Bio-oil produced from fast pyrolysis of biomass has been investigated as a renewable fuel and as a source of industrial chemicals. The lignin fraction of bio-oil produced from wood in our fast pyrolysis reactor was separated by using only water and methanol with a 25% yield based on bio-oil weight. This separation procedure appears to be of lower cost than the reported extraction procedure usin...

The nucleation and bulk growth of polycrystalline SiC in a 2 inch PVT setup using isostatic and pyrolytic graphite as substrates was studied. Textured nucleation occurs under near-thermal equilibrium conditions at the initial growth stage with hexagonal platelet shaped crystallites of 4H, 6H and 15R polytypes. It is found that pyrolytic graphite results in enhanced texturing of the nucleating g...

Two alkyl-substituted dual oligothiophenes, quarterthiophene (4T)-trimethylene (tm)-octithiophene (8T) and 4T-tm-4T, were used to fabricate molecular structures on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and Au(111) surfaces. The resulted structures were investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy. The 4T-tm-8T and 4T-tm-4T molecules self-organize into long-range ordered structures with linear and...

The fracture toughness is a critical material property for the pyrolytic carbon materials used in mechanical heart-valve prostheses; however, making accurate toughness measurements has traditionally been problematic due to difficulties in fatigue precracking specimens. In this work, a simple, effective, and reliable precracking method is presented where a sharp precrack is "popped in" from a ra...

Depending on their origins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are characterized by different chemical properties. Petrogenic PAH (e.g. from fossil fuels) and pyrolytic PAH (e.g. those produced by incineration processes) are therefore expected to affect organisms differently. The impact of trophic exposure to these PAH was investigated on swimming and metabolic performance of zebrafish Dani...

Results are presented for finding the optimal orientation of an anisotropic elastic material. The problem is formulated as minimizing the strain energy subject to rotation of the material axes, under a state of uniform stress. It is shown that a stationary value of the strain energy requires the stress and strain tensors to have a common set of principal axes. The new derivation of this well kn...