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Secondary phases, either introduced by alloying or heat treatment, are commonly 31 present in most high-entropy alloys (HEAs). Understanding the formation of secondary 32 phases at high temperatures, and their effect on mechanical properties, is a critical issue 33 that is undertaken in the present study, using the Al x CoCrFeNi (x = 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7) as 34 a model alloy. The in-situ transmission-electron-microscopy (TEM) heating observation, 35 an atom-probe-tomography (APT) study for the reference starting materials (Al 0.3 and 36 Al 0.5 alloys), and thermodynamic calculations for all three alloys, are performed to 37 investigate (1) the aluminum effect on the secondary-phase fractions, (2) the 38 annealing-twinning formation in the face-centered-cubic (FCC) matrix, (3) the 39 strengthening effect of the secondary ordered body-centered-cubic (B2) phase, and (4) 40 the nucleation path of the secondary phase thoroughly. The present work will 41 substantially optimize the alloy design of HEAs and facilitate applications of HEAs to a 42 wide temperature range.

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5‐Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is an important biobased platform chemical obtainable in high selectivity by the hydrolysis of fructose (FRC). However, FRC is expensive, making the production of HMF at a competitive market price highly challenging. Here, it is shown that sugar beet thick juice, a crude, sucrose‐rich intermediate in sugar refining, is an excellent feedstock for HMF synthesis. Unprecedented high selectivities and yields of >90 % for HMF were achieved in a biphasic reactor setup at 150 °C using salted diluted thick juice with H2SO4 as catalyst and 2‐methyltetrahydrofuran as a bioderived extraction solvent. The conversion of glucose, obtained by sucrose inversion, could be limited to <10 mol %, allowing its recovery for further use. Interestingly, purified sucrose led to significantly lower HMF selectivity and yields, showing advantages from both an economic and chemical selectivity perspective. This opens new avenues for more cost‐effective HMF production.

in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com)Hydrolysis of waste poly(ethylene terphthalate) (PET) using solid acid catalyst in SCCO 2 is presented in this work for the first time. The mechanism of PET chains scission was proved to be a combination of chain end and random chain scission by Fourier transform -infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and titration analysis. A new reaction kinetics model of PET hydrolysis in SCCO 2 was setup by introducing the Arrhenius equation into an ordinary reaction rate equation, the frequency factor and apparent activation energy were expressed in terms of temperature and CO 2 pressure, respectively. With this reaction kinetics model, the effects of temperature, and pressure were investigated. An interesting mechanism was proposed to describe the reaction process that both water molecules and hydroniums were carried and penetrated into the amorphous regions of the swollen PET by SCCO 2 , subsequently hydrolysis reaction preferentially took place in the amorphous regions of both surface and bulk of PET matrix.

Tungsten-promoted titania solid acid catalysts were synthesized by a hydrothermal method and used in the hydrolysis of waste bottle polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in supercritical CO2.

Efficient synthesis of furfural from xylose over the HCl catalyst in a water-methyl isobutyl ketone biphasic system was achieved in slug flow microreactors, using NaCl as a promotor which facilitates xylose dehydration and suppresses xylose condensation. An optimized furfural yield of 93% was obtained from 1 M xylose over 0.2 M HCl with 10 wt% NaCl at 180 C within 4 min. A comprehensive kinetic model was developed from monophasic experiments in water in microreactors, by incorporating the acidity in water and kinetic constants as a function of the chloride ion concentration. The coupling of kinetic model with furfural extraction, with consideration of phase volume change as a function of temperature and partial phase miscibility, enables to predict the results of biphasic experiments in microreactors where masstransfer limitation was eliminated. The aqueous phase containing HCl and NaCl could be readily recycled and reused multiple times without noticeable performance loss.