Sustainable chemical processing of flowing wastewater through microwave energy

Multidirectional Polarization Impacts on Microwave Heating Efficiency: A Molecular Dynamics Research of Microwave Heating of Common Solvents

Energy efficiency has always been an inherent problem of microwave heating. In this work, the higher heating efficiency of the elliptically polarized microwave electric field is investigated via MD simulations, aiming to examine the multidirectional polarization effect during microwave heating. The MD results show that the heating efficiency growth rates of EtOH, AcOH, DMSO, H₂O, and DMF are 3.17%, 3.92%, 4.14%, 5.00%, and 27.06% sequentially larger with the elliptically polarized microwave electric field (EF) than those with the linearly polarized microwave EF. Energy analyses indicate that the utilization rate of microwave energy would be increased of the elliptically polarized microwave EF with the same electric field intensities. The higher decay speed of the rotation autocorrelation function curves of elliptically polarized EF presents that the sample molecules do have a more frequent rotational motion to align with the varying polarization directions. Additionally, dielectric properties analysis gave the relation between the heating efficiency growth rate and the loss tangent of the samples. This microwave heating method is expected to be a new route to improve the microwave heating efficiency.

Solution combustion synthesis: the relevant metrics for producing advanced and nanostructured photocatalysts

The current developments and progress in energy and environment-related areas pay special attention to the fabrication of advanced nanomaterials via green and sustainable paths to accomplish chemical circularity. The design and preparation methods of photocatalysts play a prime role in determining the structural, surface characteristics and optoelectronic properties of the final products. The solution combustion synthesis (SCS) technique is a relatively novel, cost-effective, and efficient method for the bulk production of nanostructured materials. SCS-fabricated metal oxides are of great technological importance in photocatalytic, environmental and energy applications. To date, the SCS route has been employed to produce a large variety of solid materials such as metals, sulfides, carbides, nitrides and single or complex metal oxides. This review intends to provide a holistic perspective of the different steps involved in the chemistry of SCS of advanced photocatalysts, and pursues several SCS metrics that influence their photocatalytic performances to establish a feasible approach to design advanced photocatalysts. The study highlights the fundamentals of SCS and the importance of various combustion parameters in the characteristics of the fabricated photocatalysts. Consequently, this work deals with the design of a concise framework to link the fine adjustment of SCS parameters for the development of efficient metal oxide photocatalysts for energy and environmental applications.