Chemical Engineering Project Topics

Hydrogen Storage Materials for Automotive Applications

Today’s transportation sector is almost dependant on petroleum-derived fuels. There is the challenge to stabilize the global carbon dioxide level. To make the transportation sector free from petroleum driven researchers are now focusing on some new technology such as hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles (FCV) over internal combustion engine (ICE).

The biggest benefit of hydrogen power fuel cell is its zero emission which is highly desirable for the pollution free green environment. Some technological hurdles of FCV such as its efficiency and difficulty in storage make it limited in commercial applications.

Hydrogen storage materials have major role in that purpose. In general, hydrogen storage materials can be classified into two categories based on (i) the nature of their sorption mechanism and (ii) by the identity of the material itself. The most relevant hydrogen storage materials are conventional metal hydrides, complex hydrides, sorbents, and chemical hydrides.

Conventional metal hydrides possess high volumetric capacities, favourable kinetics, efficiencies and thermodynamics, and are reversible on-board the vehicle. But, it has low gravimetric capacities. Complex hydrides typically have both high gravimetric and volumetric capacities but have poor hydrogen uptake/release kinetics.

Sorbents have high gravimetric capacities and are on-board reversible with facile kinetics but have modest volumetric capacities and poor thermodynamics. The chemical hydrides possess high hydrogen capacities by both volume and weight but can be excessively exothermic and require significant heat management.

Till now a great deal of progress has been made in the development of new material for hydrogen storage in laboratory scale. However, in future further development is highly desirable to make hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles (FCV).

 

References:

1.      J. Yang, A. Sudik, C. Wolverton, D. J. Siegel, High capacity hydrogen storage materials: attributes for automotive applications and techniques for materials discovery. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2010, 39, 656 – 675.

2.      T. J. Wallington, J. L. Sullivan, M. D. Hurley, Meteorol. Z., 2008, 17, 109.

 

 

Use of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Technology in Food Processing

Over the last few years nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is found to be one of the most commonly used technique to identify molecular structures as well as to study the progress of chemical reactions. NMR has several advantages over the other analytical tools such as high pressure chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

NMR technology was used in the late 1940 to elucidate the structure of molecules in organic chemistry. Research has been focused on the use of NMR on the fields of food science, which includes food microbiology, food chemistry, food engineering, and food packaging. Based on the principle of NMR, the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) further gives the visual observations of the interior foods.

MRI also permits monitoring of internal compositional and structural modification of foods when they experience different agricultural practises and industrial possessing.

Recent some reviews on the NMR for food processing addressed that there are scope of NMR applications in wine, dairy foods, identification of food authenticity, holding capacity and meat quality, and quality testing of fruits. However, rigorous research are highly demanded on the versatility of NMR/MRI applications in processing of different categories of food such as wine, cheese, fish, fruits, vegetables, juice, pulp, tea and coffee, oil, etc.

 

References:

1.       H. S. Gutowsky, G. B. Kistiakowsky, G. E. Pake, Purcell, E. M. J. Chem. Phys. 1949, 17(10), 972– 981.

2.       F. L. Chen, Y. M., Wei, B. J. Zhang, Food Eng. 2010, 100 (3), 522 –526.

3.       N. Ogrinc, I. J. Kosir, J. E. Spangenberg, J. Kidric, Anal. Bioanaly. Chem. 2003, 376 (4), 424 –430.

4.       K. L. Pearce, K. Rosenvold, H. J. Andersen, D. L. Hopkins, Meat. Sci. 2011, 89(2), 111 – 124.

 

 

Application of Nanomaterials as Antibacterial Agent 

Excessive use of chemical pesticides for the protection of crop from various dieses and insects is a major problem today because of its toxic effect towards the human health and environmental pollution. Over the last few years research has been focused on the alternative of the chemical based pesticides, such as nanomaterial based green pesticides.

Nano-materials have some interesting properties such as high surface area to volume ratio, low density, high surface energy, more reactive, etc over the bulk material. Silver as a disinfecting material has long been studied and applied in traditional medicines and culinary items. But, application of silver as an antibacterial agent is limited because of its high cost.

Some other materials, such as TiO₂, graphene oxide, chitosan, etc were also been investigated as an antibacterial agent. Some advance properties of TiO₂ over the other materials, such as low cost, good photocatalytic activity, good chemical stability and non-toxicity, etc, make it as a prominent candidate for antibacterial applications.

Further deposition of silver can make it more suitable as antibacterial agent. Nano-particulated ZnO and nano Pd doped nano-ZnO is also use widely against Aspergillus and Candida species. Earlier, it was reported that nano-ZnO and nano-ZnO loaded with nano-Pd(OAc)₂ had enhanced activity against enteric pathogens, like E.coli, Salmonella typhymurium and Shigellaflexneri.

Two types of sulfur nanoparticles caused dose-dependent reduction of Aspergillusniger growth at concentrations between 125–2000 ppm. For Fusarium oxysporum an inhibitory effect was observed at concentrations between 25–200 ppm. In all the cases the effect of sulfur nanoparticles on the fungi exceeded that of sulphur microparticles and Platinum nanoparticles showed remarkable activity at 2, 4, and 8 g/well against two plant-pathogenic fungi (Colletotrichumacutatum and Cladosporiumfulvum).

 

References:

1.      S. S. Boxi, K. Mukherjee, S. Paria, Nanotechnology;2016, 27, 085103 (13pp).

2.      K. Roy, H. Q. Mao, S. K. Huang, K. W. Leong, Nat. Med. 1999, 5, 387–91.

3.      P. Sanpui, A. Murugadoss, P. V. Durga Prasad, S. S. Ghosh, A. Chattopadhyay, Int. J. Food Microbiol.2008, 124, 142-146.

4.      M. A. Gondal, A. J. Alzahrani, M. A. Randhawa, M. N. Siddiqui, J Environ Sci Health A Tox Hazard Subst Environ Eng; 2012, 47, 1413-8.

5.         Y. S. Pestovsky, A. M. J. Antonio, Nanosci. Nanotechnol. 2017, 17, 8699–8730.

Prev

Related Article:

Waste Water Treatment using Semiconductor Nanomaterials