Natural Antioxidant-Based Nanodrug for Atherosclerosis Treatment.

Natural antioxidants are always considered as candidates for the antioxidative therapy of atherosclerosis (AS) due to their good safety profile. However, restricted to their limited reactive oxygen species (ROS) elimination and rapid metabolism, the natural antioxidants' treatment suffers from the undesirable clinical outcomes. Herein, a new natural antioxidant-based nanodrug (VC@cLAVs) that can overcome above issues is developed to treat AS by loading natural antioxidant vitamin C (VC) into the natural antioxidant lipoic acid (LA)-constructed cross-linked vesicles. This integration not only greatly increases the blood half-life of natural antioxidants, but also amplifies the antioxidation capacity by the mutual recycling of two redox pairs LA/DHLA (reduced form of LA) and VC/DHA (oxidized form of VC). In vivo results disclose that VC@cLAVs decreases the apolipoprotein E-deficient mice's plaque area from 52% to 13%, much lower than those of free VC (≈45%) and LA (≈38%). This natural antioxidant-based nanodrug holds great potential in clinics.

Catalytic co-pyrolysis of microwave pretreated chili straw and polypropylene to produce hydrocarbons-rich bio-oil.

In this work, the kinetic behavior and products of the co-pyrolysis of chili straw (CS) and polypropylene (PP) of distinguishing conditions (blending ratios, addition of catalysts, and microwave pretreatment at different power) had been investigated. Co-pyrolysis effectively reduced the proportion of oxygenated composition in CS, and the Oxygenated composition of 5CS5PP decreased by 76.69% compared to CS. When HZSM-5 was added, the aromatic hydrocarbons in the product increased from 4.46% to 17.34%, and the final residual mass decreased from 12.75% to 7.71%, illustrating that HZSM-5 had a positive effect on co-pyrolysis. Compared with P0HZSM-5, the microwave pretreatment at a higher power level of 567 W reduced the oxygenated composition from 17.41% to 13.09%, and the weight loss peak in the first stage increased from -18.11%/min to -19.94%/min. At the same time, the activation energy decreased from 271.25 kJ/mol to 231.13 kJ/mol.

Hydrothermal liquefaction of Chlorella pyrenoidosa and effect of emulsification on upgrading the bio-oil.

This work studied the hydrothermal liquefaction of Chlorella pyrenoidosa and effect of emulsification on upgrading the bio-oil. The fuel properties and storage stability characteristics of emulsion fuels were explored. The combustion characteristic analysis showed that the ignition temperatures of emulsion fuels (139.6-151.3 °C) were lower than that of bio-oil (176.9 °C). Besides, emulsion fuels had higher comprehensive combustion indexes (7.24-14.08 × 10-6 × min-2 × C-3) than bio-oil (1.51 × 10-6 × min-2 × C-3), indicating that emulsion fuels had better combustion performance. The kinetic analysis showed that emulsification could effectively reduce the activation energy, resulting in less energy input for combustion. Based on chemical composition evolution during the storage process, a possible stability mechanism was proposed. The storage stability analysis indicated that the diesel-solvable fractions in bio-oil had better stability. Overall, this work provides a feasible way for bio-oil upgrading through emulsification. In addition, a better understanding of the stability property of emulsion fuel was provided.

Co-hydrothermal carbonization of polyvinyl chloride and corncob for clean solid fuel production.

The improvement of dechlorination efficiency remains an important challenge during co-hydrothermal carbonization (co-HTC) of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). In this work, co-HTC of biomass and PVC at different mixing ratios (30%-70%) and feed-water pH (3-11) was proposed to further improve the dechlorination efficiency. In terms of water solvent, the dechlorination efficiency of co-HTC process (87.83%-93.63%) was higher than that of individual HTC of polyvinyl chloride (87.44%). In case of organic acid/alkali solvents, the dechlorination efficiency further increased to 95.20% at pH = 5. Particularly, the hydrochars derived from co-HTC showed high fuel ratio (0.71-0.99) and their higher heating value reached approximately 29.16-32.83 MJ/kg. The TGA results showed that the combustion behaviors of hydrochars derived from co-HTC got better compared with that of hydrochar derived from PVC. Therefore, co-HTC can realize sustainable utilization of PVC towards clean solid fuels. This work also sheds light on the potential of organic acid in dechlorination treatment.