Modelling and simulation of chemical reaction of porous MgCl2 pellets with NH3 by including impact of heat and mass transfer and structure change.

The MgCl2-NH3 reactive system is investigated in terms of heat and mass transfer coupled with chemical reaction through numerical simulation. The reversible nature of the chemical reaction is captured by including adsorption and desorption terms in the rate expression simultaneously. The kinetic coefficients of the adsorption are directly adopted from the literature, while those for the desorption reaction are calculated based on the thermodynamic relations. The impact of changing pressure and pellet porosity are also investigated in the simulations. The initial temperature of the pellet is 300 K in all simulations. Temperature, NH3 pressure, and conversion distributions in the pellets, along with pellet swelling are obtained and presented as a function of time. The results indicated strong effects of heat transfer resistances in the pellets.

Hydrothermal synthesis of nanostructured TiO2 particles and characterization of their photocatalytic antimicrobial activity.

Nanostructured titania particles were synthesized by using hydrothermal processing and the photocatalytic antimicrobial activities were characterized. Both sol-gel synthesized and commercial TiO2 (anatase) samples were processed with two step hydrothermal treatments, under alkaline and neutral conditions. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images showed that alkaline treatment yields nanofibers and lamellar structured particles from the commercial anatase and sol-gel synthesized samples respectively. Further treatment of nanofibers and nanostructured lamellar particles with distilled water results with crystal growth and the formation of nano structured bipyramidal crystalline particles. The photocatalytic antimicrobial activities of the samples were determined against Escherichia coil under irradiation. It was observed that the samples treated under alkaline conditions have improved activity than the original anatase samples. Limited activity and resulting time lag in bacterial inactivation were observed for hydrothermally treated samples with distilled water. However, a post treatment comprising the UV irradiation in aqueous conditions enhanced the photocatalytic activity.