To help you stay up-to-date with the latest achievements from the chemical engineering research community here is our monthly installment with some of the latest stories.

Here are five stories of amazing chemical engineering research and innovation:

Using plant-based sorbents to clean up oil spills

This article was published as part of the Process Safety and Environmental Protection special issue on Air Pollution Control and Waste Management. The researchers identified sorption as the most effective and environmentally acceptable but the most expensive method for oil spill clean-up. However, using plant-based sorbents can improve cost-effectiveness and the plant waste can later be recycled for asphalt production and fuel.

Using a systematic approach to design ionic liquids for CCS

Because of their negligible vapour pressure, high thermal stability, and wide range of thermophysical properties ILs have huge potential. In an article published in Molecular Systems Design & Engineering, the team present a systematic approach to design an optimal IL to use in CCS.  This work helps determine the optimal IL by considering the effect of system operating conditions, and simultaneously determining optimal conditions of the carbon capture process.

Understanding how we feel about light could help to reduce domestic energy consumption

A molecular assembly that crawls on a solid substrate with a metabolic-like process

Chemical engineers in Japan have developed a vesicular aggregate filled with lipid molecules that exhibited crawling motion over a glass surface as a result of chemical reactions! Published in the Journal Molecular Systems Design & Engineering, the crawling motion was induced by a chemical reaction between didodecyldimethylammonium bromide (DDAB) and sodium oleate with calcium ions, and it caused discharge of the inner lipids.

The authors claim that this is probably the first example of an amphiphilic molecular assembly that exhibits crawling motion as a result of chemical reactions without size reduction. This could be regarded as the cell-like behavior of an abiotic molecular assembly with a metabolic-like process.

In the future, movement of vesicle-type aggregates could be exploited by means of a kind of chemical control. The team suggests that if the aggregate is placed on the solid surface where the smaller ones are placed in line, the aggregate moves along the line, leaving the film behind it. This could lead to the aggregate being used as a scavenger that removes lipid aggregates on the solid surface. A similar system has already been reported with a liquid droplet. If a similar system process could be applied biocompatible chemicals, the researchers proposed that this could be applied to clean the wall of blood vessels.

Grass could be key to super-thin condoms

Fibres from the Australian native spinifex grass are being used to improve latex that could be used to make condoms as thin as a human hair without any loss in strength. Professor Darren Martin from The University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) said the spinifex nanocellulose significantly improved the physical properties of latex.

Working in partnership with Aboriginal traditional owners of the Camooweal region in north-west Queensland, the Indjalandji-Dhidhanu People, the team have developed a method of extracting nanocellulose – which can be used as an additive in latex production – from the grass.

AIBN’s Dr Nasim Amiralian said the nanocellulose could be converted from spinifex using an efficient chemistry method - “You would firstly hedge the grass, and then it would be chopped up and pulped with sodium hydroxide – and at that stage it just looks like paper pulp, then you hit it with mechanical energy to force it through a very small hole under high pressure to peel the nano-fibres apart from the pulp, into nanocellulose happily suspended in water and ready to add to things like water-based rubber latex.”

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