This review is designed to foster the discussion regarding the viability of postcombustion CO capture by water-lean solvents, by separating fact from fiction for both skeptics and advocates. We highlight the unique physical and thermodynamic properties of notable water-lean solvents, with a discussion of how such properties could translate to efficiency gains compared to aqueous amines. The scope of this review ranges from the purely fundamental molecular-level processes that govern solvent behavior to bench-scale testing, through process engineering and projections of process performance and cost. Key discussions of higher than expected CO mass transfer, water tolerance, and compatibility with current infrastructure are presented along with current limitations and suggested areas where further solvent development is needed. We conclude with an outlook of the status of the field and assess the viability of water-lean solvents for postcombustion CO capture.

A comprehensive evaluation of a recently developed water-lean amine-based solvent, namely N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA), has been performed to analyze its post-combustion CO2 capture performance. This evaluation comprises (1) fundamental characterization of...

Gold catalysts capable of promoting reactions at low-level loadings under mild conditions are the exception rather than the norm. We examined reactions where the regeneration of cationic gold catalyst (e.g., protodeauration) was the turnover limiting stage. By manipulating electron density on the substituents around phosphorus and introducing steric handles we designed a phosphine ligand that contains two electron-rich ortho-biphenyl groups and a cyclohexyl substituent. This ligand formed a gold complex that catalyzed common types of gold-catalyzed reactions including intra- and intermolecular XH (X=C, N, O) additions to alkynes and cycloisomerizations, with high turnover numbers at room temperature or slightly elevated temperatures (≤50 °C). Our new ligand can be prepared in one step from commercially available starting materials.

In the gold(I) (e. g. L‐Au‐OTf) catalyzed hydration of alkynes, the steric hindrance of ligands has a significant influence on the kinetics of the reaction, whereas their electronic effects are less influential. Very low loadings (ppm levels) of a gold catalyst containing a highly sterically hindered phosphine ligand (e. g. L4‐Au‐OTf) (L4=Me3(OMe)tBuXPhos) is able to catalyze the hydration of a wide range of alkyne substrates in good yields, at relatively low temperature.magnified image

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is well established as a tool of choice for solving problems that involve one or more of the following phenomena: flow of fluids, heat transfer,mass transfer, and chemical reaction. Unit operations that are commonly utilized in biotechnology processes are often complex and as such would greatly benefit from application of CFD. The thirst for deeper process and product understanding that has arisen out of initiatives such as quality by design provides further impetus toward usefulness of CFD for problems that may otherwise require extensive experimentation. Not surprisingly, there has been increasing interest in applying CFD toward a variety of applications in biotechnology processing in the last decade. In this article, we will review applications in the major unit operations involved with processing of biotechnology products. These include fermentation,centrifugation, chromatography, ultrafiltration, microfiltration, and freeze drying. We feel that the future applications of CFD in biotechnology processing will focus on establishing CFD as a tool of choice for providing process understanding that can be then used to guide more efficient and effective experimentation. This article puts special emphasis on the work done in the last 10 years.

Capture of CO2 from power generation is required for its conversion or sequestration. Toward this goal, numerous CO2 capture processes have been developed, with the most widely deployed technology utilizing aqueous solutions of amines. Our group has focused on the design of several classes of water-lean solvents in order to identify molecular-level descriptors to control materials properties such as viscosity and regeneration energy. Density functional theory calculations and classical molecular dynamic simulations have shown that strategic placement of hydrogen bonding and tuning of the acid/base equilibria are critical for controlling viscosity at CO2-rich loadings. Here, we extend these principles to a new class of pyridine-based molecules with a secondary amine functionality for binding CO2. The result is a class of water-lean amines that retains high gravimetric capacity (20%) while exhibiting the lowest CO2-rich viscosities (<150 cP, 40 °C) of any 100% concentrated amine currently known. Additionally, these newly identified solvents exhibit regeneration temperatures as low as 60 °C when applying a polarity swing assisted regeneration, resulting in a solvent that can conceptually absorb and desorb CO2 with only a 20 °C temperature swing.

A reduced model connecting molecular structure to viscosity for single-component carbon capture solvents is presented.

During the last decades, the rheology of cells has been studied almost entirely in single cells. While cell-to-cell variation is typically very large and most studies were carried out in the nonlinear viscoelastic regime, we quantify average linear viscoelastic cell properties like storage and loss moduli and normal stress in monolayers of different cell types showing that murine 3T6 fibroblasts, human fibroblasts, and HeLa cells differ considerably in their storage modulus. To this end, we modified a commercial rheometer to set up a parallel-disk configuration at gap widths of a few micrometers and optically detected the cell concentration in the gap. This enables studying the linear viscoelastic behavior of the cells and permits quantifying the impact of drugs affecting the cytoskeleton or the extracellular matrix connection. Thus, due to its high-content approach, without the need of treating the samples in the rheometer, this envisions the use of this method as a fast diagnostic tool. The method also allows for quantitatively studying of the impact of pre-stress on the storage and loss moduli of the cells