1,720,972 research outputs found
Oxidation of organics in water by active chlorine performed in microfluidic electrochemical reactors: a new way to improve the performances of the process
Full text linkWastewater polluted by organics can be treated by using electro-generated active chlorine, even if this promising route presents some important drawbacks such as the production of chlorinated by-products. Here, for the first time, this process was studied in a microfluidic electrochemical reactor with a very small inter-electrode distance (145 μm) using a water solution of NaCl and phenol and a BDD anode. The potential production of chloroacetic acids, chlorophenols, carboxylic acids, chlorate and perchlorate was carefully evaluated. It was shown, for the first time, up to our knowledge, that the use of the microfluidic device allows to perform the treatment under a continuous mode and to achieve higher current efficiencies and a lower generation of some important by-products such as chlorate and perchlorate. As an example, the use of the microfluidic apparatus equipped with an Ag cathode allowed to achieve a high removal of total organic carbon (about 76%) coupled with a current efficiency of 17% and the production of a small amount of chlorate (about 30 ppm) and no perchlorate. The effect of many parameters (namely, flow rate, current density and nature of cathode) was also investigated
Electrochemical remediation of phenol contaminated kaolin under low-strength electric fields
Full text linkSoil degradation is a global concern. Electrochemical remediation (ER) technology is considered an appealing strategy for soil remediation because it is a low-cost, adaptable, and effective noninvasive in situ technology. Currently, the remediation of soil characterized by fine grains, low-hydraulic permeability, heterogeneous conditions, and mixtures of contaminants is still challenging since other conventional technologies are poorly effective. ER of soil is based on the application of low potentials between a couple of electrodes which induces an electric field (E) in the contaminated field. In this work, very low values of electric field (E ≤ 0.25 V cm−1) were used for the ER of contaminated kaolin. Phenol was selected as model hazardous organic compound and kaolin as model, reproducible and low buffering and low permeability clay. The effect of several factors, including the nature of the electrodes, treatment time, kind of current, the strength of the E and the nature of supporting electrolyte, on the performance of the process was investigated in detail and discussed in terms of the normalized phenol concentration and its total removal from the kaolin. Overall, the main finding is that the use of very low value of E (0.15 V cm−1) can allow to simultaneously desorb, mobilize and also in-situ degrade phenol. The highest removals of phenol up to approximately 80% and 90% from the kaolin under both direct and sinusoidal E, respectively, were reached using compact graphite as electrodes in presence of Na2SO4 into the kaolin
Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to HCOOH at Tin Cathode: Development of a Theoretical Model and Comparison with Experimental Results
Full text linkThe electrochemical reduction of pressurized carbon dioxide at tin cathode is considered a very promising process for the production of formic acid. Here, the process was studied in an undivided cell with the aim of developing a simple theoretical model. First, a large series of polarization and electrolyses was performed in order to evaluate the kinetic of the process. According to the literature, experimental results can be described by a simple reaction mechanism, which involves the following key stages: (i) mass transfer of CO2 to the cathode; (i) its adsorption described by a Langmuir equation; (iii) the reduction of adsorbed CO2. A simple model was developed based on the cathodic conversion of pressurized CO2 to HCOOH and on its anodic oxidation. The theoretical model was in a good agreement with experimental results collected in this work and in previous ones and well described the effect of several operative parameters, including current density, pressure and kind of reactor
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Solar heat for the decarbonization of chemical industry: dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene driven by a concentrating solar power plant with molten salts as heat transfer fluids
Full text linkThe dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene was used as a model of an energy intensive endothermic process to assess the economic sustainability of the utilization of solar heat from a concentrating solar power (CSP) plant to decarbonize an industrial chemical processes. To this purpose a process configuration compatible with the hybridization with a CSP plant using a binary mixture NaNO3/KNO3, 60/40 w/w as heat transfer fluid (HTF) was selected. The adopted chemical reactor is a shell and tube bundle converter with 30000 tubes of 6 m length and 0.025 m inside diameter that approaches isothermal regime with a productivity of 103 kT/year of styrene if a flowrate of 200 kg/s of molten salt at 560 °C are fed to the shell. The residual enthalpy of the HTF leaving the dehydrogenation reactor was further injected in the process by vaporizing and pre-heating ethylbenzene and dilution water. A cash flow analysis of the hybridized plant was performed considering solar field of increasing size so that the required solar power of 45 MW can be supplied for longer period of the year. We found that a CSP plant of 70 collectors can decrease CO2 emissions of about 50 % with a rate of return on investment (ROROI) of 9.1 % for the solar field of the hybridized plant and can grant 410 k€/year of economic benefit arising from the methane and the lower emissions of CO2. This study demonstrates that solar heat can be used to decarbonize energy intensive endothermic chemical processes without economic penalty for the plant profitability
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