Novel Reactive Distillation Process for Cyclohexyl Acetate Production: Design, Optimization, and Control.

A side-reactor column (SRC) configuration, comprising a vacuum column coupled with atmospheric side reactors, is proposed to overcome the thermodynamic restriction in the esterification of cyclohexene with acetic acid to produce cyclohexyl acetate. Meantime, this configuration can avoid the utilization of the high-pressure steam and provide enough zone for catalyst loading. In order to obtain the minimum total annual cost (TAC), the process is optimized by a mixed-integer nonlinear programming optimization method based on the improved bat algorithm. The results indicate that the optimized SRC configuration saves about 44.81% of the TAC compared to the reactive distillation process. Based on the optimized SRC process, dynamic control is carried out. The dual-point temperature and temperature-composition control structures are proposed to reject throughput and feed composition disturbances. The dynamic performances demonstrate that the temperature-composition control structure is better in maintaining product purity.

Modeling and Evaluation of Piezoelectric Transducer (PZT)-Based Through-Metal Energy and Data Transfer.

Through-metal transfer of energy and data using piezoelectric transduce can avoid the potential leakage problem caused by physical penetrations and wired feed-through. The through-metal transfer efficiency of energy or data is determined by the relative pressure on the receiving PZT (piezoelectric transducer). Hence, in this paper, we first propose the Spatial Equivalent Plane Acoustic Pressure (SEPAP), which is defined as the integration of the acoustic pressure over the receiving area, to model the pressure on the receiving PZT. Then we analyze the features of SEPAP and the factors impacting it by utilizing COMSOL. Furthermore, we propose a low-cost and small-size prototype for simultaneous transfer of energy and bidirectional communication through metal by using two pairs of PZTs working on different resonant frequencies. Extensive experiment has been done on evaluating the match between SEPAP transfer efficiency and the power transfer efficiency and analyzing the achievable data rate for bi-directional communication. Test through a 20 mm aluminum alloy plate shows that power transmission with efficiency 20.3% and data communication rate up to 38.4 Kbps can be achieved simultaneously.

Au-Catalyzed tandem intermolecular hydroalkoxylation/Claisen rearrangement between allylic alcohols and chloroalkynes.

An efficient protocol for the synthesis of γ,δ-unsaturated α-chloroketones has been developed via Au-catalyzed tandem intermolecular hydroalkoxylation/Claisen rearrangement. In the presence of 1 mol% JohnPhosAuCl and 1 mol% NaBArF, a broad range of allylic alcohols smoothly underwent the tandem intermolecular hydroalkoxylation/Claisen rearrangement with aromatic, vinylic or aliphatic chloroalkynes to give structurally diverse γ,δ-unsaturated α-chloroketones in excellent yields. Importantly, high Z/E selectivity was achieved. Other advantages are widespread availability of the substrates, compatibility with a broad range of functional groups and mild reaction conditions.

High-Order Model and Dynamic Filtering for Frame Rate Up-Conversion.

This paper proposes a novel frame rate up-conversion method through high-order model and dynamic filtering (HOMDF) for video pixels. Unlike the constant brightness and linear motion assumptions in traditional methods, the intensity and position of the video pixels are both modeled with high-order polynomials in terms of time. Then, the key problem of our method is to estimate the polynomial coefficients that represent the pixel's intensity variation, velocity, and acceleration. We propose to solve it with two energy objectives: one minimizes the auto-regressive prediction error of intensity variation by its past samples, and the other minimizes video frame's reconstruction error along the motion trajectory. To efficiently address the optimization problem for these coefficients, we propose the dynamic filtering solution inspired by video's temporal coherence. The optimal estimation of these coefficients is reformulated into a dynamic fusion of the prior estimate from pixel's temporal predecessor and the maximum likelihood estimate from current new observation. Finally, frame rate up-conversion is implemented using motion-compensated interpolation by pixel-wise intensity variation and motion trajectory. Benefited from the advanced model and dynamic filtering, the interpolated frame has much better visual quality. Extensive experiments on the natural and synthesized videos demonstrate the superiority of HOMDF over the state-of-the-art methods in both subjective and objective comparisons.

Palladium-catalyzed direct arylation of indoles with arylsulfonyl hydrazides.

A novel method to synthesise 2-arylindoles is demonstrated via direct arylation of indoles with arylsulfonyl hydrazides. Under the optimized reaction conditions, the reaction well tolerates a wide variety of functional groups to afford structurally diverse 2-arylindoles in good to excellent yields at 70 °C.

Byproduct promoted regioselective sulfenylation of indoles with sulfinic acids.

An unprecedented method to synthesise 3-sulfenylindoles is demonstrated via byproduct promoted sulfenylation of indoles with sulfinic acids in the absence of an external catalyst. The reaction selectively afforded structurally diverse indole thioethers in good to excellent yields in 1,2-dichloroethane at 80 °C.