 and 3000 ppmv, the increase in Cu content in the adsorbent decreased the the reaction rate constant. Among various models under-consideration, the 3-D Difussion-Jander kinetic model was found to be the best to represent the experimental data.