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A novel transesterification process for biodiesel production has been developed. Bentonite was used as a water adsorbent to remove moisture from the biodiesel synthesis reaction system. Diethyl ether (DEE) was used as a co-solvent to improve the mutual solubility of oil and methanol. The influence of concentration of NaOH, DEE/methanol molar ratio, methanol/oil molar ratio, amount of bentonite, agitation rate, reaction temperature and reaction time was investigated. Response surface methodology was applied to optimize the main process parameters. The maximum FAME yield of 98.35 ± 0.69% was achieved under the optimized conditions of 0.56:1 of DEE/methanol molar ratio, 1.07 wt% concentration of NaOH and 5.65:1 methanol/oil molar ratio. The kinetics and thermodynamic analysis for this process was also carried out. The activation energy for the process was 23.73 kJ mol −1 , and the thermodynamic analysis reveals that the net Gibbs energy change for the process was almost same as that for the bentonite-enhanced transesterification process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A new type of liquid-free ICE is synthesized as self-healing ionic conductor. • ICE is highly stretchable, transparent, thermally stable, and self-healable. • A temperature tolerant all-solid-state touch panel is developed based on ICE. Stretchable and transparent soft ionic conductors have shown great promise in the development of next-generation touch panels. However, hydrogel/organogel-based devices suffer from instability due to liquid leakage or evaporation. Solvent-free ionic elastomers (ICEs) with high transparency (average light transmission of 93 %), intrinsic conductivity (ionic conductivity of 8.8 × 10–3 S m−1), and stretchability at room temperature (strain up to 997 %) are demonstrated in this study. These ICEs are self-healable over a wide range of operating temperatures (−20 to 60 °C) in the absence of external stimulus while maintaining a highly transparent appearance. They are available as an all-solid-state human-machine interactive touch panel with self-healing ability. A surface capacitive touch system is used to sense the location touched by a finger, demonstrating its ability to sense the finger position over a broad temperature range. The functionality of the wearable touch panel is demonstrated by writing text, playing piano, playing electronic games, and controlling the movement of a toy car. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]