Effect of acidity in TS-1 zeolites on product distribution of the styrene oxidation reaction

The role of Bronsted acidity of titanium silicalite zeolite (with different ratios of Si/Ti) in oxidation reactions of styrene has been investigated and discussed. For zeolites with Si/Ti > 42, most of the titanium is in the zeolite framework. These framework titanium species, which act both as the isolated titanium centers and as Bronsted acidity centers (together with the Bronsted acidity produced by the tetrahedral aluminum impurity introduced during synthesis), can catalyze both the epoxidation and the succeeding rearrangement reactions, thus promoting the formation of phenylacetaldehyde. With an increase in the titanium content of the zeolite, titanium will tend to stay outside the zeolite lattice, except for the TiOx nanophases which can be occluded in the zeolite channels or on the external surface. These non-framework titanium species are favorable for the carbon-carbon bond scission, leading to the production of additional benzaldehyde. The catalytic performances of these zeolites with different Si/Ti ratios are correlated here with their structural information by using solid-state NMR and UV-Vis methods. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Theoretical studies of product polarization and state distributions of the H+HCl reaction

The angular momentum polarization and rotational state distributions of the H-2 and HCl products from the H + HCl reaction are calculated at a relative translational energy of 1.6 eV by using quasiclassical trajectories on two potential energy surfaces, one from G3 surface [T.C. Allison et al., J. Phys. Chem. 100 (1996) 13575], and the other from BW2 surface [W. Bian, H.-J. Werner, J. Chem. Phys. 112 (2000) 220]. Product rotational distributions obtained on the G3 potential energy surface (PES) are much closer to the experimental results (P.M. Aker et al., J. Chem. Phys. 90 (1989) 4795; J. Chem. Phys. 90 (1989) 4809) than the distributions calculated on the BW2 PES. The distributions of P(phi(r)) for the H-2 and HCl products obtained on the G3 PES are similar, whereas the rotational alignment effect of the H-2 product is stronger than that of the HCl product. In contrast to the polarization distributions obtained on the G3 PES, the rotational alignment effect of the two products calculated on the BW2 PES is similar. However, the abstraction reaction is dominated by out-of-plane mechanisms, while the exchange reaction is dominated by in-plane mechanisms. The significant difference of the product rotational polarization obtained on the G3 and BW2 PESs implies that the studies of the dynamical stereochemistry can provide a sensitive test for the accuracy of the PES. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The Development of a Marine Natural Product-based Antifouling Paint

Problems with tin and copper antifouling compounds have highlighted the need to develop new environmentally friendly antifouling coatings. Bacteria isolated from living surfaces in the marine environment are a promising source of natural antifouling compounds. Four isolates were used to produce extracts that were formulated into ten waterbased paints. All but one of the paints showed activity against a test panel of fouling bacteria. Five of the paints were further tested for their ability to inhibit the settlement of barnacle larvae, Balanus amphitrite, and algal spores of Ulva lactuca, and for their ability to inhibit the growth of U. lactuca. Two paints caused a significant decrease in the number of settled barnacles. One paint containing extract of Pseudomonas sp. strain NUDMB50-11, showed excellent activity in all assays. The antifouling chemicals responsible for the activity of the extract were isolated, using bioassay guided fractionation, and their chemical structures determined.

Biologically Inspired Features for Scene Classification in Video Surveillance

Inspired by human visual cognition mechanism, this paper first presents a scene classification method based on an improved standard model feature. Compared with state-of-the-art efforts in scene classification, the newly proposed method is more robust, more selective, and of lower complexity. These advantages are demonstrated by two sets of experiments on both our own database and standard public ones. Furthermore, occlusion and disorder problems in scene classification in video surveillance are also first studied in this paper.

A new route to control product selectivity in the oxidative dehydrogenation of cyclohexane and cyclohexene

The product selectivity can be controlled by adding acetic acid in feed over vanadium phosphate (VPO) in gas phase oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH), in which cyclohexane and cyclohexene are oxidized to cyclohexene and 1,3-cyclohexadiene (1,3-CHD), respectively, at almost 100% selectivity. This approach is also an efficient method to capture the very unstable intermediates in the mechanism study.

Effects of acetic acid on product selectivity in gas phase oxidative dehydrogenation of cyclohexane

The effect of adding acetic acid on the product distribution in gas phase oxidative dehydrogenation of cyclohexane over alpha(1)-VOPO4 catalyst was investigated. The role of acetic acid in the reaction process was put forward. The proposed mechanism is that acetic acid take precedence of cyclohexane adsorbing on the active sites of alpha(1)-VOPO4 catalyst to form isolated active site. Thus, cyclohexene species can desorb quickly from the active sites, avoiding its deep oxidation dehydrogenation. Almost 100% selectivity to cyclohexene could be obtained when the molar ratio of acetic acid to cyclohexane was 12.9:1 at 450 degrees C, the conversion of cyclohexane was 6.9%.