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Spent bleaching clay (SBC) is a hazardous waste produced by vegetable oil refining industries. SBC contains a residual oil (RO) with a lot of organic and inorganic impurities and its disposal leads to severe environmental consequences. In this study, SBC regeneration by extraction, acid modification and pyrolysis under various conditions and biodiesel production were studied. The GC-MS of the extracted RO shows that the fatty acid content is in conformity with crude oil and is appropriate for biodiesel production. FTIR was recorded in order to evaluate the main functional groups of fresh-, spent-, regenerated bleaching clay. The specific surface area (SSA) of fresh bleaching clay (FBC) (166.1 ± 1.7 m2/g) was lower than regenerated bleaching clay (RBC) one. The highest SSA (252.1 ± 1.7 m2/g) was revealed by pyrolysis at 550°C and activation with 10% sulfuric acid. Subsequent increase in the acid concentration and temperature of pyrolysis caused a decrease in the SSA. The heavy metals concentration in RBC was lower than the limits for activated bleaching clay in the National Food Safety Standard. Hence, RBC effectively copes with heavy metal removal. The peroxide, anisidine, acid values and oxidation stability of oil bleached with RBC are comparable to the FBC. Implications: The disposal of spent bleaching clay from vegetable oil refining industries has been recognized as a significant environmental issue. After adsorbing the impurities, spent bleaching clay becomes contaminated with a high concentration of organic and inorganic substances, including residual oils, fatty acids, phospholipids, and potentially toxic heavy metals. This makes spent bleaching clay a hazardous waste and improper disposal can lead to severe environmental consequences. Due to the potential environmental harm caused by spent bleaching clay disposal, it is crucial for vegetable oil refining industries to adopt proper waste management practices. Overall, the proper management and disposal of spent bleaching clay is essential to prevent environmental contamination and safeguard human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work explored the zinc nanoparticles obtained by the one-stage induction flow levitation method. A 10 kW tube generator with an operating frequency of 440 kHz was used. The process used 8 mm diameter zinc granules (2 g weight) with a purity of 99.9%. Zinc wire was fed to replace the evaporated metal from the granule surface. This method productivity was 30 g/h of nanoparticles. In addition, various methods were used to characterize the resulting nanoparticles: scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-Ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), dynamic light scattering (DLS), porosimetry and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-MS). The resulting nanoparticle size, determined by SEM and porosimetry, was 350 nm, while the size of the primary crystallites was 21 nm. The amount of impurities in the resulting nanoparticles did not exceed 1000 ppm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mesoporous silica support was synthesized using the sol–gel method from trichlorosilane. There is a tendency for the specific surface area and the proportion of silica particles mesopores to increase during all stages of sol–gel synthesis. It has been shown that the insertion of hexane and toluene, as additional solvents, into the structure-forming polyethylene glycol, makes it possible to regulate the pore size and specific surface area of silica. Silica functionalization was carried out using SILP technology. The activities of the catalytic systems based on polymer and inorganic supports immobilized by imidazole-based ionic liquids during the trichlorosilane disproportionation reaction were compared. There is a tendency for the monosilane yield for catalytic systems based on an inorganic support to increase. We identified the most promising catalyst in terms of monosilane yield and proposed a bifunctional catalyst that exhibited activity in two parallel reactions: trichlorosilane disproportionation and silicon tetrachloride hydrogenation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research provides data on the density (ρ), viscosity (η) and ability to absorb carbon dioxide of systems containing amine, molecular solvent (MS) and choline chloride (ChCl), with the investigation of the physical properties of both neat amine/MS/ChCl mixtures and their samples after complete CO2 saturation. The effect of the mixture composition was studied by varying amine from primary (monoethanolamine, MEA) to secondary (diethanolamine, DEA) and tertiary (triethanolamine, TEA) amine, and the degree of its substitution from a mono- (MEA, DEA and TEA) to a doubly-substituted (ethylenediamine, EDA) compound. The role of an MS was investigated via the exchange of ethylene glycol (EG) with water and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO). In addition, the influence of the CO2 absorption promoters present in the ternary MEA/EG/ChCl mixture at an amount of 5 wt. % was also investigated. We show that an increase in ρ and η in the amine/EG/ChCl mixture affects the properties of neat amines. This suggests that in the studied ternary mixtures, the nature of the interspecies interactions is very similar to those in the previously studied MEA/EG/ChCl system. When EG was exchanged for H2O or DMSO, a decrease in ρ and an increase in η were observed. A comparison of the data with the corresponding properties of the systems composed of each pair of the mixture components indicates that the intensity and/or number of interspecies interactions in the present ternary mixtures were stronger than those in pure H2O, DMSO and MEA. While in the presence of promoters no significant changes in the studied properties were found, for the corresponding CO2-saturated samples, the ρ and η increased proportionally to the amount of absorbed gas. This was also the case for all the systems studied in the present research. The overall CO2 absorption of the EG-based mixtures decreased when going from primary to secondary and tertiary amines; it was 21% higher for the MEA/H2O/ChCl system compared to the mixtures containing EG and DMSO, which, in turn, showed similar absorption capacities. When the promoters were added to the MEA/EG/ChCl mixture, the highest capacity was found for the piperazine-containing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functionalized silica supports were synthesized under various conditions using tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and silicon tetrachloride (STC) as precursors by the sol-gel method. The polyethylene glycol with a molecular weight of 1500 was used as a structure-controlling agent. The use of STC as a SiO2 precursor allowed getting a higher specific surface area in comparison with TEOS. The influence of hydrothermal and acidic treatment on the specific surface area of the obtained structures was studied. The concentration of silanol groups was evaluated applying diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy. SEM micrographs showed that the use of toluene as an additional solvent of polyethylene glycol led to the formation of the agglomerates from sphere-shaped SiO2, meanwhile, the use of hexane led to the formation of a rhombohedral cell structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]