Multifunctional and Environmentally Friendly TiO-SiO Mesoporous Materials for Sustainable Green Buildings.

This work deals with the formulation of environmentally friendly, cheap, and readily-available materials for green building applications, providing the function of air purificator by improving the safety and the comfort of an indoor environment. High surface area TiO-SiO samples, prepared by a simple, cost effective, and scalable synthetic approach, proved to be effective in maximizing the properties of each component, i.e.

Titanium Dioxide-Based Nanocomposites for Enhanced Gas-Phase Photodehydrogenation.

Light-driven processes can be regarded as a promising technology for chemical production within the bio-refinery concept, due to the very mild operative conditions and high selectivity of some reactions. In this work, we report copper oxide (CuO)-titanium dioxide (TiO) nanocomposites to be efficient and selective photocatalysts for ethanol photodehydrogenation under gas phase conditions, affording 12-fold activity improvement compared to bare TiO. In particular, the insertion method of the CuO co-catalyst in different TiO materials and its effects on the photocatalytic activity were studied.

5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) Production from Real Biomasses.

The present paper reviews recent advances on the direct synthesis of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from different kinds of raw biomasses. In particular, in the paper HMF production from: (i) edible biomasses; (ii) non-edible lignocellulosic biomasses; (iii) food wastes (FW) have been reviewed. The different processes and catalytic systems have been reviewed and their merits, demerits and requirements for commercialisation outlined.