Volume 31, Issue 5

The dehydrogenation of light alkanes, especially propane and butane, is widely exploited for the large-scale production of corresponding olefins. The industrial application of the direct dehydrogenation of light alkanes is limited due to reaction and thermodynamic constraints. The dehydrogenation of light hydrocarbons involves the breaking of two carbon–hydrogen bonds with the simultaneous formation of a hydrogen and carbon-carbon double bond selectively. It may appear to be simple, but their endothermic nature and selectivity control at higher temperature is difficult. The same technologies with minor changes in process and catalyst were used for the production of both propane and isobutane dehydrogenation. The economic analysis of the available technologies based on the specific consumption of feedstock, operational ease, and capital investment indicates an internal rate of return ~25%. The attractiveness of light alkane dehydrogenation is largely dependent on the difference in feedstock and the price of olefins produced. The available technologies and how they manage reaction constraints at commercial scale have been compared. The possible solution for improvement is by focusing on catalyst improvements and the unique design of reactors.

The inevitably low value of bioglycerol has led to extensive investigations on glycerol conversion to value-added chemicals. This review focuses on the industrially important catalytic esterification of glycerol with oleic acid attributable to its high commercial value. Conventionally, the catalytic esterification of long-chain fatty acids with glycerol is operated at extreme operating conditions (homogeneous acid catalyst, high temperature, and intensive vacuum system). Because of these, rational design of reliable solid acid catalysts for water-sensitive esterification process is needed in order to enhance existing process condition. Up until now, the recent development of efficient and environmentally benign catalysts for esterification of glycerol with oleic acid has not been captured in any review. Therefore, the current literatures of catalytic esterification of glycerol with oleic acid and their affecting parameters are primarily discussed in this review. This review has shown that the hydrophobicity surface of catalysts is vital to boost up the reaction activity of polar glycerol and immiscible phase behavior of reactants. In addition, the concluding remarks for catalyst selectivity of glycerol monooleate, dioleate, and trioleate synthesis are presented. The paper also highlights the research gaps and future direction of this important research field.

In the past decades, process engineers are facing increasingly more data analytics challenges and having difficulties obtaining valuable information from a wealth of process variable data trends. The raw data of different formats stored in databases are not useful until they are cleaned and transformed. Generally, data cleaning consists of four steps: missing data imputation, outlier detection, noise removal, and time alignment and delay estimation. This paper discusses available data cleaning methods that can be used in data pre-processing and help overcome challenges of “Big Data”.

Circulation half-life has become one of the major design considerations in nanoparticle drug delivery systems. By taking cues for designing long circulating carriers from natural entities such as red blood cells (RBCs) has been explored for many years. Among all the cellular carriers including leukocytes, fibroblasts, islets, and hepatocytes, RBCs offer several distinctive features. The present review underlines a discussion on the applications of different RBC carriers (RBC mimics) which can evade the body’s reticuloendothelial system overcoming many barriers such as size, shape, accelerated blood clearance, mechanical properties, control over particle characteristics, and surface chemistry. Bilayer membrane liposomes infusing phospholipids have long been synthesized to mimic bioconcave RBC carriers using the notion of stealth liposomes. This is not a comprehensive review; some illustrative examples are given on how they are currently obtained. A special attention is devoted to the RBC mimics from polymers, red cell membrane ghosts, and the red cell membrane enclosing polymeric cores as potential drug carriers. The present research reveals the achievement of RBC surface charge to accord with the immune system as a game of hide and seek in a much promising way in the light of its pharmaceutical applications.

Biotechnology continues to offer routes for many exciting and unique products. Researchers genetically altered goats with a spider gene. These goats produce milk that contains a protein that can be extracted to produce biosteel fibers for use in bulletproof vests. It is referred to as “biosteel” to highlight its strength comparable to steel. This review paper describes the important aspects of produced dragline spider silk proteins via cell culture techniques using silk genes derived from two species of weaving spiders. These fibers were tested for a number of mechanical properties and compared to natural spider silk. In effect, fibers of biosteel were able to absorb similar amounts of energy as natural spider silk by stretching further. As opposed to most other synthetic fibers, biosteel is ecofriendly both in terms of its composition and production process.