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Advances in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Catalytic Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 3146

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering, National Institute of Chemistry, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interests: multiscale modeling; density functional theory; kinetic Monte Carlo; computational fluid dynamics; thermodynamics; reaction kinetics; microkinetics; transport phenomena; heat transfer; mass transfer; fluid mechanics; unit operations; separations
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National Institute of Chemistry Ljubljana, Department of Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interests: chemical reaction engineering; catalysis; biomass conversion; hydrodeoxygenation; kinetic modelling; structure–activity correlations

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is well known that more than 90% of commercial chemical products involve catalytic processes in at least one step of their manufacture. Despite the ubiquitous use of catalytic processes, further demand for energy sources, chemical building blocks, fine chemicals, food processing and waste treatment (exhaust gases, wastewaters, solid wastes) is pushing material scientists and chemical engineers to develop new catalyst materials and corresponding processes. Primarily, catalyst evolution reflects in higher activity and long-term stability of materials, as well as in higher selectivity of catalysts towards desired products.

Some of the greatest technological challenges of a mankind involve the development of novel catalytic processes, specifically:

  • The valorization of captured CO2 into platform chemicals and energy vectors;
  • The valorization of CH4 that is commonly flared at small or temporary sources;
  • The valorization of biomass to yield value-added chemicals;
  • Environmental pollution abatement;
  • Fuel-cells (oxygen evolution and reduction reactions);
  • Enzymatic conversions.

This Special Issue will feature articles that cover topics related to materials preparation, engineering, functionalization, activation and characterization of materials, and particularly, experimental and theoretical investigations of their themo-, photo-, electro-, bio- or organocatalytic activity. Material science and chemical engineering nexus is particularly encouraged.

We invite you to submit review articles, original research papers and communications for this Special Issue before the end of January 2020.

Prof. Dr. Blaž Likozar
Dr. Miha Grilc
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • heterogeneous catalysis
  • homogeneous catalysis
  • photocatalysis
  • electrocatalysis
  • organocatalysis
  • characterization
  • chemisorption and physisorption
  • kinetics and mass transfer
  • reaction mechanisms and pathways

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 27277 KiB  
Article
PTFE-Carbon Nanotubes and Lipase B from Candida antarctica—Long-Lasting Marriage for Ultra-Fast and Fully Selective Synthesis of Levulinate Esters
by Anna Szelwicka, Agnieszka Siewniak, Anna Kolanowska, Sławomir Boncel and Anna Chrobok
Materials 2021, 14(6), 1518; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14061518 - 19 Mar 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2034
Abstract
An effective method for levulinic acid esters synthesis by the enzymatic Fischer esterification of levulinic acid using a lipase B from Candida antarctica (CALB) immobilized on the advanced material consisting of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and a hydrophobic polymer—polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon, PTFE)—as a heterogeneous [...] Read more.
An effective method for levulinic acid esters synthesis by the enzymatic Fischer esterification of levulinic acid using a lipase B from Candida antarctica (CALB) immobilized on the advanced material consisting of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and a hydrophobic polymer—polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon, PTFE)—as a heterogeneous biocatalyst, was developed. An active phase of the biocatalyst was obtained by immobilization via interfacial activation on the surface of the hybrid material MWCNTs/PTFE (immobilization yield: 6%, activity of CALB: 5000 U∙L∙kg−1, enzyme loading: 22.5 wt.%). The catalytic activity of the obtained biocatalyst and the effects of the selected reaction parameters, including the agitation speed, the amount of PTFE in the CALB/MWCNT-PTFE biocatalyst, the amount of CALB/MWCNT-PTFE, the type of organic solvent, n-butanol excess, were tested in the esterification of levulinic acid by n-butanol. The results showed that the use of a two-fold excess of levulinic acid to n-butanol, 22.5 wt.% of CALB on MWCNT-PTFE (0.10 wt.%) and cyclohexane as a solvent at 20 °C allowed one to obtain n-butyl levulinate with a high yield (99%) and selectivity (>99%) after 45 min. The catalyst retained its activity and stability after three cycles, and then started to lose activity until dropping to a 69% yield of ester in the sixth reaction run. The presented method has opened the new possibilities for environmentally friendly synthesis of levulinate esters. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis)
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