Aqueous-phase product treatment and monetization options of wet waste hydrothermal liquefaction: Comprehensive techno-economic and life-cycle GHG emission assessment unveiling research opportunities.

While wet waste hydrothermal liquefaction technology has a high biofuel yield, a significant amount of the carbon and nitrogen in the feedstock reports to the aqueous-phase product. Pretreatment of this stream before sending to a conventional wastewater plant is essential or at the very least, advisable. In this work, techno-economic and life-cycle assessments were conducted for the state-of-technology baseline and four aqueous-phase product treatment and monetization options based on experimental data.

Techno-economic Analysis of Sustainable Biofuels for Marine Transportation.

Renewable, low-carbon biofuels offer the potential opportunity to decarbonize marine transportation. This paper presents a comparative techno-economic analysis and process sustainability assessment of four conversion pathways: (1) hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of wet wastes such as sewage sludge and manure; (2) fast pyrolysis of woody biomass; (3) landfill gas Fischer-Tropsch synthesis; and (4) lignin-ethanol oil from the lignocellulosic ethanol biorefinery utilizing reductive catalytic fractionation. These alternative marine biofuels have a modeled minimum fuel selling price between $1.

A microfluidic platform for evaporation-based salt screening of pharmaceutical parent compounds.

We describe a microfluidic platform to screen for salt forms of pharmaceutical compounds (PCs) via controlled evaporation. The platform enables on-chip combinatorial mixing of PC and salt former solutions in a 24-well array (~200 nL/well), which is a drastic reduction in the amount of PC needed per condition screened compared to traditional screening approaches that require ~100 μL/well. The reduced sample needs enable salt screening at a much earlier stage in the drug development process, when only limited quantities of PCs are available.

Nitrogen-based catalysts for the electrochemical reduction of CO2 to CO.

The synthesis and application of carbon-supported, nitrogen-based organometallic silver catalysts for the reduction of CO(2) is studied using an electrochemical flow reactor. Their performance toward the selective formation of CO is similar to the performance achieved when using Ag as the catalyst, but comparatively at much lower silver loading. Faradaic efficiencies of the organometallic catalyst are higher than 90%, which are comparable to those of Ag.

Ionic liquid-mediated selective conversion of CO₂ to CO at low overpotentials.

Electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO(2))--a key component of artificial photosynthesis--has largely been stymied by the impractically high overpotentials necessary to drive the process. We report an electrocatalytic system that reduces CO(2) to carbon monoxide (CO) at overpotentials below 0.2 volt.

A microfluidic platform for pharmaceutical salt screening.

We describe a microfluidic platform comprised of 48 wells to screen for pharmaceutical salts. Solutions of pharmaceutical parent compounds (PCs) and salt formers (SFs) are mixed on-chip in a combinatorial fashion in arrays of 87.5-nanolitre wells, which constitutes a drastic reduction of the volume of PC solution needed per condition screened compared to typical high throughput pharmaceutical screening approaches.

A study of the Coriolis effect on the fluid flow profile in a centrifugal bioreactor.

Increasing demand for tissues, proteins, and antibodies derived from cell culture is necessitating the development and implementation of high cell density bioreactors. A system for studying high density culture is the centrifugal bioreactor (CCBR), which retains cells by increasing settling velocities through system rotation, thereby eliminating diffusional limitations associated with mechanical cell retention devices. This article focuses on the fluid mechanics of the CCBR system by considering Coriolis effects.