The effect of air quality parameters on new COVID-19 cases between two different climatic and geographical regions in Turkey.

Different health management strategies may need to be implemented in different regions to cope with diseases. The current work aims to evaluate the relationship between air quality parameters and the number of new COVID-19 cases in two different geographical locations, namely Western Anatolia and Western Black Sea in Turkey. Principal component analysis (PCA) and regression model were utilized to describe the effect of environmental parameters (air quality and meteorological parameters) on the number of new COVID-19 cases. A big difference in the mean values for all air quality parameters has appeared between the two areas. Two regression models were developed and showed a significant relationship between the number of new cases and the selected environmental parameters. The results showed that wind speed, SO2, CO, NOX, and O3 are not influential variable and does not affect the number of new cases of COVID-19 in the Western Black Sea area, while only wind speed, SO2, CO, NOX, and O3 are influential parameters on the number of new cases in Western Anatolia. Although the environmental parameters behave differently in each region, these results revealed that the relationship between the air quality parameters and the number of new cases is significant.

Green dehydrogenation of dimethylamine borane catalyzed by cheaply copper(0) nanocatalysts without any stabilizer at nearly room temperature.

In this work, the findings of the work on the green dehydrogenation behavior of molten dimethylamine borane (DMAB) catalyzed by the precatalyst copper(II) acetylacetonate (Cu(acac)2) in solvent-free medium (green) at near room temperature (nRT, 30.0+0.1°C) were reported. Herein, a complete study has been presented, which includes the following steps: (i) synthesis and catalytic activity of Cu(0) NCats in solvent-free medium, (ii) determination of activation energy for Cu(0) NCats catalyzed green dehydrogenation of DMAB, (iii) demonstration of catalytic lifetime of Cu(0) NCats, (iv) test of isolability and reusability of Cu(0) NCats, (v) poisoning experiments using carbon disulfide on a per-active-copper-atom basis, (vii) characterization of Cu(0) NCats by UV-vis, XRD, XPS and TEM/HRTEM/TEM-EDX spectroscopies. In addition, ATR-FTIR and 11B NMR techniques were use to characterize the cyclic aminoborane product obtained as a result of dehydrogenation of dimethylamine-borane.

B-N polymer embedded iron(0) nanoparticles as highly active and long lived catalyst in the dehydrogenation of ammonia borane.

B-N polymer embedded iron(0) nanoparticles (NPs) were in-situ generated from the reduction of iron(III) acetylacetonate during the dehydrogenation of ammonia borane (AB) in THF solution at 40.0 +/- 0.5 degrees C. The iron(0) NPs could be isolated as powder from the reaction solution by centrifugation and characterized by UV-Vis, TEM, and XRD. They are redispersible in polar solvent such as THF and yet highly active catalysts in the dehydrogenation of AB providing a TOF value of 202 h(-1) at 40.0 +/- 0.5 degrees C. The catalytic activity of iron(0) NPs compare well with those of the known homogenous and heterogeneous precious metal catalysts reported so far. They are also long-life catalysts in the dehydrogenation of AB providing 1410 turnovers over 18 h at 40.0 +/- 0.5 degrees C. The poisoning experiments using carbon disulfide show that the dehydrogenation of AB catalyzed by iron(0) NPs is a heterogeneous catalysis. The catalytic dehydrogenation of AB in the presence of iron(0) NPs was followed by measuring the volume of hydrogen generated and by 11B-NMR spectroscopy. Our report also includes the results of a detailed kinetic study on the catalytic dehydrogenation of AB depending on the catalyst concentration, substrate concentration, and temperature. The dehydrogenation of AB produces sparingly soluble B-N polymers which provide just enough stability to the iron(0) NPs. The co-precipitation of some iron(0) NPs with the sparingly soluble polymers causes a slight decrease in the catalytic activity toward the end of dehydrogenation. However, iron(0) NPs embedded in B-N polymers appear to be an efficient catalyst in hydrogen generation from ammonia borane at moderate temperature.