Secure the EU research budget for a future-oriented Europe!

Priority for the research budget is crucial for achieving economic prosperity and solutions for global challenges. Read the text of the petition and voice your concerns on the EU budget to the heads of states or governments.
 
Sign the petition - and invite others to join!

This petition reflects the mobilisation of research communities, including younger scientists, the members of learned societies and of concerned citizens. It complements the open letter of 42 European Nobel Laureates and 5 Fields Medallists recently published in the major European newspapers. ERC Starting Grant holders, organised in the Young Academy of Europe, are some of the first signatories of the petition, which also stresses the importance of funding provided by the European Research Council (ERC) for the attractiveness of Europe for top researchers.

The petition is coordinated by the Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE).

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

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.

We are changing!

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!

3 supercriticals years!

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).

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!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy new year!

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

Day of scientific skepticism, alchemy and modern chemistry.

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

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

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

PREBIOTIC or PROBIOTIC?

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

supercritical fluid transition...

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

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

 

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

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

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

2 years of supercritical stuffs...

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

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

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

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

Supercritical solution for global warming...

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

Geological carbon storage

Mike J. Bickle

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

Enjoy the article!

Yours comments are welcome!

[1] Geological carbon storage
[2] Phenomenal fluids

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

SCF-Ex ; cannabis & multiple sclerosis

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

supercritical products...

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...).

AFTS

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.

Food additives or Biofortified Food.

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

... forest looses, greenhouse wins.

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...

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...

CO2 + H2O -> fuel + O2

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.

Celebrating the tenth year of the Green Chemistry journal

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.