Steam explosion as sustainable biomass pretreatment technique for biofuel production: Characteristics and challenges.

The biorefining process of lignocellulosic biomass has recently emerged as one of the most profitable biofuel production options. However, pretreatment is required to improve the recalcitrant lignocellulose's enzymatic conversion efficiency. Among biomass pretreatment methods, the steam explosion is an eco-friendly, inexpensive, and effective approach to pretreating biomass, significantly promoting biofuel production efficiency and yield. This review paper critically presents the steam explosion's reaction mechanism and technological characteristics for lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment. Indeed, the principles of steam explosion technology for lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment were scrutinized. Moreover, the impacts of process factors on pretreatment efficiency and sugar recovery for the following biofuel production were also discussed in detail. Finally, the limitations and prospects of steam explosion pretreatment were mentioned. Generally, steam explosion technology applications could bring great potential in pretreating biomass, although deeper studies are needed to deploy this method on industrial scales.

Sorbent-based devices for the removal of spilled oil from water: a review.

Always, oil spills do cause serious and dire consequences for the environment, nature, and society that it consumes much time and socio-economic resources to overcome such consequences. Oil spills, hence, posed a big challenge in searching the advanced technologies and devices to recover spilled oil rapidly and efficiently. Indeed, sorbents have been found to play an extremely critical role in the spilled-oil remediation processes. Recently, a large number of various advanced sorbents and sorbent-based oil-collecting devices/technologies have been developed to enhance the oil-recovery capacity. Therefore, it is necessary to have a comprehensive assessment of the application of sorbent-based oil-collecting devices/technologies in recovering spilled oil. Due to this reason, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the advanced technologies of the combination of sorbents and oil-collecting devices in the oil cleanup strategies. Two main oil-collecting devices such as booms and skimmers that could conjunct with sorbents were critically evaluated on the basis of the applicability and technological features, indicating that the capacity of oil spill recovery could achieve 90%. Moreover, oil-storage and oil-collecting devices were also completely mentioned. Last but not least, technical directions, concerns over the application of sorbents in oil recovery, and existing challenges relating to storage, transport, and disposal of used sorbents were discussed in detail. In the future, the automatic process of spilled oil recovery with the conjunction between advanced devices and environmentally friendly high-efficiency sorbents should be further investigated to minimize the environmental impacts, reduce the cost, as well as maximize the collected oil spill.

Advanced super-hydrophobic polymer-based porous absorbents for the treatment of oil-polluted water.

The threat of environmental pollution caused by spilled oil is rapidly increasing along with the expansion of oil exploration, the development of maritime activities and industrial growth. Oil spill incidents usually affect seriously the ecosystem and human life. Therefore, the treatment and recovery of the oil spill have been considered as an ultra-important issue to protect the environment and to minimize its negative impacts on socio-economic activities. Among methods of oil spill recovery, porous materials have emerged as potential absorbents possessing the capacity of absorbing spilled oil at a fast rate, high adsorption capacity, good selectivity, and high reusability. In this review paper, two types of polymer-based porous absorbents modified surface and structure were introduced for the treatment strategy of the oil-polluted water. In addition, the absorption mechanism and factors affecting the adsorption capacity for oils and organic solvents were thoroughly analyzed. More importantly, characteristics of polymer-based porous materials were discussed in detail based on microstructure analysis, absorption efficiency, and reusability. In general, this paper has provided an overview and a comprehensive assessment of the use of advanced polymer-based porous materials for the treatment of oil-polluted water, although the impacts of environmental factors such as wind, wave, and temperature should be further investigated in the future.

Exergy Analysis of Advanced Adsorption Cooling Cycles.

This study conducted an exergy analysis of advanced adsorption cooling cycles. The possible exergy losses were divided into internal losses and external losses, and the exergy losses of each process in three advanced cycles: a mass recovery cycle, heat recovery cycle and combined heat and mass recovery cycle were calculated. A transient two-dimensional numerical model was used to solve the heat and mass transfer kinetics. The exergy destruction of each component and process in a finned tube type, silica gel/water working paired-adsorption chiller was estimated. The results showed that external loss was significantly reduced at the expense of internal loss. The mass recovery cycle reduced the total loss to 60.95 kJ/kg, which is -2.76% lower than the basic cycle. In the heat recovery cycle, exergy efficiency was significantly enhanced to 23.20%. The optimum value was 0.1248 at a heat recovery time of 60 s. The combined heat and mass recovery cycle resulted in an 11.30% enhancement in exergy efficiency, compared to the heat recovery cycle. The enhancement was much clearer when compared to the basic cycle, with 37.12%. The observed dependency on heat recovery time and heating temperature was similar to that observed for individual mass recovery and heat recovery cycles.