Separation of phenols from oils using deep eutectic solvents and ionic liquids

Phenolic compounds are important basic materials for the organic chemical industry, such as pesticides, medicines and preservatives. Phenolic compounds can be obtained from biomass, coal and petroleum via pyrolysis and liquefaction, but they are mixtures in oil. The traditional methods to separate phenols from oil using alkaline washing are not environmentally benign. To solve the problems, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) and ionic liquids (ILs) have been developed to separate phenols from oil, which shows high efficiency and environmental friendliness. In this article, we summarized the properties of DESs and ILs and the applications of DESs and ILs in the separation of phenols and oil. There are two ways in which DESs and ILs are used in these applications: (1) DESs formed in situ using different hydrogen bonding acceptors including quaternary ammonium salts, zwitterions, imidazoles and amides; (2) DESs and ILs used as extractants. The effect of water on the separation, mass transfer dynamics in the separation process, removal of neutral oil entrained in DESs, phase diagrams of phenol + oil + extractant during extraction, are also discussed. In the last, we analyze general trends for the separation and evaluate the problematic or challenging aspects in the separation of phenols from oil mixtures.

Aerobic Oxidative Coupling of Aniline Catalyzed by One-Dimensional Manganese Hydroxide Nanomaterials

The aerobic oxidative coupling of aniline is an effective process for producing aromatic azo compounds, which are widely used in the organic chemical industry. The development of heterogeneous catalysts for this reaction would be advantageous because of their recyclability and convenience in posttreatment. In this work, one-dimensional Mn(OH)2 nanostructure with various shapes were synthesized through the adjustment of various surfactants. The as-synthesized Mn(OH)2 nanobelts and nanowires showed superior catalytic activity in the activation of oxygen and aniline. Aromatic azo compounds with a variety of substituents were produced through the coupling of the corresponding anilines without additives under ambient conditions.

Drugs

History has always known antidepressant remedies. In an era of faith, the faithful held to the Word as an augury of recovery: “cast down, but not destroyed.” But in a secular era and certainly by the middle of the twentieth century, pharmacological remedies were required. Indeed they were urgently indicated, for the diagnosis of depression itself was starting to spread. Because of Kraepelin and Freud, by 1940 depression had become a common term for serious psychiatric disease. An editorial in the Lancet called depression “perhaps the most unpleasant illness that can fall to the lot of man.” Depression was thus, while not terribly common, a considerable public health issue. What is puzzling in this story is that around 1940 depression began an inexorable, irreversible climb from awful but unusual to epidemic status. With the 1960s, depression started to become epidemic. One reason for the upswing in depression in mid-twentieth century was the cheering of the pharmaceutical industry. The drugs of the first generation of psychoactive medications were indicated for nervous disease, but there after the firms switched to depression because here were clearly the markets of the future. The early drugs represented an effective treatment for nervous disease. Their effect was sedation, and sedative drugs in medical practice go back to opium and to members of the belladonna family that have been known since Ancient times. Sedation means the process of calming, or allaying excitement. It does not necessarily involve the obtunding of consciousness, although large doses of sedatives may do that. Sedation means easing the pain of being, soothing the griefs and worries of existence, and calming the depressive and anxious agitation of the nervous syndrome. Although we all have worries and anxieties, we do not all have a pathological syndrome called nervousness. Historically, it was those with nerves who benefited from the early psychopharmacological treatments, beginning with the bromides at mid-nineteenth century. The first sedative made by chemical synthesis, chloral hydrate, was used clinically in 1869. A succession of sedatives from the organic chemical industry followed.