The CAMERE process (carbon dioxide hydrogenation to form methanol via a reverse-water-gas-shift reaction) was developed and evaluated. The reverse-water-gas-shift reactor and the methanol synthesis reactor were serially aligned to form methanol from CO2 hydrogenation. Carbon dioxide was converted to CO and water by the reverse-water-gas-shift reaction (RWReaction) to remove water before methanol was synthesized. With the elimination of water by RWReaction, the purge gas volume was minimized as the recycle gas volume decreased. Because of the minimum purge gas loss by the pretreatment of RWReactor, the overall methanol yield increased up to 89% from 69%. An active and stable catalyst with the composition of Cu/ZnO/ZrO2/Ga2O3 (5:3:1:1) was developed. The system was optimized and compared with the commercial methanol synthesis processes from natural gas and coal.

Oxygen plasma-treated quenched and annealed polypropylene (PP) films with different crystallinities were investigated to characterize the surface rearrangement behavior during aging using contact-angle measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Optimum plasma conditions were examined by varying the power, time and pressure. Less crystalline quenched PP showed a larger increase in water contact angle and a larger decrease of oxygen atomic concentration during aging than the more crystalline annealed PP, since the oxygen species, such as hydroxyl groups, introduced by oxygen plasma treatment, oriented towards or diffused faster into the bulk with lower crystallinity. The degree of crosslinking on the surface was enhanced after plasma treatment and, in addition to increased crystallinity, the crosslinked structure induced by plasma treatment restricted chain mobility and lowered the aging rate of the PP surface.

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