Understanding the Synthesis of Supported Vanadium Oxide Catalysts Using Chemical Grafting.

The complexity of variables during incipient wetness impregnation synthesis of supported metal oxides precludes an in-depth understanding of the chemical reactions governing the formation of the dispersed oxide sites. This contribution describes the use of vapor phase deposition chemistry (also known as grafting) as a tool to systematically investigate the influence of isopropanol solvent on VO(O Pr) anchoring during synthesis of vanadium oxide on silica. The availability of anchoring sites on silica was found to depend not only on the pretreatment of the silica but also on the solvent present.

Quantification of elemental and organic carbon in atmospheric particulate matter using color space sensing-hue, saturation, and value (HSV) coordinates.

A fast and cost effective application of color sensing was used to quantify color coordinates of atmospheric particulate matter collected on filters to quantify elemental and organic carbon (EC/OC) loading. This is a unique and novel approach for estimating OC composition. The method used a colorimeter and digital photography to obtain XYZ color space values and mathematically transformed them to HSV cylindrical-coordinates; a quantification method was applied to estimate the NIOSH and IMPROVE (TOR) EC/OC loadings from a set of globally diverse PM samples.