Merry Christmas and Happy new year!

I hope you'll have a fantastic 2011!!!
See you soon in http://supercritical-fluids.blogspot.com/

Day of scientific skepticism, alchemy and modern chemistry.

The 20th  December 2010 marks the fourteenth anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan. For this reason, since last year is celebrated "Skepticism Day Against the Advancement of pseudoscience", the number of blogs in the world that we will adhere. It is a good opportunity to denounce the rise that certain "practices" are reaching the population.
I arrived a day late to the celebration ...
but I've always believed that the important thing is to participate!
You can get more info in Wikipedia.

For that reason in our work we do demonstrate the functionality of our developments in SCF and product with SCF extracts...
Supercrítical Fluid Processes works, and are very interesting, but not always the cheapest way...

Sometime an green procedure is sacrified for economical reasons...
for that reason we try to spread SCF and its benefits...

Natural power!

I've found a very interesting article about natura medicine. It's a bit old but I want to have it close to me.
Supercritical fluids are a key tool to extract natural power and the base knolwdge is essencial to focus the reseach on what to extract.

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Natural Alternatives to the Top 10 Drugs

Imagine the public outcry, says Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., if two commercial airliners crashed in mid-air each day of the year. A chilling thought - but that's how many people die each day from prescription drugs, says the San Diego, Calif., nutrition and autism researcher.

PREBIOTIC or PROBIOTIC?

Reading the news prompted me to delve a little on this topic ...
The first thing that came up is what is the difference?
The first answer, the fastest one, comes from wikipedia ...
Prebiotic foods are generally composed of non-digestible carbohydrates while probiotics contains living organisms.
In both cases beneficial health properties are attributed to the products, but the EFSA (European Food Safety Agency) is there to protect the consumer.

supercritical fluid transition...

I've found this article in the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility web page.
and it looks interesting.

New phases in supercritical fluids: the Widom line as crossover between liquid-like and gas-like behaviour

 

According to textbooks, there is no observable physical characteristic beyond the critical point allowing a liquid to be distinguished from a gas, hence only a single fluid phase is defined. Using inelastic X-ray scattering and molecular dynamics simulations, a team lead by Italian researchers from the Universities of Rome and Florence, identified two distinct dynamical regimes (liquid-like and gas-like) in dense hot supercritical fluid argon, contradicting the notion of a homogeneous supercritical fluid phase.

FLUCOMP new web!

After the transformation of the network FLUCOMP in Association the organization has created the new web page.
You can suscribe to the association and follow the new such as the preparation for the FLUCOMP2011 that will be held in Burgos.

11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CARBON DIOXIDE UTILIZATION

The 11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CARBON DIOXIDE UTILIZATION will be held in Dijon (FRANCE) from the 27th to the 30 June 2010.

The  deadline for abstract is on February 2011.

IDOKI launches OB/GYN line with two new products

Published September 9, 2010 in BIOBASQUE web page.

The Basque company IDOKI SCF Technologies launches two new products to inaugurate its new gynaecological line. These new products are an intimate hygiene gel and a feminine intimate moisturiser, which are 100% natural, like the rest of the company's products. Thanks to their innovative formulas they are free from chemical ingredients and are formulated with efficiency as their main goal.

SCF extracts are safe.

We all know that supercritical fluid is a tool for green technology with several applications, among them the most popular is supercritical fluid extraction, and mainly of natural raw materials.

If we use a safe raw material, such as plants, a GRAS solvent such as CO2 and a green product we can expect to have a safe product.
However, if we want use these products in the food industry several agencies have to give their opinion...

Recently, supercritical fluid extract of magnolia bark has been labeled as safe by the the UK Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes

Selected papers of ISSF 2009 published.

Selected papers from the 9th International Symposium on Supercritical Fluids (ISSF 2009)  have been recently published in "The Journal or Supercritical fluids"

Whit the title "New Trends in Supercritical Fluids: Energy, Materials, Processing" the congress was held in Arcachon, France, May 18-20, 2009


The journal has been edited by Jacques Fages, Cyril Aymonier, François Cansell, Jacques Mercadier and Erdogan Kiran
 
You can find the abstracts and the access to the full text in ScienceDirect web page.

Mazda injection molding process uses supercritical fluids

Mazda Motor Corp. (Hiroshima, Japan) announced on Sept. 9 2008 that it has developed a new plastic injection molding technology with supercritical fluid technologies that enables a substantial reduction in the weight of plastic parts used in vehicles.

This molding technique cuts the consumption of plastic resins that are used as raw material by approximately 20 to 30 percent, with associated reductions in vehicle weight.

Recycling radioactive waste no longer a problem

Published in August 22nd, 2008 by IANS in http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/

A new plant will help recover uranium from the ashes of radioactive wastes, which can then be recycled with an efficient, eco-friendly technology inspired by decaffeinated coffee and using supercritical fluids. The technique’s future may even hold the key to recycling the most dangerous forms of radioactive waste in the near future.

Supercritical Fluids Chromatography

The Supercritical Fluids Chromatography (SFC) is a kind of chromatography where the mobile phase is a supercritical fluid.
The most used SCF is the carbon dioxide (do not mix-up SCF SuperCritical Fluid and SFC Supercritical Fluid Chromatography).
Then SFC is a normal phase chromatography between the gas chromatography (GC) and the liquid chromatography (HPLC).
The systems are close to an HPLC but with a backpressure regulator to maintain the pressure above the critical pressure.
The stationary phase is in packed columns that can contain differents polar phases .

Update II: Natural Supercritical Water

I've found this video about the "Natural Supercritical Water"...



You may also enjoy the article of Andrea Koschinsky and Cols. "Hydrothermal venting at pressure-temperature conditions above the critical point of seawater, 5°S on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge".

Supercritical Fuel System: 50-75% Improvement in Engine Fuel Economy

The TSCi gasoline fuel charge enters the cylinder at around 400 °C—compared to about 100 °C for a conventional liquid direct injection fuel charge—at precisely Top Dead Center (TDC, 0° crank angle).
The supercritical charge facilitates short ignition delay and fast combustion, with the energy released focused just on pushing the piston down. The fast combustion minimizes crevice burn and partial combustion near the cylinder walls, and prevents droplet diffusion burn.

LLLIC-SCF-GSCE 2010!

The "Conference and Life Long Learning Intensive Course SCF-GSCE: Supercritical Fluids - Green Solvents in Chemical Engineering" will be held between 1stJuly and 17th July 2010 at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary.

The deadline for Registration is 14th May 2010.

SCF 2010

This post was programmed for the 15 May (one month before the deadline) but we have been contacted by the conference manager and we have decided to forward the publication.
Thanks for reading!

The Green Chemistry Group, organizers of the upcoming SFC 2010 Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, is a non–profit organization dedicated to the advancement of environmentally sustainable chemical research and development throughout the world.

B.I.O.N'Days 2010

The B.I.O. N'Days : International Symposium and Partnering Event on Preservation & Extraction of Natural Products will be held in Valence (FRANCE) from the 20 to the 23 April 2010.

Deadline for registration: 19 March 2010

9th Conference on Supercritical Fluids and Their Applications

The 9th Conference on Supercritical Fluids and Their Applications will be held in Sorrento (Napoli) from the 5th to the 8th September 2010.

The deadlines for Abstracts submision is : April 1st, 2010 (200‐300 words, e‐mail to idemarco@unisa.it)

PROSCIBA 2010

PROSCIBA 2010 (second iberoamerican conference on supercritical fluids) will be held in Natal (Brazil) form the 05 to the 09 April 201


I've miss the deadline for abstract submission (September 18th 2009).

For those that have to send the full parper remember that the deadline is close...
very close!
=> Final Version of full paper submission: February 22st, 2010

The registration with discount have to be done before march 5th 2010.

12th EUROPEAN MEETING ON SUPERCRITICAL FLUIDS

The "12th EUROPEAN MEETING ON SUPERCRITICAL FLUIDS" will be held in Graz (Austria) 9-12 May 2010

The symposium will be held over three days. The programme will include plenary lectures, key-notes, oral communications and poster sessions. The scientific programme will focus on aspects of new progresses in the field of applications of Supercritical Fluids (SCFs). It will focus in the following points:

•Properties of SCFs
•Reactivity in and with SCFs
•Material processing in SCFs
•SCFs and Energy
•New fields of SCFs applications

2 years of supercritical stuffs...

This blog was created 2 years ago with the aim of spreading the knowledge on supercritical fluids. At the same time related subjects, such as sustainable development or green chemistry, have also been touched as these themes are close to the supercritical fluids because SFE (supercritical fluid extraction) is a "green chemistry" process.

I've tried to add something at least once a month, but news about supercritical fluids are not very common and I don't want to make this blog too much technical.
I still waiting some answer or question from readers and hope that sooner or later it would be some.

I would like to thank all the visitor from all around the world and hope to see you back again!

Google Analytics says from 07/02/2008 to 07/02/2010: 1605 visits from 675 cities from all around the world!

Supercritical solution for global warming...

An article about CO2 capture and storage has been published in Nature Geoscience recently [1]. The storage of the CO2 is said to be in supercritical state, however only the pressure is above the critical point and therefore the system is not fully supercritical but in a compressed liquid state [2].

Geological carbon storage

Mike J. Bickle

Storage of the carbon dioxide that is produced by burning fossil fuels is one way to avoid the damaging consequences of climate change. A range of observations suggests that geological carbon storage is much less risky than unabated carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

Enjoy the article!

Yours comments are welcome!

[1] Geological carbon storage
[2] Phenomenal fluids

You may also want to read:
[3] Capturing carbon
[4] Putting the carbon back: The hundred billion tonne challenge
[5] Tracing carbon dioxide's fate underground
[6] Solubility trapping in formation water as dominant CO2 sink in natural gas fields