The Blog of Supercritical Fluids

10th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SUPERCRITICAL FLUIDS

2012-01-20T14:11:00.003+01:00

The 10th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SUPERCRITICAL FLUIDS will be held in San Francisco (USA) in May 13-16 2012.

This time i'm a bit late to remind you the last date for abstract submision...

Important Dates

December 15, 2011 General abstract deadline for orals and posters
January 9, 2012 Final date to submit abstracts for oral consideration
February 1, 2012 Preliminary Scientific Program posted
February 15, 2012 Early Registration
March 1, 2012 Final date to submit abstracts for poster presentation
March 15, 2012 Proceeding Papers Due
April 1, 2012 Hotel Registration Deadline
May 13-16, 2012 ISSF 2012 Symposium in San Francisco

The most established and recognized international conference series focusing on all aspects of Supercritical Fluids (ISSF). The series of International Symposia on Supercritical Fluids brings together world renowned scientists to provide the largest and most thorough coverage of all aspects of Supercritical Fluids from traditional to emergent areas. The symposium features a wide scope of supercritical fluids topics and focuses on new perspectives to identify new challenges and breakthroughs in the field. The program includes plenary lectures, key-notes, oral communications, poster sessions and exposition. Topics include properties of SCFs; reactivity in SCFs; material processing in SCFs; SCFs and energy; new fields of SCFs applications. Sessions will be organized around various areas: thermodynamics and phase equilibria, transport properties, extraction and fractionation, chromatography, material processing, solvothermal and hydrothermal processes, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, reactions, catalysis, polymers, nanotechnology, biotechnology, environmental, microelectronics.

Chairs : J. King (Univ.Arkansas/USA), M. McHugh (Virginia Commonwealth Univ./USA), F. Temelli (Univ. Alberta/Canada) and J.Watkins, Univ. Massachusettts (USA)
Contact : janetbarr@aol.com

Web Site : http://www.ISSF2012.com

Very interesting post and Blog

2011-12-31T13:31:00.002+01:00

A close look at supercritical carbon dioxide CO2

You can find more info and interesting thigs in the author's blog:

http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/

Best regards!

Direct Link to the post.

Dead line for ISSF 2012!

2011-12-08T22:03:00.001+01:00

Deadline for abstract submisión is 15th december, so don't wait to much if you are willing to send your contribution!

The ISSF 2012 will be held in San Francisco (USA) in May 2012.

Other important dates are:

February 1, 2012 Preliminary Scientific Program posted
February 15, 2012 Early Registration
March 15, 2012 Proceeding Papers Due
April 1, 2012 Hotel Registration Deadline
May 13-16, 2012 ISSF 2012 Symposium in San Francisco

ISSF 2012 is a global conference that brings together an international group of researchers, practitioners, and industrialists who will contribute cutting-edge presentations on emerging applications and processes. The focus of this meeting is to highlight the discovery, development, and production aspects inherent with a wide range of technologies that utilize the unique capabilities of supercritical fluid solvents. This three-day Symposium is structured with parallel sessions packed with plenary, keynote, and contributed talks as well as poster sessions.

See the preliminary list of confirmed plenary and keynote speakers in the link to the "Scientific Program".

Research suggests basis for red wine heart benefits

2011-08-26T13:10:00.000+02:00

Greats properties of wine are well known...
but every week new scientific studies increases their background.

Enjoy the reading!

Research suggests basis for red wine heart benefits

Hydrogen-Powered Symbiotic Bacteria Found in Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Mussels

2011-08-21T12:56:00.000+02:00

Very interesting article.

The search for new energy sources to power humankind's increasing needs is currently a topic of immense interest. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are considered one of the most promising clean energy alternatives. While intensive research efforts have gone into developing ways to harness hydrogen energy to fuel our everyday lives, a natural example of a living hydrogen-powered 'fuel cell' has gone unnoticed.

Source: Science Daily

2011 IChemE innovation and excellence awards

2011-07-16T21:07:00.000+02:00

Quote from the IChemE group from linkedin.

Hello everybody
There is still time to enter the 2011 IChemE innovation and excellence awards...
The international awards are free to enter and reward and recognise both individual and team achievements in chemical, biochemical and process engineering across 14 different categories.
If you haven’t already done so, download your entry form now from http://www.icheme.org/awards .

All shortlisted entries are featured in tce magazine an on icheme.org and tcetoday.com.

Categories include energy, sustainable technology, water, bioprocessing, education and training, food and drink and many more.

For more information about the awards, visit

All shortlisted entries are featured in tce magazine an on icheme.org and tcetoday.com.

Categories include energy, sustainable technology, water, bioprocessing, education and training, food and drink and many more.
For more information about the awards, visit http://www.icheme.org/awards or contact me via Linked In or email me direct at: jsharp@icheme.org

Green and sustainable conferences!

2011-04-04T21:48:00.000+02:00

The 15th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference will be held in Washington from 21 to 23 June 2011, in partnership with the 5th International Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry.

Dead line for abstract submission ended on 6 March, but you can attend the conferences.
The program cover a broad range of topic and different industries.

You can find all the information on the ACS web.

SCF Thesis Awards!

2011-04-01T21:17:00.000+02:00

Any student having defended a Ph.D. thesis before 31 December 2010 is invited to apply for thesis Award, granted by the International Society for the Advancement of Supercritical Fluids, by submitting his (her) work to the I.S.A.S.F. jury.

The subject of the thesis must be closely related to the practice and/or theory of supercritical fluids (at least half of the work must be directly applicable to supercritical fluids).
A file in English must be submitted to the Society Secretary (brionne@ensic.inpl-nancy.fr) before end of June 2011. It shall include :

The thesis title
Detailed Abstract summarizing all the information that may help the jury evaluation (two to three pages with the list of the pertinent publications already published or to be published)
Laboratory and supervisor names and address
Environment description : number of students and supervisors dealing with supercritical fluids in the team where the work was done
Duration of the work (number of months)
Applicant address.

The award will consist in a grant of Euro 800 and be attributed during the Meeting of The Hague (09-13 October 2011).

Solid, Liquid, Gas, Supercritical, ¿new phase?

2011-03-31T21:13:00.011+02:00

Everybody studied in his childhood 3 states of the materials...
Solid, liquid and gas...
If you follow this blog you may know that above certain pressure and temperature there is another state where the inter-phase of liquid and gas disappears, is the supercritical state.
If you are scientist you may have heard about plasma state... were gases are ionisated...
But a study of superconductor materials seems to have discovered a new state.

You can read the abstract of the article "From a Single-Band Metal to a High-Temperature Superconductor via Two Thermal Phase Transitions".
I also copy an article related to this new that explains the discovery!

Superconductor research indicates new phase of matter

Posted on Mar 25th 2011 by Emma Woollacott in TGDaily

Scientists believe they've found an answer to a puzzling gap in the electronic structures of some high-temperature superconductors - and that the answer could be a previously-undiscovered phase of matter.
This 'pseudogap' has been a stumbling block for researchers who are trying to find superconductors that operate at room temperature.
"A clear answer as to whether such a gap is just an extension of superconductivity or a harbinger of another phase is a critical step in developing better superconductors," says Zhi-Xun Shen of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES).
"Our findings point to management and control of this other phase as the correct path toward optimizing these novel superconductors for energy applications, as well as searching for new superconductors."
Although researchers have developed 'high-temperature superconductors', even the warmest of these — the cuprates — must be chilled halfway to absolute zero before they will superconduct. Room-temperature versions are something of a Holy Grail.
One hallmark of a superconductor is the so-called 'energy gap' that appears when the material transitions into its superconducting phase.
The gap in electron energies arises when electrons pair off at a lower energy to do the actual job of superconducting electric current. When most of these materials warm to the point that they can no longer superconduct, the electron pairs split up, the electrons start to regain their previous energies, and the gap closes. But in the cuprates, the gap persists even above superconducting temperatures.
This 'pseudogap' doesn't fully disappear until a second critical temperature called T* is reached - and this can be 100 degrees higher than the temperature at which superconductivity begins.
Shen's team looked at a sample of a cuprate superconductor, examining electronic behavior at the sample's surface, thermodynamic behavior in the sample's interior, and changes to the sample's dynamic properties over time.
They found that electrons in the pseudogap phase are not pairing up, but reorganizing into a distinct order of their own. In fact, the new order is also present when the material is superconducting; it had been overlooked before, masked by the behavior of superconducting electron pairs.
Simply knowing the pseudogap indicates a new phase of matter provides a clear signpost for follow-up research, according to Ruihua He, a post-doctoral researcher at the Advanced Light Source.
"First to-do: uncover the nature of the pseudogap order," he says. "Second to-do: determine whether the pseudogap order is friend or foe to superconductivity. Third to-do: find a way to promote the pseudogap order if it's a friend and suppress it if it's a foe."

Supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton Cycle turbines promise giant leap in power generation

2011-03-30T23:37:00.000+02:00

Supercritical fluids are not only used as a solvent media for extraction or fractionation...
In the article I've found the supercritical carbon dioxide is used as fluid for moving turbines in systems that claims higher efficiency.

SOURCE : Sandia Labs News Releases March 4, 2011

Sandia National Laboratories researchers are moving into the demonstration phase of a novel gas turbine system for power generation, with the promise that thermal-to-electric conversion efficiency will be increased to as much as 50 percent -- an improvement of 50 percent for nuclear power stations equipped with steam turbines, or a 40 percent improvement for simple gas turbines. The system is also very compact, meaning that capital costs would be relatively low.

Research focuses on supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) Brayton-cycle turbines, which typically would be used for bulk thermal and nuclear generation of electricity, including next-generation power reactors. The goal is eventually to replace steam-driven Rankine cycle turbines, which have lower efficiency, are corrosive at high temperature and occupy 30 times as much space because of the need for very large turbines and condensers to dispose of excess steam. The Brayton cycle could yield 20 megawatts of electricity from a package with a volume as small as four cubic meters.

The Brayton cycle, named after George Brayton, originally functioned by heating air in a confined space and then releasing it in a particular direction. The same principle is used to power jet engines today.

"This machine is basically a jet engine running on a hot liquid," said principal investigator Steve Wright of Sandia's Advanced Nuclear Concepts group. "There is a tremendous amount of industrial and scientific interest in supercritical CO2 systems for power generation using all potential heat sources including solar, geothermal, fossil fuel, biofuel and nuclear."

Sandia currently has two supercritical CO2 test loops. (The term "loop" derives from the shape taken by the working fluid as it completes each circuit.) A power production loop is located at the Arvada, Colo., site of contractor Barber Nichols Inc., where it has been running and producing approximately 240 kilowatts of electricity during the developmental phase that began in March 2010. It is now being upgraded and is expected to be shipped to Sandia this summer.

A second loop, located at Sandia in Albuquerque, is used to research the unusual issues of compression, bearings, seals, and friction that exist near the critical point, where the carbon dioxide has the density of liquid but otherwise has many of the properties of a gas.

Immediate plans call for Sandia to continue to develop and operate the small test loops to identify key features and technologies. Test results will illustrate the capability of the concept, particularly its compactness, efficiency and scalability to larger systems. Future plans call for commercialization of the technology and development of an industrial demonstration plant at 10 MW of electricity.

A competing system, also at Sandia and using Brayton cycles with helium as the working fluid, is designed to operate at about 925 degrees C and is expected to produce electrical power at 43 percent to 46 percent efficiency. By contrast, the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle provides the same efficiency as helium Brayton systems but at a considerably lower temperature (250-300 C). The S-CO2 equipment is also more compact than that of the helium cycle, which in turn is more compact than the conventional steam cycle.

Under normal conditions materials behave in a predictable, classical, "ideal" way as conditions cause them to change phase, as when water turns to steam. But this model tends not to work at lower temperatures or higher pressures than those that exist at these critical points. In the case of carbon dioxide, it becomes an unusually dense "supercritical" liquid at the point where it is held between the gas phase and liquid phase. The supercritical properties of carbon dioxide at temperatures above 500 C and pressures above 7.6 megapascals enable the system to operate with very high thermal efficiency, exceeding even those of a large coal-generated power plant and nearly twice as efficient as that of a gasoline engine (about 25 percent).

In other words, as compared with other gas turbines the S-CO2Brayton system could increase the electrical power produced per unit of fuel by 40 percent or more. The combination of low temperatures, high efficiency and high power density allows for the development of very compact, transportable systems that are more affordable because only standard engineering materials (stainless steel) are required, less material is needed, and the small size allows for advanced-modular manufacturing processes.

Sandia's S-CO2 Brayton cycle program is supported by DOE with funding from the Labs' Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) program.

It's not easy being green

2011-03-28T18:57:00.000+02:00

Due to the in international year of chemistry, Nature is publishing some interesting papers.

One of them is a reviews of "green chemistry", which 12 principles were formulated by Paul Anastas and John Warner in the 1990s to provide a roadmap for chemists trying to implement green chemistry.

As every body can suppose supercritical fluid technologies are shown as an example of green process that can replace some organic, and unfriendly, solvents...

But their main drawback are also pointed out.

I hope you enjoy the articles and wait you comments!

Published online 5 January 2011 | Nature 469, 18-20 (2011) | doi:10.1038/469018a

You can download the article in pdf version

Chemistry: It's not easy being green

In the past two decades, the green-chemistry movement has helped industry become much cleaner. But mindsets change slowly, and the revolution still has a long way to go.

By the latter half of the 1980s, the worldwide chemical industry knew that it had to clean up its act: its environmental reputation was dismal. Still fresh in the public mind was the 1984 disaster at Bhopal, India, where at least 3,000 people died and hundreds of thousands were injured by a toxic gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant. Also fresh were memories of the 1978 Love Canal incident in Niagara Falls, New York, where the discovery of buried toxic waste forced the abandonment of an entire neighbourhood, and the discovery of dioxin contamination a few years later that forced the evacuation of an entire town — Times Beach, Missouri.

Even when companies did try to deal responsibly with their waste, which typically included volatile organic solvents and other hard-to-clean-up agents, the volumes were daunting. Global statistics were, and still are, fragmentary. But in the United States, according to the earliest systematic data gathered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), some 278 million tonnes of hazardous waste were generated in 1991 at more than 24,000 sites. Not all of it came from chemical companies, but much of it did. More than 10% of the total, some 30 million tonnes, came from one firm alone: the Dow Chemical Company, headquartered in Midland, Michigan. And other firms, such as petrochemical giant Amoco, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and DuPont, of Wilmington, Delaware, were not far behind.

The result, as chemical companies struggled to deal with increasingly stringent environmental regulations, was an industry-wide move towards what is often called 'green chemistry' — a term introduced in 1991 by Paul Anastas, then a 28-year-old staff chemist with the EPA.

The goal of green chemistry was never just clean-up, explains Anastas, who is currently on leave from Yale University to head the EPA's research division. In his conception, green chemistry is about redesigning chemical processes from the ground up. It's about making industrial chemistry safer, cleaner and more energy-efficient throughout the product's life cycle, from synthesis to clean-up to disposal. It's about using renewable feedstocks wherever possible, carrying out reactions at ambient temperature and pressure — and above all, minimizing or eliminating toxic waste from the outset, instead of constantly paying to clean up messes after the fact. "It's more effective, it's more efficient, it's more elegant, it's simply better chemistry," says Anastas.
If the green-chemistry ideal is simple to state, however, achieving it has been anything but simple. Yes, says Eric Beckman, a chemical engineer at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, "Companies these days are being very attentive to rendering their current processes greener." In 2009, for example, the total US output of hazardous waste was down by an order of magnitude over 1991, to 35 million tonnes. The largest generator in that year, DSM Chemicals in Augusta, Georgia, produced just 3.4 million tonnes.
But the greening of any given process is always a trade-off among benefits, feasibility and cost, says Beckman — and green is not always the winner. Furthermore, he says, industry's adoption of green chemistry has so far been focused mainly on incremental improvements in existing processes.
"It's embryonic at best," says Beckman, who speaks for many observers when he says that the real 'green revolution', in the form of processes redesigned from scratch and plants rebuilt from the ground up, is only just beginning.

The progress of green chemistry so far has been partly a matter of technical feasibility, as researchers have developed less toxic alternatives to conventional methods. A prime example is supercritical carbon dioxide: ordinary, non-toxic carbon dioxide that has been heated and pressurized above its 'critical point' of 31.1 °C and 7.39 megapascals, beyond which it behaves like both a gas and a liquid, and readily serves as a solvent for a wide range of organic and inorganic reactions. Other non-toxic replacements for solvents have been found among the ionic liquids: exotic cousins to ordinary table salt that happen to be liquid at or near room temperature.

The E-factor

Green chemistry's progress has also benefited from an awareness campaign by Anastas and his allies. A key first step was the 1991 coining of the name itself, says John Warner, president of the Warner-Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry in Wilmington, Massachusetts, who at the time was director of exploratory research at the Polaroid Corporation in Minnetonka, Minnesota. "Identifying green chemistry as a field of science differentiated it from a political and social movement," he says.

Another key step was the drawing up by Anastas and Warner of a set of principles intended to help scientists define and practise green chemistry (see 'The twelve principles of green chemistry'). And yet another came in 1995, when Anastas helped to persuade US President Bill Clinton to launch the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge, which still awards five citations each year to companies and academics who have done an outstanding job of implementing the principles.

Mostly, however, green chemistry's progress has been a matter of corporate buy-in, as epitomized by its promotion by the chemical industry's own voluntary initiative, Responsible Care (http://www.responsiblecare.org), which works with national industry associations to improve the industry's health, safety and environmental performance. Founded in Canada in 1985, membership has grown from 6 national associations to 53.

The pharmaceutical sector has embraced green chemistry most enthusiastically, perhaps because it has the most to gain. Pharmaceutical plants typically generate 25 to 100 kilograms of waste per kilogram of product, a ratio known as the environmental factor, or 'E-factor'. So there is plenty of room to increase efficiency — and cut costs.
At drug-maker Pfizer, for example, the first laboratory synthesis of its anti-impotence drug sildenafil citrate (Viagra) had an E-factor of 105. But long before Viagra went on the market in 1998, a team at Pfizer's plant in Sandwich, UK, was rigorously re-examining every step of the synthesis. The researchers replaced all the chlorinated solvents with less toxic alternatives, and then introduced measures to recover and reuse these solvents. They eliminated the need to use hydrogen peroxide, which can cause burns. They also eliminated any requirement for oxalyl chloride, a reagent that produces carbon monoxide in reactions and is therefore a safety concern. Eventually, Pfizer's researchers cut Viagra's E-factor to 8.
After that success, Peter Dunn, the leader of the Viagra synthesis team, became head of the more systematic green-chemistry drive started by Pfizer in 2001. Dunn says he is not free to talk about specific cash savings, but can point to sweeping changes made across the company. Pfizer has reduced the E-factor of the anticonvulsant pregabalin (Lyrica) from 86 to 9, he says, and has made similar improvements for the antidepressant sertraline and the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory celecoxib. "These three products alone have eliminated more than half a million metric tons of chemical waste," says Dunn.

Creative chemistry

Nor is Pfizer alone; the pharmaceutical sector is so competitive that no company can afford to ignore green chemistry's potential savings. The Pharmaceutical Roundtable, first convened in 2005 by the American Chemical Society's Green Chemistry Institute, now has 14 member companies that jointly fund academic research in the field and share pre-competitive information.
In 2002, the chemicals giant BASF, based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, introduced an industrial-scale process that uses ambient-temperature ionic liquids to remove acid by-products from reaction mixtures — a common chemical manufacturing step that had previously been much more cumbersome. But BASF's embrace of green chemistry (which the company prefers to call 'sustainable chemistry') goes much further, notes Pete Licence, a green chemist at the University of Nottingham, UK. "You're getting sensible and joined-up thinking about the way that chemical plants are created," he says. "They have this integrated reaction system where the products and the by-products of reactions are actually the starting materials for the plant that is next door." The plants are also designed to maximize energy efficiency, Licence says: "Waste heat from one process is the warm-up for the feedstock for the next."
But the comprehensive restructuring required illustrates why the shift to green chemistry has been comparatively slow among bulk-chemicals manufacturers. These firms deal with products that are made in much larger volumes than pharmaceuticals, and their industrial processes are already highly optimized, with E-factors typically in the range of 1 to 5. Although it is possible to go much lower — E-factors for petrochemicals are on the 0.1 scale — doing so is not always economic. "Once you have a plant, it will run for 30 or 40 years because you have made a huge investment," says Walter Leitner at the Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry at the University of Aachen, Germany.
Nor does it always pay to be green in the speciality chemicals sector — as Thomas Swan and Company in Consett, UK, learned the hard way. In 2001, building on the work of chemist Martyn Poliakoff at Nottingham University, it opened the world's first continuous-flow reactor using supercritical carbon dioxide as a solvent. "It looked as if it could have been game-changing within the industry," says managing director Harry Swan. But when no government subsidies were forthcoming, the plant could not provide chemicals more cheaply than those made by the standard non-green methods, he says. So the facility was mothballed, and may soon be decommissioned and dismantled.

Other roadblocks to the adoption of green chemistry are technical. For example, even after decades of research, green solvents are not always more efficient than the widely used chlorinated solvents. Nor have chemists completely eliminated the need for catalysts containing precious or toxic metals — although Dunn, for one, is optimistic that this may eventually be possible through advances in enzyme technology. And how to make bulk chemicals from biomass and other renewable feedstocks, rather than from crude oil, is still an open challenge. "It's a different way of looking at a chemical synthesis," says Leitner, who points out that the conventional problem gets turned on its head. Instead of starting out with a relatively simple hydrocarbon extracted from oil, and then adding side groups to the molecule to give it the desired properties, chemists have to start with the incredibly complex mixture of biomolecules typical of most renewable feedstocks, and get to what they want by snipping off pieces in a controlled manner.
But many advocates say that the most fundamental barrier to the wider adoption of green chemistry is mindset — which largely reflects the way chemists are taught. "In the United States, chemists get trained rigorously in chemistry, but don't see any engineering, product design, or life-cycle analysis," says Beckman. Or, as Anastas puts it, "you usually get the safety course that says, 'Wear your goggles and your coat, and don't blow things up — and by the way, here's the number to call if you do.' But I don't think that's the same as treating the consequences of what we do as an intrinsic part of our work".
This curricular conservatism may well reflect the often negative reactions of academic chemists to green chemistry. Especially in its early years, the field was seen as fuzzy and non-rigorous, recalls Neil Winterton of the University of Liverpool, UK, a former critic who has since become more accepting of the movement. The word 'green' conveyed the impression that certain techniques were being promoted for reasons of political correctness, he says. "It needed a little bit more fundamental underpinning to establish whether what was being proposed was or wasn't a major contribution to improving the efficiency of chemical processes."
Sceptics also questioned whether green chemistry was anything more than a trendy new buzzword used to get money for projects of dubious environmental value. "It's something that can dupe the public, it can dupe other scientists working in the area, and much, much more importantly, it can dupe decision-makers", concedes Licence.
Scepticism hasn't gone away entirely; a mention of green chemistry in a gathering of chemists can still provoke sighs and eye-rolling, says Warner. But scepticism has lessened as research has improved. The EPA, for example, has made notable progress in lifting one barrier to effective green chemistry, which is that researchers trying to create a new, non-toxic manufacturing process often don't know if a given compound is 'green' or not. No one has had the time or money to gather the toxicity data, which typically requires expensive animal testing.
The EPA's answer is a high-throughput screening project called ToxCast, which has been running at its Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina since 2007. The ToxCast team has applied a battery of standard high-throughput biochemical assays, which measure such things as binding to cellular receptors, to 1,000 chemicals that already have animal toxicology data. These data have then been used to build statistical and computational models that attempt to predict any compound's toxicity from the assays alone.
A ToxCast prediction costs US$20,000 per chemical, compared with the $6 million to $12 million typical of animal toxicology tests, says Robert Kavlock, who oversees the project as head of the EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology at Research Triangle Park. So if these models can be made reliable enough, he says, "then we've got a way to address the chemicals that we can't afford to test in animals" — and in the process, help companies to choose compounds that will make their chemistry truly green.

Now that Anastas is the EPA's research chief, he has been trying to spread the green-chemistry approach through staff meetings at the agency's labs across the country. He wants to move the EPA away from a culture of regulating and banning to one where products are designed to be synthesized in a way that reduces or eliminates the use of hazardous substances in the first place. As EPA chief Lisa Jackson puts it: "It's the difference between treating disease and pursuing wellness."
If that change in attitude happens, says Anastas, it will represent a "seismic shift" at the agency — "the culmination of the work of my career". But in a sense, he adds, it will also be just the beginning: "I believe that the ultimate goal for green chemistry is for the term to go away, because it is simply the way chemistry is always done. Green chemistry should just be second nature, the default value."

Box: Q&A: Paul Anastas

Katharine Sanderson

In 1991, when he was a 28-year-old staff chemist at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Paul Anastas invented the term ‘green chemistry’ — an approach to chemical production that called for the elimination of toxic processes at the outset, instead of cleaning up hazardous waste after the fact. In 1998, when director of the EPA’s industrial chemistry branch, he helped to define the approach more clearly by co-authoring the 12 principles of green chemistry. Since 1999, Anastas has served in succession as a staffer at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, director of the Green Chemistry Institute at the American Chemical Society in Washington DC and as a professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Most recently, he returned to the EPA to head its research division, and to serve as the agency’s chief scientist. Nature asked him about how things have changed in the past 20 years.

What was the attitude to green chemistry back in 1991?
When I first started out, there’s no doubt that I was thought to be perhaps just slightly insane, because I was flying in the face of a couple of centuries of tried and true conventional wisdom. When we started ‘green chemistry’ off in 1991, there were a lot of ways we could have approached it. We could have had educational programmes, governmental policies, mandates. I refused to pursue any of those. I said the only thing we had to pursue was the science.
The whole reason that the first thing out of the box for many years was on the research side was because I was well aware that the natural preconception would be that this is not hard science. And whether it was through the emergence of the journals or the emergence of the research centres and the research programmes over time, that issue has been resolved.
How is green chemistry relevant to industry?
If I’m talking to a company, I’m going to give them the tangible reasons that it’s going to make them more profitable and more competitive. People ask me how I came up with this name ‘green chemistry’ in 1991, and they think I’m joking when I say, well, green is the colour of nature but in the United States green is also the colour of our money. It’s always been about how you meet your environmental and economic goals simultaneously.
If you are looking at a manufacturing process you don’t merely explain that you want to do green chemistry because its different and nice, you show that it’s more effective, it’s more efficient, it’s more elegant, it’s simply better chemistry.
How did green chemistry make the mainstream?
There was a major step forward in 1995 when President Clinton put in place the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge, which I proposed. Its awards are a recognition of accomplishment in the field, primarily by industry but also by small business and academia. They were geared not just to give credit where credit’s due, they’re also to serve as models and to track the progress that companies are making. When you see your competitor getting a competitive advantage over you by pursuing green chemistry, you sit up, you take notice. And that award process has been duplicated in Italy, Britain, Canada, Japan, China and Australia.
The pharmaceutical sector is something of a green chemistry success — how has this happened?
A few years ago I co-founded the green chemistry pharmaceutical roundtable. Every major pharmaceutical company belongs to this roundtable now, and pays handsomely to sit at it. The staggering statistic is that with traditional drugs, if you look at the full life cycle, on average, for every kilogram of drug that you’re generating, you’re generating a tonne of hazardous waste. That is a statistic that made people sit up and take notice, and it let the pharmaceutical industry transform itself into a leading sector in green chemistry.
What problems remain in academia?
When I was getting my PhD in chemistry I was expected to translate technical articles from French and German to English, and English to French and German. But I can tell you I have never, ever, had to translate an article from German or French into English in all of my working life. And yet there was never any requirement that I needed to know the first thing about toxicity or the hazards of the tools of my trade — the chemicals. I never had to take a test that required me to understand the consequences of the molecules that I was introducing into the Universe or the ones that I was using on a daily basis. There’s an absurdity there that needs to be addressed.
What challenges remain for green chemistry?
I believe that the ultimate goal for green chemistry is for the term to go away, because it is simply the way chemistry is always done. Green chemistry should just be second nature, the default value. What is needed to make that happen is to fill up the chemistry toolbox with the new methods, the new products, the new solvents and the new techniques that are going to transform the next generation of products. There are so many different levers. The single most important thing that needs to happen is a deeper-level, broader, more systemic understanding of what green chemistry is and what it can do for industry scientists or academic scientists.

Supercritical CO2 Power Cycle Symposium

2011-03-25T23:16:00.001+01:00

Supercritical CO2 Power Cycle Symposium will be held at the University of Colorado in Boulder on May 24 - 25, 2011.

The Supercritical CO₂ Power Cycle Symposium is an academic workshop organized to advance supercritical Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) power cycle technology. Every two years researchers, industry partners, and end users meet to learn about advancements in the field; discuss priorities; and establish a critical path for technology development.

Paper submission deadline has been extended to April 6, 2011. Final papers should be 3 - 5 pages in length and presentations should be about 20 minutes in length. Final papers should be emailed to finalpapers@sco2powercyclesymposium.org in PDF format.
You may want to have Final Paper Style Guidelines (Rev. D)

A complementary event that may be of interest is the Workshop on Chemical & Physical Property Data Needs for Super Critical CO2 in Storage & Power Cycle Applications at the Hyatt International Airport in Pittsburgh, PA on March 24, 2011. The objective of the workshop is to identify the physical and chemical property needs for CO2 as it pertains to CO2 storage, transportation, compression and expansion. The meeting is being organized and hosted by the Electric Power Research Institute and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. Please contact Richard Dennis or Karen Lockhart if you would like to participate.

You can find all the information in the web page of the Supercritical CO2 Power Cycle Symposium.

The twelve principles of green chemistry

2011-03-24T19:17:00.002+01:00

I think that a blog of Supercritical Fluids, Green Chemistry and Sustainable Development must include these 12 principles that are in fact our guideline.

Published in:
Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, P. T. Anastas and J. C. Warner, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.

1 Waste prevention Prevent waste from the start rather than treating or cleaning it up afterwards.
2 Atom economy Design synthetic methods to maximize the incorporation of intermediate materials into the final product.
3 Safer syntheses Design synthetic methods to minimize the use and generation of toxic substances.
4 Safer products Design chemical products to carry out their function while minimizing their toxicity.
5 Safer auxiliaries Minimize the use of solvents and other auxiliary substances, and make them as innocuous as possible.
6 Energy efficiency Minimize the energy used in chemical processes, and if possible, carry them out at ambient temperature and pressure.
7 Renewable feedstocks Use biomass and other renewable raw materials whenever practicable.
8 Derivative reduction Minimize the potentially wasteful use of blocking groups and other temporary modifications of intermediates.
9 Catalysis Prefer catalytic reagents — as selective as possible — over stoichiometric reagents.
10 Degradability Design chemical products for eventual disposal, so that they break down into innocuous compounds that do not persist in the environment.
11 Pollution prevention Develop methods for real-time monitoring and control of chemical processes that might form hazardous substances.
12 Accident prevention Choose processes and practices that minimize the potential for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions and fires.

postponed deadline for abstract submission to13th...

2011-03-21T19:29:00.001+01:00

The deadline for abstract submission to13th European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids has been postponed until April 15...

So you still in time to send your abstract...

you have more info in the previous post and in the official web page...

Don't be late this time!

We are changing!

2011-03-18T19:11:00.000+01:00

As you may notice, if it's not the first time you visit our blog, we are changing things...
That was the old blog:

This is the change 0.1.

Only little details by now...

We will make changes during the next week...

and posting each step...

We hope you'll enjoy the new template.

Best regards!

SCF 2011; 5th international conference on Packed Column SFC

2011-03-15T13:02:00.017+01:00

SFC 2011 promises to attract leading chromatography scientists from the pharmaceutical industry, research institutes and universities.
The conference will be held in New York from the 20 to 22 of July.

Deadlines for Abstract Submissions
Oral Presentations: April 1st, 2011
Poster Presentations: May 1st, 2011

You have to submmit your abstracts to ltaylor@vt.edu in MS Word or Adobe PDF format, including your full name, organization, contact information and e-mail address in the body of your message.

For questions and/or concerns, please e-mail the scientific committee at abstracts@greenchemistrygroup.org.

You can also visit their web page: http://www.greenchemistrygroup.org/

13th European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids

2011-03-01T21:13:00.002+01:00

13th European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids: SCFs as product and process solvents in emerging applications.

The congresswill be held from 9th to 13th October 2011 and will take place at the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague, The Netherlands.
The goal of the 13th edition of the European Symposium on Supercritical Fluids is to bring together scientists and engineers interested in Supercritical Fluids from traditional to emergent areas.
Deadlines:
Abstract: March 18th 2011
Full text: July 8th 2011

Abstracts
An abstract less than 300 words should be sent before March 18th 2011 to Françoise Brionne: brionne(at)ensic.inpl-nancy.fr

The abstract must be accompanied by a pre-registration form. When submitting the abstract, please state if you prefer to present your paper as an oral or a poster.

Proceedings
The proceedings will be published in advance of the conference and delivered to the participants on registration.
Instructions will be sent out to authors or will be available from the conference website: www.isasf.net/TheHague

Last call for FLUCOMP 2011.

2011-02-28T12:37:00.002+01:00

Don't forget to send your abstract before next tuesday, march 1st.

You can find all the information in the new web of FLUCOMP 2011.

FLUCOMP 2011; V MEETING OF EXPERTS IN TECHNOLOGY OF COMPRESSED FLUIDS

2011-02-15T12:10:00.003+01:00

The V MEETING OF EXPERTS IN TECHNOLOGY OF COMPRESSED FLUIDS (FLUCOMP 2011) congress will be held in Burgos (Spain) from the 15th to 17th June 2011.

Important Dates:
March 1: Deadline for abstract submission to participate in the V Meeting FLUCOMP
March 15: Deadline for selection of papers presented
April 1: Deadline for payment of registration fees reduced rate

3 supercriticals years!

2011-02-07T19:35:00.040+01:00

3 years ago I started this blog whit the aim of spreading the supercritical fluids technology...

during these 3 years I've participated in several groups with similar purposes...
the flucomp network (Association of Experts in Compressed Fluid; a group of scientists and technologists focused on developing and promoting technologies with supercritical fluids.), and the AFTS (Business Association for the Advancement of Supercritical Technology).

Unfortunately, since last January 5, 2011 I no longer work in IDOKI, and therefore my career and my scientific interests may diverge from the supercritical matters, but I'll try to continue the blog ....

In fact, now I'm working to update the blog...

I'll also try to broaden the subjects... sustainability, green chemistry and so on.

As I said one year ago:

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 stats says: 2,917 visits from 6 continents, 87 countries/territories; 1107 cities.

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome! ;o)

A Day Without Chemistry

2011-02-04T20:52:00.007+01:00

A Day Without Chemistry

Posted January 20, 2011 2:57 PM by Adam Dylewski

Imagine a day without cars, electric lights, TV, telephones, safe food, water, medicine, clothing, your house, and other things that make up modern life. Do it, and you are imagining a day without chemistry.

I hope you have enjoy the video...
I believe that worlrd is better with chemistry... but let´s go toward green chemistry!!!

CO2 could be used in 'green' plastic production

2011-02-03T21:13:00.002+01:00

/By Ben Coxworth/

Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has certainly become an environmental concern in recent years, but researchers from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology are now experimenting with a process that uses CO2 to process plastic products in an environmentally-friendly fashion. They have discovered that by compressing the gas, it can be used to impregnate plastic objects with dyes, antibacterial compounds, or other substances. Traditionally, toxic solvents have been used for coloring plastic items.

The Fraunhofer team pump CO2 into a high-pressure container already containing the plastic parts and powdered pigment, then heat it to 30.1C (86.18F) and compress it to 73.8 bar. At this point, it goes into a supercritical state and takes on solvent-like properties. The team then continue to increase the pressure, until at 170 bar the pigment dissolves into the CO2, and then proceeds to diffuse into the plastic. The whole process only takes a few minutes, and while the gas itself escapes from the plastic afterward, the pigment stays in and cannot be wiped off.
The researchers have also successfully impregnated plastics with antibacterial nanoparticles, silica, and the anti-inflammatory active pharmaceutical ingredient flurbiprofen.
The process is said to work on partially crystalline and amorphous polymers (such as nylon and polycarbonate), but not on crystalline polymers. Unlike some traditional plastic impregnation technologies, it doesn’t cause dyes to change color, heat-sensitive substances (such as fire retardants or UV stabilizers) can be introduced, and the plastic comes nowhere near its melting point.
The CO2 itself is non-flammable, non-toxic and inexpensive. While the Fraunhofer process doesn’t capture carbon dioxide, there are experimental plastic production systems that do – perhaps the escaped gases from the one could find their way into the other.

Source: GIZMAG

11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CARBON DIOXIDE UTILIZATION

2011-02-01T21:26:00.001+01:00

The 11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CARBON DIOXIDE UTILIZATION will be held in the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon (France) - June 27-30.2011.

ICCDU XI will give emphasis on leading edge research from basic science to development relevant to the current issues of CO2 such as capture from emission sources, feedstock for the energy and chemicals sectors, and utilization in general.

The aim of the conference is to bring together the academic and industrial communities for crossfertilization of ideas and concepts to practical and profitable innovations.

Important dates:
Deadline for abstract submission February 15, 2011
Notification of acceptance (oral or poster communication) March 31, 2011
Preliminary program March 31, 2011
Deadline for early registration fees April 15, 2011
Regular registration fees from April 16, 2011
ICCDU XI June 27-30, 2011

Chairman : Danielle BALLIVET-TKATCHENKO
Email : ballivet(at)u-bourgogne.fr

Website : www.ffc-asso.fr/ICCDU

Topics

1. Fundamentals in CO2 activation
2. CO2 separation and capture
3. Catalysis and biotechnologies for CO2 conversion into energy products and chemicals
4. Photocatalytic and electrochemical reduction of CO2
5. CO2 as solvent
6. CO2 in the context of Green Chemistry for sustainability
7. Innovative process engineering and LCA methods
8. Impact of CO2 regulations on industrial processes

HPLC 2011; 36th International Symposium on HPLC and Related Techniques

2011-01-02T21:03:00.005+01:00

The International Symposium on High Performance Liquid Phase Separations and Related Techniques is an international forum for scientific discussion of the methods of high performance liquid chromatography in its various forms, along with the complementary separation techniques such as electrophoresis, electrochromatography, field-flow fractionation, supercritical fluid chromatography and hyphenated techniques, such as LC-MS and CZE-MS. The field of microfluidics or lab-on-a-chip is also included.

HPLC 2011 will be held in Budapest (Hungary) from 19th to 23th june 2011 in the Budapest Congress & World Trade Centre.

The scientific programme will include plenary, keynote lectures and contributed oral presentations on original research. An essential part of the scientific communication will be the presentation of posters with the discussion of the most recent advances in the field of separation science. The short courses, vendor seminars, and tutorial lectures will introduce the latest developments and current trends. An attractive social programme will complement the scientific programme.

Abstract deadline for oral presentations: 15 January 2011
Abstract deadline for poster presentations: 31 March 2011
Preliminary programme: 1 April 2011
Deadline for early registration: 15 April 2011
Deadline for hotel booking: 30 April 2011
Deadline for cancellation without penalty: 30 April 2011
Opening of the symposium: 19 June 2011

You can find all the information on their web page: http://www.hplc2011.com/

Merry Christmas and Happy new year!

2010-12-30T20:42:00.000+01:00

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.

2010-12-21T15:07:00.002+01:00

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!

2010-12-01T21:34:00.002+01:00

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.

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.

Drugs are a big business. Last year, aggressive marketing and sales rang up revenues of more than $100 billion dollars for the top 12 pharmaceutical companies. Rimland, who has long questioned the benefits of heavily promoted pharmaceuticals, refers to them as "sub-lethal doses of toxic substances" that kill an estimated 150,000 Americans each year. Rimland also likes pointing out that the 3,000-page Physicians Desk Reference, a compendium of prescription drugs, would probably be only about 100 pages long if all the drug side effects, warnings, and contraindications were deleted. That's an example, he says, of how dangerous prescription and OTC drugs are.
In contrast, natural therapies, which include vitamin and mineral supplements and herbal remedies, can often do the job of drugs, but with greater safely and at a lower cost. Vitamins and minerals also play roles in normal biochemistry and maintaining, so they're less likely to cause side effects. "You don't get a headache because you have an aspirin deficiency," Rimland quips.
If you find yourself regularly reaching for the medicine cabinet to deal with ailments from headaches to hypertension, consider some of the natural alternatives to the top over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs. Of course, if you're taking medicine to treat a chronic condition, please work with your physician to transition from one treatment to another.
Alternatives to the Top 5 OTC Drugs
Analgesics. Tylenol and Advil are the best-selling OTC drugs in the United States. Most analgesics, which also include aspirin, are used to relieve headaches, muscle soreness, and inflammation and pain related to arthritis or injuries.
Natural alternatives abound. To ease joint or muscle pain, apply a topical capsaicin (pronounced cap-say-uh-sin) cream, made from the active ingredient in hot peppers. Roy Altman, M.D., of the University of Miami School of Medicine, recommends using capsaicin cream to ease sore arthritic joints, and his studies have shown that it does work. The cream's warm sensation goes away with regular use - as does the pain. Just recently, Neil Ellison, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic reported in the August Journal of Clinical Oncology that capsaicin cream also relieves post-surgical pain. He had asked patients to rub the cream around their incision sites for eight weeks. Most benefited from pain reduction after using the cream.1
Taken orally, the omega-3 fatty acids, popularly known as fish oils, have a powerful antiinflammatory affect, easing the pain and swelling associated with rheumatoid arthritis and injuries.2 So do common antioxidants, such as vitamin E and Pycnogenol.
Natural therapies can also help people suffering from migraine headaches. Long-term use of the herb feverfew (Tanacetum pathenium) inhibits blood vessel dilation and can reduce the frequency and severity of migraines. Other studies have found migraine sufferers to be low in magnesium, and magnesium and taurine (an amino acid) supplements sometimes help.3
Antacids/Antigas. A few years ago, heartburn was a pain in the chest. Today, drug companies have repositioned heartburn as "acid reflux disease." Aggressive marketing has made Pepcid AC the third most popular OTC drug and Tagamet and Zantac big sellers as well.
While heartburn is characterized by excess stomach acid backing up into the esophagus, its actual cause can be an undiagnosed food allergy or sensitivity. Eating fewer processed microwavable or "fast" foods, with a lot of suspect additives, and taking the time to de-stress and enjoy your meal, can often eliminate heartburn.
Also, consider taking a small amount of "buffered" vitamin C, which will temporarily lower your stomach acidity, plus give you a little extra of an important nutrient. In addition, several studies have reported that licorice root (Glycyrrhiza glabra), rich in antioxidants, can relieve heartburn.
If flatulence is a problem, again reevaluate what you're eating. Food allergies can contribute to this problem but some foods, such as beans, contain gas-producing compounds. By eating beans on a regular basis, though, people often start producing the enzymes needed break down these compounds. Fermented foods, such as yogurt or kefir, or "probiotic" capsules, contain legions of beneficial bacteria that can control the gas-producing bad ones in your gut.
Cold Remedies and Lozenges. Robitussin, NyQuil, and Halls cough drops and lozenges are very popular OTC drugs. But all they do, at best, is temporarily relieve cold symptoms. You can do more than that with vitamins, minerals, and herbs.
If you feel a cold coming on, act fast: pick up some zinc lozenges at a health food store and suck on one every two waking hours. According to research by Michael L. Macknin, M.D., of the respected Cleveland Clinic, doing so greatly relieves cold symptoms and cuts the length of a cold almost by half, from about 7.6 to 4.4 days.4 The lozenges are much more effective when taken at the start of a cold rather than after you're very sick. Stop taking them when you have recovered.
High doses of vitamin C - 2 to 6 grams daily - can also ease cold symptoms. Divide the dose so you take the vitamin several times during the day and follow the "bowel tolerance" concept. If you start to develop diarrhea, reduce your dose slightly. According to Robert Cathcart, M.D., of Los Altos, Calif., the amount just below what causes loose stools is your ideal dose. High doses of N-acetyl-cysteine, a form of the amino acid cysteine, also relieve cold and flu symptoms - and can even bolster the immune system against AIDS.5 Try 1,000-2,000 mg daily.
Allergy relief. Benadryl, Contact, and Sudafed are commonly used to treat allergic rhinitis, the sneezing and thick-headed feeling you get when you're hypersensitive to pollens and other allergens.
There are a number of alternatives. Vitamin C might be of benefit, along with such antioxidant flavonoids as Pycnogenol and quercetin. All are natural antihistamines, and they won't make you drowsy. Elliott Middleton Jr, M.D., who recently retired from the State University of New York, Buffalo, reported in the International Archives of Allergy and Immunology (1995;107:435-6) that quercetin inhibits the activity of cells that release histamine, which causes allergic symptoms.6
The herb feverfew, rich in flavonoids, might also relieve allergies. And crazy as it might seem, bee pollen has a devoted following as a remedy for allergies. Senator Tom Harkin, a democrat from Iowa, suffered from severe pollen allergies until, on the advice of a friend, he began taking bee pollen.7 Solid scientific evidence to support bee pollen is hard to find - some older studies show benefits and others show people going into anaphylactic shock after taking pollen.8 Pollen advocates typically recommend consuming one granule of pollen daily and slowly upping the dose to avoid a negative reaction.
Laxatives. Being constipated is a sign from nature that you're not eating right. Ask yourself: do you want to continue not eating right, or do you want to do something good for your body.
X-Lax and Metamucil might get you going, but simply adding a little fiber and water to your diet is a lot more natural. Drinking several glasses of water daily enlarges and softens stools, while fiber speeds the movement of food through the intestine. Fruits and vegetables contain both fiber and water. Eating a bowl of whole grain (minimally processed) cereal in the morning, or sprinkling bran on cereal, are other good ways to add fiber. There's an added benefit - fiber moves cancer-causing substances out of your digestive tract and reduces the long-term risk of colorectal cancer.
If you want something that's more forceful, so to speak, increase your vitamin C intake until you feel it loosening your stools. If you're eating a high-fiber diet, but still get constipated from time to time, occasionally try some Aloe vera. A warning, though: the result could be explosive, so don't take aloe on a regular basis.
Alternatives to the Top 5 Rx Drugs
Just because a physician prescribes a drug for you doesn't mean that it's the best therapeutic option. Doctors often recommend drugs because of savvy marketing by pharmaceutical companies, which are not going to suggest cheaper and more natural alternatives.
Estrogen replacement. Premarin, the best-selling drug in the world, racked up more than $1 billion in sales last year for its maker, Wyeth-Ayerst. This estrogen-replacement drug, made from horse urine, is prescribed to relieve menopausal symptoms, including hot flashes. But most women suffer such severe gastrointestinal side effects from Premarin that they stop taking it after less than a year.
Some physicians, such as Susan Love, M.D., of Los Angeles, believe that the marketing of Premarin is designed to turn a normal process, menopause, into a condition that needs to be treated. Marcus Laux, N.D., of Marina del Rey, Calif., recommends numerous natural alternatives in his book, Natural Woman, Natural Menopause (HarperCollins, 1997). Among them are isoflavones, found in soy foods, and also available in supplements.
Isoflavones are a type of antioxidant flavonoid that has mild estrogen-like properties. Recent studies of menopausal women have found that isoflavones can reduce the number and intensity of menopausal hot flashes. (See the Oct. 1997 Let's Live.) The herb black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) has very similar properties and a long history of use as a folk medicine to treat menstrual cramps and menopausal symptoms.
Antibiotics. Trimox, a form of amoxicillin, is the top-selling antibiotic in the United States. Sure, it kills germs. But the over-use of antibiotics breeds antibiotic-resistance bacteria - germs that are immune to antibiotics! Amoxicillin also destroys large numbers of protective "good" bacteria that reside in your intestine, making you more vulnerable to other infections.
Probiotic capsules or tablets, containing beneficial bacteria, have long been used to restore intestinal bacteria destroyed by antibiotics. According to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, they might actually protect against many infections. Gary W. Elmer, Ph.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle, reported in JAMA that probiotics greatly reduced the risk of gastrointestinal and vaginal infections.9
Garlic is well documented for its antibacterial properties and its ability to increase resistance to infection, according to The Natural Health Guide to Beating the Supergerms, by Richard P. Huemer, M.D. Huemer recommends making liberal use of garlic in foods or taking it in supplemental form. He also points out that there is considerably scientific support for the herbs echinacea (Echinacea spp.) and goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis).10
Antidepressants. Books have been written extolling the benefits of Prozac, an antidepressant that's one of the best-selling drugs in the United States. If you're having a bad day, Prozac (or Zoloft, a competing drug) isn't for you. But if you're feeling down all the time and see no hope for getting better, you might consider a natural antidepressant.
The herb St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) may be the biggest rival to Prozac and Zoloft. There have been dozens of medical journal articles published on St. John's Wort. Last year, in the British Medical Journal. Klaus Linde, Ph.D., of Ludwig-Maximillians University, Munich, analyzed the effect of St. John's Wort on 1,757 patients in 23 studies. St. John's Wort, often referred to as simply hypericum, was "significantly superior" to dummy pills.11
Although St. John's Wort is extremely safe, do not take it for bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder or with mono-amino-oxidase (MAO) inhibiting drugs, such as the antidepressant drugs Nardil and Parnate, cautions Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., author of Hypericum & Depression.12 St. John's Wort works in part as a "serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI)," and combining an MAO inhibitor and an SRI can increase blood pressure to dangerous levels.
Vitamin B1 can also improve and stabilize mood, according to a study of 120 college students by David Benton, M.D., of the University of Wales, Swansea.13 And a study of 11 men found that low selenium levels were associated with depression and confusion.14
Although Ritalin is not really an antidepressant, it is becoming a popular behavior-altering drug used in the treatment of attention-deficit disorder (ADD). David Horrobin, D Phil, BM, BCh, a British researcher and editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses, has found that supplements of gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) can improve ADD by correcting brain chemistry. GLA is found in evening primrose oil and DHA is found in fish oil supplements.
Blood-Pressure Lowering Drugs. High-blood pressure, known as hypertension, is a major contributor to coronary heart disease. Increased pressure on blood-vessel walls damages them, setting the stage for cholesterol deposits and vessel ruptures.
Vasotec is the most prescribed medication for hypertension, but there are natural and easy ways to lower blood pressure. David McCarron, M.D., of Oregon Health Sciences University has reported that calcium, magnesium, and potassium lower blood pressure. A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed the blood-pressure-lowering benefits of potassium.15
Garlic supplements have also been reported to lower blood pressure. Manfred Steiner, M.D., Ph.D., of East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C., gave male subjects nine "aged garlic extract" capsules or placebos daily for six months. Men taking the garlic capsules had a modest drop in blood pressure and cholesterol.16
Anti-Ulcer Drugs. Zantac is the most popular prescription drug for treating peptic ulcers, but most makers of anti-ulcer drugs have had to scramble over the past couple of years. It turned out that most ulcers are actually caused by a bacterial infection, Helicobacter pylori, not by excessive stomach acid.
H. pylori infections are easily treated with a brief antibiotic regimen. But if you have an ulcer not caused by this germ, consider trying two herbs: licorice root and bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus). Numerous medical studies have found that a key component of licorice root, deglycyrrhizinated licorice, promotes the healing of ulcers.
Bilberry is the European version of common blueberries, so eat more of this fruit might help against ulcers. Both bilberry and blueberry are rich sources of anthocyanidins, a type of flavonoid also found in Pycnogenol. In addition, another flavonoid, catechin, has also been reported of benefit in treating ulcers. Pycnogenol and green tea also contain catechin.
Natural alternatives to drugs are almost always safer, less expensive, more effective, and with fewer side effects. While it's always best to stay in good health, sometimes you do have to resort to more aggressive treatments of specific conditions. When you do, think natural.

1 Ellison N, et al., Journal of Clinical Oncology, August 1997;15:2874-80.
2 Shapiro JA, et al., Epidemiology, 1996;7:256-63.
3 McCarty MF, Medical Hypotheses, 1996;47:461-6.
4 Macknin ML, Annals of Internal Medicine, 1996;125:81-8.
5 Herzenberg L, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, March 4, 1997;94:1967-72.
6 Middleton E, et al., International Archives of Allergy and Immunology, 1995;107:435-6.
7 Carper J, Miracle Cures, New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
8 Jackson JL, et al., International Journal of Biosocial Research, 1983;5:47-52.
9 Elmer GW, et al., Journal of the American Medical Association, 1996;275:870-6.
10 Huemer RP and Challem JC, The Natural Health Guide to Beating the Supergerms, New York: Pocket Books, 1997.
11 Linde K, et al., British Medical Journal, 1996;313:252-8.
12 Bloomfield HH, Mordfors M, and McWilliams P, Hypericum & Depression, Los Angeles: Prelude Press, 1996: 74-8.
13 Benton D, et al., Psychopharmacology, 1997;129:66-71.
14 Hawkes WC, et al., Biological Psychiatry, 1996;39:121-8.
15 Whelton PK, Journal of the American Medical Association, May 28, 1997;277:1624-32.
16 Steiner M, et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1996;64:866-70.

By Jack Challem
Copyright © 1997 by Jack Challem, The Nutrition Reporter™.
All rights reserved.
"One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small.
And the ones your mother gives you don't do anything at all."
- Darby Slick

This article originally appeared in Let's Live magazine. The information provided by Jack Challem and The Nutrition Reporter™ newsletter is strictly educational and not intended as medical advice. For diagnosis and treatment, consult your physician.

PREBIOTIC or PROBIOTIC?

2010-11-16T21:11:00.000+01:00

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.

This is the subject of the article that led me here (written in spanish):

This yogurt is not protecting your health
The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) issued a verdict on more than 800 alleged health claims of functional foods, including probiotics.
Source / Public.

* Live microorganisms with health benefits
* Not all probiotics are equal
In the natural world one must be very careful.
On the other hand, we note that the EFSA does not say the products are bad, it just indicates that benefits attributed to them are not demostrated enough.
But we must not forget that not everything natural is good and as I told earlier "good things are only good when taken in the right way".
If we bring this issue to the theme of the blog, supercritical fluids can be used for the production of prebiotic ingredients like inulin.Pulling the thread can access two interesting articles on the topic (also in spanish):

supercritical fluid transition...

2010-11-01T22:54:00.002+01:00

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.

Where is the distinction between liquid and gas in a supercritical fluid?

The properties of fluids in the supercritical regime are mostly unknown despite intense research efforts throughout the past century. This region is above the critical point, the thermodynamic point in pressure (P_c) and temperature (T_c) above which distinction between liquid and gas phases was thought not to exist. Research on fluids was typically hampered by technical difficulties encountered with complex sample environments such as high pressure diamond anvil cells or laser shock techniques.
Important new insights were recently gained through an experiment on supercritical argon (at T=4×T_c and P>10²×P_c), conducted on beamline ID28, in conjunction with molecular dynamics simulations, which revealed distinct changes in the dispersion of nanometric acoustic waves depending on the thermodynamic conditions. This dynamical feature represents the so-called positive sound dispersion, observed for most liquids when measuring the sound velocity as a function of wavelength from the continuum limit (at very large wavelengths) in which acoustic waves propagate adiabatically, to the short-wavelength limit, that is, when approaching interparticle distances. Its origin can be traced back to the presence of at least one relaxation mechanism interacting with the dynamics of the density fluctuations induced by the propagation of acoustic waves. In particular the viscoelastic relaxation, reflecting the interaction of local structural changes (on nm length- and picosecond time scales) with acoustic sound waves, provides a clear fingerprint of liquid behaviour [1].
Figure 1 reports the amount of positive sound dispersion, corresponding to the maximum of the ratio of the largest observed sound velocity over its adiabatic value, as a function of pressure, derived from the experiment and molecular dynamics simulations. A sharp decrease from about 13% to 4% is observed on pressure decrease with a cross-over located at 0.4 GPa. This distinct decrease is due to the disappearance of the structural relaxation process, and thus marks the transition from a collective liquid-like to a single particle gas-like behaviour. This clearly provides a connection between dynamics and thermodynamics, contradicting the widespread belief of a homogeneous supercritical fluid phase. Furthermore, we speculate that the positive sound dispersion plays the role of an order parameter, sensitive to the local structure and able to amplify on a macroscopic scale the degree of correlation between thermal heterogeneities and mechanical density fluctuations.

Figure 1. Positive sound dispersion of argon as a function of pressure at 573 K. Full and open circles indicate the positive sound dispersion as obtained from the IXS experimental data and from the molecular dynamics simulations, respectively. The two solid lines represent fits to the data set below and above the cross-over point at 0.4 GPa, and the dotted line marks the point on the extrapolated Widom line at 573 K.

Most remarkably, the crossover value of 0.4 GPa corresponds to the extrapolation of the so-called Widom line, constituting the locus of the maxima of the isobaric specific heat C_P (see Figure 2) in the supercritical fluid phase. In fact, the partition between liquid-like and gas-like regimes survives even above the theoretical definition of the Widom line, where there is no longer an observable maximum in the pressure dependence of C_P. This ascribes a much more general role to the Widom line as the marker of distinction between liquid-like and gas-like behaviour in supercritical fluids. In analogy with the subcritical behaviour, the Widom line embodies the extrapolation of the liquid-vapour coexistence line into the supercritical region, thus supplying the first fundamental insight into the correspondence between subcritical and supercritical fluid behaviour.

Figure 2. Sketch of the (P/P_c, T/T_c) plane. Red line: Widom line of argon obtained from the NIST database [3] (continuous) up to the highest temperature where a maximum in C_P vs. P can still be identified (T=470 K; T/T_c=3.12), and extrapolated (dotted) above this temperature. Black line: best fit of the average of the liquid-vapour coexistence lines for argon, neon, nitrogen and oxygen using the Plank-Riedel equation [4]. Dots with different colours mark data from a variety of systems (this study, and also ref. [2] and references therein). Isothermal, experimental and molecular dynamics simulation data on argon are reported in pink inside a black rectangle. Open circles represent cases where the positive dispersion of the sound velocity exhibits low values, full circles cases where there is a clear signature of large positive dispersion.

This newly discovered relationship between thermodynamics and the viscoelastic behaviour of hot dense fluids is expected to allow major breakthroughs in areas such as the physics of planetary systems, solvation techniques for nanotechnologies, and in geophysics for the validation of seismological models based on the thermophysical properties of materials.

References
[1] T. Scopigno, G. Ruocco, and F. Sette, Rev. Mod. Phys. 77, 881 (2005).
[2] F. Gorelli, M. Santoro, T. Scopigno, M. Krisch, and G. Ruocco, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 245702 (2006).
[3] NIST Chemistry WebBook, http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry
[4] R. Plank and L. Riedel, Ingenieur-Archiv 16, 255 (1948).

Principal publication and authors
G.G. Simeoni (a), T. Bryk (b,c), F.A. Gorelli (d,e), M. Krisch (f), G. Ruocco (e,g), M. Santoro (d,e) and T. Scopigno (e,g), The Widom line as the crossover between liquid-like and gas-like behaviour in supercritical fluids, Nature Physics 6, 503 (2010).
(a) FRM II, Technische Universität München, Garching (Germany)
(b) Institute for Condensed Matter Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv (Ukraine)
(c) National Polytechnic University of Lviv (Ukraine)
(d) LENS, European Laboratory for Non Linear Spectroscopy, Firenze (Italy)
(e) IPCF-CNR, UOS Roma (Italy)
(f) ESRF
(g) Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’ (Italy)

FLUCOMP new web!

2010-10-15T21:35:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-01T22:08:00.016+02:00

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.

Other important dates:

March 2011 contribution acceptance
April 2011 deadline for early registration
June 27-30 ICCDU XI

The Topics are:
1. Biotechnologies for CO2 conversion into chemicals
2. Catalysis for energy products and chemicals
3. CO2 as solvent
4. Fundamentals in activation
5. Green chemistry for sustainability
6. Impact of CO2 regulations on industrial processes
7. Innovative process engineering and LCA methods
8. Photocatalytic and electrochemical reduction
9. Separation and capture

IDOKI launches OB/GYN line with two new products

2010-09-20T22:46:00.002+02:00

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.

These products are presented as a novelty in pharmacy, since no other brand has produced a product line with a similar formulation. IDOKI formulates all its products using extracts obtained through supercritical fluid technology, being the base for all the laboratory work.

IDOKI, located at the Bizkaia Technology Park, manufactures products based on the identification of active principles in natural raw materials. Once these target compounds are selected, IDOKI outlines the technological process to extract them from top quality raw materials, purify them and incorporate them in standard or new formulations.

In the case of these new products, propolis is one of the main ingredients in the intimate hygiene gel, which has been included in this formula because of its effect against Candida albicans, Gardnerella vaginalis and Escherichia coli, micro-organisms that frequently affect feminine intimate areas.

Additionally, a prebiotic ingredient is present in both formulas, both in the intimate hygiene gel as in the feminine intimate moisturiser. It is a gluco-oligosaccharide obtained from natural sugars through enzymatic synthesis, stimulating the growth of beneficial skin flora, balancing and strengthening the skin's ecosystem, which is the first barrier against external aggressions.

IDOKI counts on the analytical chemistry and microbiology capacities needed for product analysis and performance evaluation, and develops new products in the industrial, agrifood and galenic fields.

SCF extracts are safe.

2010-09-15T20:36:00.002+02:00

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

Read the DRAFT:
"OPINION ON AN APPLICATION UNDER THE NOVEL FOODS REGULATION FOR EXTRACT OF MAGNOLIA BARK"

The bark of the Magnoliae officinalis tree, a member of the biloba subspecies, has been used in traditional Chinese herbal medicine for thousands of years, and is reputed to have anti-stress properties. It is used in dietary supplements in some countries.

Selected papers of ISSF 2009 published.

2010-09-07T20:56:00.002+02:00

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

2010-08-15T20:37:00.001+02:00

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.

The most common manufacturing method for producing automobile plastic parts is injection molding.

Mazda’s improved injection molding process involves mixing supercritical fluid (SCF) made from common inert gases such as nitrogen or carbon dioxide, with the plastic resin raw material. The process uses a particular characteristic of SCF to mix readily with other substances at the molecular level to raise the fluidity of the liquid plastic resin and cause it to expand rapidly when injected into a mold. As a result, smaller amounts of the raw material resin are needed to fill molds.

Furthermore, by using a core-back expansion molding process – which enables thicker parts to be manufactured using less plastic raw material – Mazda has successfully developed parts with a multilayer structure. The bubbles in the outer layer of the plastic are kept microscopic to ensure each part has the necessary strength and rigidity, while the size of the bubbles in the core layer can be freely adjusted to reduce its density as desired.With this proprietary technology, substantially less material is needed to manufacture plastic parts that are lighter and have equal or greater strength and rigidity characteristics compared to conventional, non-foamed parts. This plastic foam molding technology can potentially be applied to nearly all plastic parts used in vehicles. Because the core back molding process enables control of the foam’s structure, it is possible to add extra value by enhancing the heat insulation and acoustic characteristics of plastic parts.

Mazda says conventional plastic foaming methods use a gas formed through the thermal decomposition of organic and inorganic compounds. However, through the use of SCFs, Mazda’s foamed resin molding technology does not result in adverse effects from residual chemical compounds, has a smaller impact on the environment, and produces parts that can be easily recycled.

Mazda intends to adopt this technology for plastic parts on their next generation platforms that will be introduced from 2011. It will be used to accelerate their weight reduction initiatives.
http://www.mazda.com/mazdaspirit/env/engine/mold.html

Recycling radioactive waste no longer a problem

2010-07-15T19:13:00.001+02:00

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.

Chien Wai, University of Idaho chemistry professor, has developed a process that uses supercritical fluids to dissolve toxic metals. When coupled with purifying process developed in partnership with Sydney Koegler, an engineer with nuclear industry leader AREVA and University of Idaho, enriched uranium can be recovered from the ashes of contaminated materials.
“Radioactive waste is a big problem facing the US and the entire world,” said Wai. “We need new, innovative technology, and I think supercritical fluid is one such technology that will play an important role in the very near future.”
A supercritical fluid - in this case carbon dioxide - is any substance raised to a temperature and pressure at which it exhibits properties of both a gas and a liquid.
When supercritical, the substance can move directly into a solid like a gas and yet dissolve compounds like a liquid. For example, said Wai, supercritical carbon dioxide has directly dissolved and removed caffeine from whole coffee beans for decades.
When the carbon dioxide’s pressure is returned to normal, it becomes a gas and evaporates, leaving behind only the extracted metals. No solvents required, no acids applied, and no organic waste left behind.
“That’s why decaffeinated coffee tastes so good,” said Wai, while chuckling at the beauty and simplicity of the process. “There is no solvent used, and so no solvent left behind.”
Because the technology is so simple, cost-effective and environmentally friendly, AREVA is eager to test its first full-scale use on 32 tonnes of incinerator ash in Richland, Washington.
The existing plant in Richland fabricates fuel for commercial nuclear power plants from raw enriched uranium supplied by utility customers as uranium hexafluoride (UF6).
During normal operation, common items including filters, rags, paper wipes, and gloves become contaminated with uranium. The waste is burned to reduce its volume and increase its uranium content, making it easier to recover the uranium.
Nearly 10 percent of the ash’s weight is usable enriched uranium, worth about $1,800 dollars a kg in today’s market. This means about $5 million dollars is currently sitting in the garbage waiting to be recovered.
The new recycling plant is expected to be operational in 2009 and will take about a year to process AREVA’s ash inventory. When finished, much of its operating time can be devoted to ash received from other sites.

Supercritical Fluids Chromatography

2010-06-01T20:15:00.001+02:00

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

2010-05-15T21:40:00.002+02:00

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

2010-05-01T23:18:00.001+02:00

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.

The TSCi system supports more efficient engine operation over the full range of conditions—from stoichiometric air-to-fuel ratios at full power to lean 80:1 air-to-fuel ratios at cruise.
The software control is key to facilitating the extremely fast combustion, enabled by advanced microprocessing technology. The TSCi injection system can also be supplemented by advanced thermal management, exhaust gas recovery, electronic valves, and advanced combustion chamber geometries. (The Syracuse team, for example, is using exhaust gas heat to help bring the fuel to SC states.) Through the use of its software, the TSCi system can optimize the use of any combustion chamber geometry or piston bowl shape.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/08/sc-diesel-20090804.html
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/03/transonic-20100304.html

LLLIC-SCF-GSCE 2010!

2010-04-14T21:06:00.005+02:00

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.

The topics:

Thermodynamic Properties
Phase Equilibria
Transport Properties
High Pressure Heat Transfer
Hydrodynamics and Mass Transfer in Gas-Liquid Contactor Operating at High Pressure
High Pressure Equipment
Separation of Chiral Compounds using Supercritical Fluids
Extraction of Pharmaceutical Plants
Supercritical Extraction of Solids
Supercritical Extraction and Fractionation of Liquids
Wet Air Oxidation
Supercritical Water Oxidation
Precipitation of Solids with Dense Gas
Particle Generation
Enzymatic Reactions
Chemical Reactions in Supercritical Fluids
Sterilisation with High Pressure
High Pressure Food Processing
High Pressure Viscometry
Pharmaceutical Applications with Supercritical Fluids
Modelling of Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Plant Materials
High Pressure Technology in Material Industry
Closure Systems for High Pressure Vessels
Hydrogenation Processes at High Pressure
High Pressure Processes in Refining of Crude Oil
Subcritical and Supercritical Alcoholysis of Vegetable Oil
High Pressure Carbon Dioxide and Room Temperature Ionic Liquids for Green Chemistry Applications
Supercritical Fluid - Polymer Interactions
Extrusion assisted by Supercritical Fluids
Nanomaterial Processing in Supercritical Fluids
Sustainable Development

SCF 2010

2010-04-01T20:00:00.004+02:00

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.

With the growth of supercritical fluid chromatography as a cutting edge technology, this conference provides a forum for new developments and applications.

SFC 2010, scheduled September 2010, promises to attract leading chromatography scientists from the pharmaceutical industry, research institutes and universities.

The conference will feature a scientific program of oral and poster presentations and an exhibition. Vendors will have the opportunity to introduce the latest SFC technology to a diverse audience by becoming a conference sponsor via exhibits and⁄or workshops.

SFC 2010: Call for Papers
Deadline for oral submission is June 15th, 2010.
Deadline for poster submission is August 15th, 2010.

SFC 2010: Date and Venue
September 15-16, 2010
Stockholm, Sweden at the Radisson Blu Royal Viking Hotel.

B.I.O.N'Days 2010

2010-03-15T01:15:00.026+01:00

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
3 themes will be over viewed:
- European Professional Conference on the Preservation of Biological Products.
- International Brokerage event
- Conferences on Supercritical Fluids and Membranes : extraction and separation
The Brokerage Event B.I.O. N'Days will allow you to :
- Find technology and/or business partners for licence, technical cooperation, commercial agreement, join FP7 Projects
- Promote your technology
- Detect technological solutions fulfilling your needs
- Learn more about Organic and Natural Products technologies, market and actors
- Find opportunities to develop your business
- Do technology watch

You can download the official agenda to reach more information.

9th Conference on Supercritical Fluids and Their Applications

2010-03-01T20:49:00.003+01:00

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)
Major objective of this conference is to point out the state of the art of technological applications in supercritical fluid processing. Exchange of information and experience on research and close communication between international participants will help to identify the future needs and the new aspects on the use of this technology. An intense exchange between industrial applications and research will be stimulated.
Topics

• Processing such as: Extraction, Reaction, Micronization and membrane formation
• Thermodynamics and high pressure equilibria
• Physico‐Chemical properties
• Applications to Polymers, Food, Fossil Fuels, New Materials, Environment, Cosmetics, Pharmaceuticals and Biomedicals.

PROSCIBA 2010

2010-02-22T12:41:00.001+01:00

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.

The areas of the congress are:
1) Fundamentals:
Thermodynamics & High Pressure Equilibria
Transport Properties & Other Physico-Chemical Properties
Surface Phenomena
2) Processing:
Extraction & Fractionation
Scale Up & Economics
Foods & Functional Food Ingredients
Cosmetics and Pharmaceuticals
3) Reactions and New Processing:
Chemical and Biochemical Reactions
Biotechnology
Foaming
Thin Film processes
Combined Processes
Supercritical Drying
4) Materials:
Materials: Powders, pourous materials, polymers, functional materials, bio-materials, nano-systems
Microelectronics
Micronization & Impregnation
5) Biofuels and Environmental:
Environment
Petroleum, Natural Gas & Biofuels
Safety

12th EUROPEAN MEETING ON SUPERCRITICAL FLUIDS

2010-02-12T21:23:00.007+01:00

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

Deadlines
Abstract: October 16th 2009 => postponed to November 13th
Full text: February 12th 2010

Conference Location:
Graz University of Technology, Campus Inffeldgasse, A-8010 Graz, Austria

You can already acces to the detailed program, with the final schedule and the title of plenary lectures, Oral communication and List of posters comunication.

2 years of supercritical stuffs...

2010-02-07T20:09:00.029+01:00

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...

2010-01-04T20:12:00.010+01:00

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

IDOKI wish you...

2009-12-29T20:45:00.002+01:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Joyeux Nöel et bonne nouvelle année 2010!

¡Feliz Navidad y próspero año nuevo!

Zorionak eta urte berri on!

SCF-Ex ; cannabis & multiple sclerosis

2009-12-07T20:58:00.004+01:00

A recent article states [1]:

Cannabis therapy has been considered an effective treatment for spasticity, although clinical reports of symptom reduction in multiple sclerosis (MS) describe mixed outcomes. Recently introduced therapies of combined delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) extracts have potential for symptom relief with the possibility of reducing intoxication and other side effects. Although several past reviews have suggested that cannabinoid therapy provides a therapeutic benefit for symptoms of MS, none have presented a methodical investigation of newer cannabinoid treatments in MS-related spasticity. The purpose of the present review was to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of combined THC and CBD extracts on MS-related spasticity in order to increase understanding of the treatment's potential effectiveness, safety and limitations.
We found evidence that combined THC and CBD extracts may provide therapeutic benefit for MS spasticity symptoms. Although some objective measures of spasticity noted improvement trends, there were no changes found to be significant in post-treatment assessments. However, subjective assessment of symptom relief did often show significant improvement post-treatment. Differences in assessment measures, reports of adverse events, and dosage levels are discussed.

These compounds can be easely extracted by means of supercritical fluid extraction (SCF-Ex) with CO2.

Avoiding the use of further solven, with high yields and shorts times [2]

[1]: Shaheen E Lakhan and Marie Rowland; BMC Neurology 2009, doi:10.1186/1471-2377-9-59

[2]: Veress T.; J.Chromatogr. A 668 (1994) 285

The supercritical fluids and its impact in the new generation of natural additives

2009-11-27T20:00:00.011+01:00

The use of food additives is a very old practice. In the past, it was very common to use, for example, salt to preserve fish and meat; sugar to preserve fruits or herbs to improve the food taste. Same as in the past, in the food processing industry the use of additives is much extended.

Food additives are substances intentionally added to food for a technological purpose like colouring, sweetening or preserve a product. The idea behind the use of additives is to avoid deterioration or improve the quality/aspect of the product, and not to become a product of lower quality in a better one.

Food habits are changing constantly and consumers are more and more demanding with food they buy and with its manufacturers. The new food technologies are being rapidly accepted while at the same time consumers request more healthy and natural products. Such products should have high sensory quality, keeping their nutritional properties but minimizing the “technological interventions” and the use of artificial additives including flavourings. The latter shows the consumers current concern about characteristics like “bio”, “eco” or sustainable.

In consequence, the market trend is going to the production of natural products and additives, being the last one an important part of processed food. In such a way, the companies which work developing additives are moving to the “natural” side, pushed by a more demanding and restrictive law in the use of synthetic products and by the consumer demands.

On the other hand, in the last decade, the extraction of additives from vegetable and animal sources or from food industry by-products has rise as a result of the huge benefits coming from their use in the food industry. The use of Supercritical Fluids technology in such process has been confirmed by numerous research works published in the last years. This technology is classified like “green chemistry” due to the no use of harmful solvents during the extraction process.

As it was mentioned before, the market trend is moving to the consumption of natural products and, food additives, as a part of them, should integrate to this trend. Therefore, companies which develop this kind of products have to look for valid alternatives to replace synthetic products.

Due to the food companies’ increasing concern about the use of organic solvents and their further treatment after their use, the supercritical fluid technology is becoming more and more popular. The future shows promising for this technology for its use in extraction processes and in other food industry fields.

X. Carrión. Alimarket. Novembre 2009

supercritical products...

2009-10-21T20:58:00.001+02:00

Please let me introduce our new brand in cosmetics...

As you may imagine, due to the name, our products are well related with the matter of this blog.

In fact PlusKRITIK is the first commercial brand of IDOKI SCF Technologies S.L. and it's composed by a number of cosmetic products...

The name comes from the use of supercritical fluid extract in the formulation of the products that are moreover eco-products or natural cosmetics.

We also have launched a blog a community and an e-shop with the aim of showing the way we work and to contact our customers to share our knowledge in cosmetics and well being.

Unfortunately, by now, all these webs are in Spanish but I hope some of you will like to have a look, and even make some comments (here or there...).

FLUCOMP 2010

2009-09-10T20:50:00.000+02:00

In the "3rd meeting of experts in compressed fluids technologies", carried out in february 2009, the thematic net "FLUCOMP" evolved in a "Scientific associaton of compressed Fluids" with the same name.

Now will take place the "4th meeting of experts in compressed fluids technologies" that will be held in Ciudad Real (Spain) from the 10th to 12th February.

Dead line for the submition of abstracts is 30th September and they have to be sent to congreso.flucomp2010@uclm.es .

Hope to see you there!

Supergreen2009

2009-07-30T20:35:00.001+02:00

The main theme of the sixth Supergreen symposium is the fusion of the SCF technology with the material science technology, device technology, environmental technology, and the other technologies, which will aid in expanding the applications of the SCF technology.

Supergreen2009 will be held from October 15th to 17th, 2009 at Sakura Hall, Katahira Campus, Tohoku University, Sendai City, Miyagi, Japan.

Early registration before September 18th, 2009.

Last call for LLLIC-SCF-GSCE 2009!!!

2009-04-20T21:45:00.001+02:00

Don´t forget that the Deadline for Registration to the "Life Long Learning Intensive Course Supercritical Fluids-Green Solvents in Chemical Engineering" is this Friday, 24th April 2009.

See you there!

5th INTERNATIONAL THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE

2009-03-15T21:25:00.004+01:00

The "5th International Theoretical and Practical Conference; Supercritical Fluids: Fundamentals, Technologies, Innovations" will be held in SUZDAL (Russia) from September 15th to 18th 2009.
The scope of the congress includes thermodynamics and phase equilibria, transfer phenomena in SCF systems; extraction and fractionation; chemical synthesis and reactions of SC reactants and in SC media; modification and dispersion of natural and synthetic materials; SCF chromatography and analytical applications of SCF; experimentation in SCF systems; economical aspects of SCF technologies.

You can get the 1st circular and visit their web.

Chair : LUNIN V.V, President of CSCFT, MSU (Moscow)
Contact : scftec@isc-ras.ru
Early registration: Before 1 April, 2009

AFTS

2009-03-05T21:08:00.006+01:00

The Spanish "Association for the promotion of Supercritical State Technologies" AFTS (from the Spanish "Asociación para el Fomento de las Tecnologías del estado Supercritico") has been set up by the approval of the statutes and the election of the first board in Valencia.

This organizations aims to enhance the relationship between their partners and to promote the collaboration for the use of Supercritical Fluid Technologies in the obtaining of more secure, sustainable and with better quality products.

At the same time the association wants to increase the knowledge of the society about supercritical fluids technologies, their advantages and the enhanced quality of its products.

You can read here the new in Spanish.

CO2 + H2O -> fuel + O2 UPDATE

2009-02-20T21:14:00.003+01:00

In an older post, one year ago, I found a new about "the best way to avoid Climate Change":
convert the CO2 in fuel...
the problem was the source of energy...
and the solution was ¿nuclear energy?

Well, this blog is to talk about supercritical fluids, and some researches are being done that connect both subjects.

Photocatalytic preferential reduction of CO2 to methane can be performed by means of photoactalytic systems. The way of catalyst are made produces important differences and their synthesis in supercritical fluid can give interesting properties.

Some previous related works...
"Effect of Synthesis Conditions on Photocatalytic Activity of TiO2 Powders Synthesized in Supercritical CO2"The Journal of Supercritical Fluids, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 23 January 2009E. Alonso, I. Montequi, M.J. Cocero.
"Effect of TiO2 particle size on the photocatalytic reduction of CO2" Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 24 January 2009K. Kočí, L. Obalová, L. Matějová, D. Plachá, J. Jirkovský, O. Šolcová
"Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 using TiO2 powders in supercritical fluid CO2" Energy, Volume 24, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 21-30Satoshi Kaneco, Hidekazu Kurimoto, Yasuhiro Shimizu, Kiyohisa Ohta, Takayuki Mizuno

9th SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL ON SUPERCRITICAL FLUIDS

2009-02-15T21:08:00.002+01:00

The symposium will take place in Arcachon (France) from the 18th-20th May 2009.

The slogan is "New trends in Supercritical Fluids: Energy, Materials, Processing"

The goal of this edition is to bring together scientists and engineers interested in Supercritical Fluids from traditional and emergent areas. The symposium will focus on new perspectives to identify new challenges and breakthroughs in the field.

Early registration is to be done before 31/01/2009.

For more information visit the symposium web page.

LLLIC-SCF-GSCE

2009-02-10T15:51:00.010+01:00

No, I'm not mad...

These are the initials of the "Life Long Learning Intensive Course Supercritical Fluids-Green Solvents in Chemical Engineering" that will be held in KOC University (Istanbul, Turkey) from 25th June to 9th July 2009.

This Life Long Learning Intensive Course was promoted by the members of the Working Party “High Pressure Technology” of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) and all members, recognised European experts both in the theoretical aspects and in the industrial applications of supercritical fluids, will present the topics.

You can find this information and more information in the Circular or in the web page.

On the web page you can also find the registration form.
Deadline for Registration is 24th April 2009.

3rd meeting of experts in compressed fluids technologies

2009-01-16T17:30:00.000+01:00

The meeting will be held from 5 to 6 of February in Madrid.

The purpose of the meeting is to update the list of research groups in Supercritical Fluids applications and to present the “Spanish association of compressed Fluids”.
You can find more information in their web (in Spanish).

20th anniversary of Advanced Materials

2009-01-07T16:41:00.002+01:00

The journal "Advanced Materials" is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Having an Impact Factor of 8.191 Advanced Materials is one of the most influential journals in the field.
Therefore a quick review of articles published in this journal related with "supercritical fluids" may give us an idea of the its use in materials design. From 1993 to 2008, 43 articles talk about something related to supercritical fluids.

Last trend is the use of SCF in the synthesis of Nano-tubes, which is at the same time one of the more promising lines of research in materials. For example in the next number of the journal an article entitled "Synthesis of Carbon-Nanotube Composites Using Supercritical Fluids and Their Potential Applications" will be published.

You can also download the "anniversary review" on their web, or with this link.

Zorionak eta Urte Berri On!

2008-12-23T16:34:00.007+01:00

We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Joyeux Nöel et bonne nouvelle année 2009!

¡Feliz Navidad y próspero año nuevo!

Idoki's Participation in "II Ecuadorean Congress in food engineering"

2008-11-12T14:47:00.003+01:00

From the web page of UTPL we can see the talk from Dr. Iñarra about "Use of supercritical fluid technologies in food and nutraceutical industries" (In Spanish).

We can also see interviews to Dr. Iñarra and Ms. Ximena Carrión, both from Idoki SCF Technologies.

Supercrítical Fluids in agrofood...

2008-10-29T16:53:00.003+01:00

"II Ecuadorean Congress in food engineering" will be held Loja (Ecuador) from the 5th to 7th November.
Dr. Bruno Iñarra, from IDOKI, will talk about the use of supercritical fluids in the food industry, agrofood and nutraceutical.
At the same time and place takes place the "XI Conference of Food Science and Technology" as a meeting between university and enterprises.

See you at ECONAT2008!

2008-08-27T15:06:00.006+02:00

Supercritical Fluid Extraction has a wide range of applications among we can find medicinal products. The extraction of actives molecules from natural matrices with supercritical fluids is a way to enhance traditional and natural medicines.

At the "International Congress on Natural medicines" ECONAT2008 our colleague Dr. Jauregi will talk about the medicinals properties of propolis (Abstract in Spanish).

The congress will be held in Madrid from 19th to 21th September.

See you there!

Lecture...

2008-05-27T20:15:00.000+02:00

About the Supercritical fluid...

Here are an interview with the acclaimed Martyn Poliakoff (a chemistry professor at the University of Nottingham) that I've had the honour to meet at the 11th European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids

Update: Natural Supercritical Water

2008-05-16T10:10:00.002+02:00

In a previous post Natural Supercritical Fluid? (Wednesday, February 13, 2008) I talked about a courious phenomena.
I've found a new article related "Mud volcanoes – a result of supercritical water formation at depth?".

Supercritical Fluid Course

2008-05-12T12:00:00.007+02:00

The "Life Long Learning Intensive Course: Supercritical Fluids - Green Solvents in Chemical Engineering" will be held in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (6th – 20th July 2008).

The course comprises lessons and exercises about basics and applications of supercritical fluids (CO2, propane, water,...) for chemical engineering processes and other high pressure technologies.

You can register from the web site, but hurry up! the deadline for registration is next 15th May 2008.

11th European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids

2008-04-30T09:44:00.009+02:00

New Perspectives in Supercritical Fluids:
Nanoscience, Materials and Processing

The 11th European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids will be held from 4th to 7th of May (Sunday to Wednesday ). The scientific program will focus on those aspects at the frontier of new progresses in the field of applications of supercritical fluids. It will focus on the following topics:

1) Self-organized Soft Materials
2) New trends in Drug Delivery
3) Challenges in Theoretical Aspects
4) Crystalline polymorphism
5) Processing

I hope to see you there!

Supercritical Fluids transition...

2008-04-04T14:29:00.005+02:00

In my everyday patrol of the internet looking for supercritical fluid stuffs, I've found these videos of the transition from supercritical fluid to liquid-gas equilibria.

The first one shows the aparatus employed, and the substance is benzene.

The second one, also shows the experimental setup. The liquid is ethane.

This 3rd one can be CO2, but it's not said.

An a second one, same "liquid" as previous one but at zero "g"

Finally, supercritical water transition.

Food additives or Biofortified Food.

2008-03-14T20:26:00.005+01:00

One of the uses of Supercritical Fluids is the extraction of actives compounds for the alimentary industry.
The obtaining of natural preservatives, flavours, colorants or aromas are of great interest because the low temperature used in the process avoids the destruction of thermolabile compounds.
But there is another important market in the food industry, the extraction of actives compounds such as carotenes or poly-unsaturated fatty acids. These compounds added to food increase their nutritional value.

However it's not the only way to enrich food, I've found and article about "Biofortified" food. The use genetic manipulation allows producing vegetables with high levels of vitamins or other micronutrients. The main doubt, apart from the general aversion produced by "genetically modified" words, was whether the nutrients are bioavailable.
A recent publication, report that carrots genetically engineered to accumulate twice as much calcium as control carrots are indeed a good source of this essential nutrient, resulting in a 50% increase in calcium absorption [1].

Then we are between nutrition and pharmacology and in the field of novel foods which deals with food safety and a lack of clear legislation.

[1] Morris J. & cols. PNAS 105 (2008) 1431

Green Chemistry using CO2?

2008-03-11T19:27:00.004+01:00

This is one of the questions people use to ask when you explain Supercritical Fluid process and you argue that is a green process, or you talk about sustainable development.
Of course CO2 is regarded as one of the most important environmental problems and its relation with climate change and global warming seams well establish.
However, although most Supercritical Fluids processes employ CO2 as solvent, we don't have to forget that the process DOES NOT PRODUCE CO2 and, moreover, most of the CO2 employed is recirculated.

Related with CO2 problem, today I’ve found a new about one more possible solution.
Craig Venter at TED2008 (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talked about his latest research into "fourth-generation fuels", biologically created fuels with CO2 as their feedstock.
The idea is to create genetically new bacterias that will produce methane form atmospheric CO2.
It seems more plausible than transforming CO2 in fuel using nuclear energy.
But, having to play with DNA, the idea will have lots of detractors, perhaps more than nuclear energy.

20 years of JSCF!

2008-03-06T19:54:00.010+01:00

I suppose most readers of this blog may know this publication.

"The Journal of Supercritical Fluids" is like a bedside book when you are doing some research in the field.

The Journal of Supercritical Fluids is an international journal devoted to the fundamental and applied aspects of supercritical fluids and processes. Its aim is to provide a focused platform for academic and industrial researchers to report their findings and to have ready access to the advances in this rapidly growing field. Its coverage is multidisciplinary and includes both basic and applied topics.

Its publication begun in 1988 with a single issue in the whole year and six articles. Nowadays they produce twelve issues per year with fifteen articles in each.

That gives an idea of how supercritical fluids technologies are rising and the extend of its application. More over, other scientific publications are full of articles with supercritical fluids, such as "Journal of Agricultural Food and Chemistry" or "International Journal of Food Science and Technology".

It's not a coincidence that both cited publication are related with "food". It's in fact in the field of nutrition where supercritical fluid technologies are finding one market niche. Production of preservatives, food additives, aromas and other interesting products for alimentary industry by means of a "high tech process" are favored by legislation (against organic solvents) and the appeal of natural products produced with green technologies (Another publication that has to do with supercritical fluids, "Green Chemistry" wich is celebrating its ten years).

Other important applications for supercritical fluids are cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, and the list is expanding as quickly as the technology is getting affordable and better known.

About climate change.

2008-03-01T19:48:00.007+01:00

"Earth under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World"
It's a recently published book with a novel view of a warming world.
The author, Gary Braasch, gives a photographic report that shoes how the climate is changing the landscape. Pictures are documentated and supported by weighty scientific evidences.

You can find more information here or here and if you like it it's better to buy it here!

Green Guide

2008-02-28T20:17:00.005+01:00

Looking for new today I've found a publication of National Geographic.

It's a green guide and its philosophy is close to ours so I want to give you the link to share this curiosity.

I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.thegreenguide.com/

... forest looses, greenhouse wins.

2008-02-27T18:50:00.004+01:00

WWF has published a summary report of the contribution to climate change due to forest loss in Sumatra.

It's not only a problem of greenhouse effect but it also drives to extinction to elephants and other animals.

I think it's a really good example of the opposite of "sustainable development".

Read the new, the summary or the full report.

just in case...

2008-02-27T18:12:00.007+01:00

If everything goes wrong, if doomsday arrives or whatever... a frozen vault has been opened in Norway where millions of seeds will be stored to safeguard against any disasters wiping out food crops around the globe.

I hope we won't need it.

More info: Wikipedia; BBC, WashingtonPost, National Geographic, Times, The New York Times...

Green USA effect?

2008-02-26T18:45:00.007+01:00

The USA seems ready to accept "binding international obligations" on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, officials say, if other nations do the same.
They wants to conclude talks before the G8 summit in Japan. (Source)

It may seem that it's a bit late, but I hope it won't be too late!

(I've found this explanation of the BBC about "greenhouse effect", for those who need a simple explanation).

and now... BIODIESEL jumbo!

2008-02-25T21:21:00.004+01:00

Virgin Atlantic announced yesterday a 747 flown on a mixture of about 20 percent biofuel and the rest kerosene.
It seems that the origin of the biodiesel is from amazon nuts (source).

It's the first step for cleaners fuels, but are we going to get short of nuts, like Mexicans of corn?
Does the amazon will resist?

Car that runs on air?

2008-02-22T18:55:00.009+01:00

This kind of vehicle could be on sale in India as soon as this year.

That's the proposal of TATA group.

However, the vehicle burns small amounts of conventional fuels at higher speeds that limits its "environmental friendly" conception.

The idea has been developed by Moteur Development International (MDI), by Mr. Guy Nègre, in cooperation with Mr. Miguel Celades, who now is in AirCar factories.

In fact there is some discussion between both (read here and here)...

The main problem of this invention, in my opinion, is the fact that we have to compress the air. That means a consumption of energy, electric energy.

So I wonder if the performance of the system enhances the results of electrical cars.

International Year of Planet Earth

2008-02-21T19:18:00.005+01:00

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the year 2008 to be the "International Year of Planet Earth", and the inauguration took place last week.

The proclamation set up the purposes of the event, that are related with sustainable development.

I don´t know if I'm well informed or not, but is the first new I have from this program and it started in 2006!
So I wonder, were did these good proposal went?
Are we going to see any result or improvemnt of anything?

You can also read the "Status Report" of "August 2007" and "January 2008".
Don't bother too much... they are nearly identical.
Only the number of "national committees" has increase.. but, what for?

CO2 + H2O -> fuel + O2

2008-02-20T19:52:00.004+01:00

This is the proposal of scientist of "Los Alamos National Laboratory ".

Nothing new, if an hydrocarbon plus oxygen give carbon dioxyde plus water, the inverse reaction is feasible... we only have to give some energy.

The "unique" problem is the source of energy.

Nuclear energy?

Today the principal investigator on the project, F. Jeffrey Martin, will be presenting a talk on the subject at the Alternative Energy NOW conference in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

I don't know if the label "green chemistry" or "sustainable development" are appropiate for this new...

More information here.

No news, good news.

2008-02-19T21:42:00.008+01:00

Today I haven't found any interesting new or curiosity...

However, I don't want to lose the opportunity to encourage everybody to comment any article.
We are also open to news proposals related with Supercritical Fluids, Green Chemistry, Sustainable development... (themes related with our activity).

about Supercritical Fluids...

2008-02-18T19:47:00.004+01:00

I suppose most of the readers of this blog, if there are some, should know what a Supercritical Fluid is.
Just in case...
A SCF is defined as a substance above its critical temperature (TC) and critical pressure (PC). The critical point represents the highest temperature and pressure at which the substance can exist as a vapour and liquid in equilibrium.
In the figure you can see the transition from the gas-liquid equilibrium to de Supercrítical Fluid.
You can find more information elsewhere... like here, here or here ...
or just type "Supercritical Fluids" on Google!

Pollutant ships...

2008-02-15T16:09:00.004+01:00

Planes, car, buses and trucks...
All are pollutants means of transport that contributes to the "greenhouse effect".
However, leaked UN report says that ships pollution is three times higher than previously thought, and represent 1.12 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, while global air travel is responsible for around 650 million tonnes of CO2 each year.
That means that ships are responsible for 4% of CO2 emissions, and must be included in Kyoto targets.

More info:
- True scale of CO2 emissions from shipping revealed (The guardian)
- Ships' greenhouse emissions revealed (Nature)

Results?

2008-02-14T18:51:00.003+01:00

Well...
the "thematic debate" of the UN took place...
the "Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2008" (DSDS) has finished...

and Valentine's day is here!

you can read here the statements of the UN debate... and more details here...
on the other hand you can read the "Proceedings DSDS 2007" that I suppose are similar to those of 2008...

In fact the same conclusion, as Boxer in "Animal farm" use to say: "I will work harder".
We have to work harder...

But doesn't matter, today is Valentine's day.

Natural Supercritical Fluid?

2008-02-13T09:52:00.008+01:00

In my every day search about related news or curiosities on Supercritical Fluids I´ve found and "old" article from "Nature" that talks about underwater hot spots.

Record hotspot found underwater
Scientists working in the southern Atlantic Ocean have found a 407 °C hydrothermal vent, the hottest yet known on an ocean floor.
(if somebody has acces to the full text... please let me know)

Well, this is hot!
but if we go ahead, these hotspots are at 3000 meters under the sea, that means about 300 bar (4350 psi) of pressure...
So water in these condition is a Supercritical Fluid. (Critical temperature and pressure of water,374°C; 217.7 atm, 3147 psi).
So we have a source of natural Supercritical Water!

Celebrating the tenth year of the Green Chemistry journal

2008-02-12T09:39:00.003+01:00

Green Chemistry is the utilisation of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products.[1]

Since Paul Anastas and John Warner established the 12 principles of "Green chemistry"[1] lot of changes have taken place.
But this "new" is to talk about the tenth anniversary of the journal.
In fact, that was in January, but we didn't had our BLOG then.
You can download their EDITORIAL here.

Nowadays, green chemistry, sustainable development and related concepts are daily used, normally in the same sentence as greenhouse effect or global warming, and debates, summits and conferences are organised...
but, are we advancing toward the solution?

1- Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, P. T. Anastas and J. C. Warner, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.

Addressing Climate Change: The United Nations and the World at Work

2008-02-11T08:58:00.000+01:00

Today will start this debate at UN Headquarters in New York.
Two discussions will take place:

- Rising to the Challenge: Parnerships on Climate Change
- Responding to a Multifaceted Challenge: The UN at Work
Tomorrow there will be a discussion open to all in which Member States will make statements.

You can find all the information here.

I wonder if this kind of meetings are useful, or its only a meeting of good intentions.

Neither liquid nor gas, odd substances find uses.

2008-02-08T19:33:00.000+01:00

Looking for Supercritical Fluids News I've found an article from "The New York Times" published in May 19, 1987.

It's an old one, but it gives a clear an simple point of view of this "BIZARRE form of matter".

You can read the full text here.

IDOKI SCF Technologies S.L.

2008-02-07T19:00:00.000+01:00

Whit this blog we want to let you know about our enterprise, our philosophy and to create a tool to discuss about supercritical fluids technologies and related matters.
If you want more information don't hesitate to visit our website, http://www.idoki.com/.

A través de este blog queremos dar a conocer nuestra empresa, nuestra filosofía y crear una herramienta de intercambio de impresiones y conocimientos en el mundo de la tecnología de fluidos supercríticos.
Para un primer contacto con IDOKI os invitamos a visitar nuestra página web, www.idoki.com, y a dejar aquí vuestras impresiones.

Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2008

2008-02-07T15:08:00.000+01:00

The 2008 edition of the DSDS (Delhi Sustainable Development Summit) assumes unusual importance because it deals with the theme of ‘Sustainable Development and Climate Change’. Climate change is the result of society having pursued a path of development that is not sustainable. The impacts of this, in turn, make it difficult for societies, particularly the poorest ones, to implement measures of development, which are sustainable. DSDS 2008 will focus on promoting an understanding of this linkage among decision-makers and leaders who can mould public opinion. The summit has another significance. The 13th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in Bali in December 2007. So it would not bean exaggeration to state that DSDS 2008 would be a crucial step in the global process to tackle the challenge of climate change—especially since several heads of state and leaders of the corporate sector and civil society as well as distinguished academics and researchers would be present at the summit.