• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.799-807
• /
• 2006

The catalytic activity of $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalysts for the oxidation of toluene and toluene+xylene mixture was investigated in the microreactor of fixed-bed type. The calcination temperatures and loadings of $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalysts played the important role in the activity of catalysts for the oxidation of toluene. The increasing calcination temperatures and loadings of $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalysts increased the crystallite size of the platinum to result in the higher oxidation activity of catalysts. The catalytic activity for the toluene oxidation over $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalysts turned out to be increasing in the order of $500^{\circ}C\;<\;800^{\circ}C<600^{\circ}C\;<\;700^{\circ}C$ for calcination temperatures and 0.1 wt% < 0.3 wt% < 1.0 wt% for platinum loadings, respectively. The 1.0 wt% $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalysts calcined at $700^{\circ}C$ for 3 hrs in the air showed the highest activity for the oxidation of the toluene. The decrease of oxidation activity of $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalysts calcined at $800^{\circ}C$ might result from the decrease of active sites by sintering of platinum metals as well as ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ supports. The 1.0wt% $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalyst showed the activity from the lower temperature at $120^{\circ}C$, reached the light-off temperature ($T_{50%}$) at $180^{\circ}C$, and leveled off its activity at $340^{\circ}C$ with the conversion of 100% 'Mutual promotion' effects were observed for the binary mixture of toluene and xylene. The activity of the easy-to-oxidize toluene was slightly increased with the existence of the xylene. It might suggest the different mechanism for the oxidation of toluene and xylene on the $Pt/{\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalysts on different sites, and its reaction of gaseous oxygen.

• Clean Technology
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.71-86
• /
• 2008

In this review we discussed the effective ways to catalytically derive value-added chemicals from propane which has been utilized only as an energy source so far. Among various propane-derived products, the most valuable chemicals such as propylene and acrylonitrile were mainly focused herein. Propylene could be manufactured through oxidative dehydrogenation of propane using $O_2,\;CO_2$, etc. as an oxidant for the purpose of overcoming thermodynamic limitations of propane dehydrogenation. On the other hand, propane ammoxidation would be an alternative to propylene ammoxidation for producing acrylonitrile since propane is much cheaper than propylene as a starting material. Although effective $MoVTeNbO_x$ catalysts have been developed fur propane ammoxidation in recent years, more detailed studies should be thoroughly performed. In carrying out both oxidative dehydrogenation and ammoxidation of propane fur a long period, the most critical issue is definitely considered to find out the most active and selective catalysts, which makes it possible to commercialize both reactions into economically viable processes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2013.02a
• /
• pp.588-588
• /
• 2013

Nanoscale noble-metals have attracted enormous attention from researchers in various fields of study because of their unusual optical properties as well as novel chemical properties. They have possible uses in diverse applications such as devices, transistors, optoelectronics, information storages, and energy converters. It is well-known that nanoparticles of noble-metals such as silver and gold show strong absorption bands in the visible region due to their surface-plasmon oscillation modes of conductive electrons. Silver nanocubes stand out from various types of Silver nanostructures (e.g., spheres, rods, bars, belts, and wires) due to their superior performance in a range of applications involvinglocalized surface plasmon resonance, surface-enhanced Raman scattering, and biosensing. In addition, extensive efforts have been devoted to the investigation of Gold-based nanocomposites to achieve high catalytic performances and utilization efficiencies. Furthermore, as the catalytic reactivity of Silver nanostructures depends highly on their morphology, hollow Gold nanoparticles having void interiors may offer additional catalytic advantages due to their increased surface areas. Especially, hollow nanospheres possess structurally tunable features such as shell thickness, interior cavity size, and chemical composition, leading to relatively high surface areas, low densities, and reduced costs compared with their solid counterparts. Thus, hollow-structured noblemetal nanoparticles can be applied to nanometer-sized chemical reactors, efficient catalysts, energy-storage media, and small containers to encapsulate multi-functional active materials. Silver nanocubes dispersed in water have been transformed into Ag@Au nanoboxes, which show highly enhanced catalytic properties, by adding $HAuCl_4$. By using this concept, $SiO_2$-coated Ag@Au nanoboxes have been synthesized via galvanic replacement of $SiO_2$-coated Ag nanocubes. They have lower catalytic ability but more stability than Ag@Au nanoboxes do. Thus, they could be recycled. $SiO_2$-coated Ag@Au nanoboxes have been found to catalyze the degradation of 4-nitrophenol efficiently in the presence of $NaBH_4$. By changing the amount of the added noble metal salt to control the molar ratio Au to Ag, we could tune the catalytic properties of the nanostructures in the reduction of the dyes. The catalytic ability of $SiO_2$-coated Ag@Au nanoboxes has been found to be much more efficient than $SiO_2$-coated Ag nanocubes. Catalytic performances were affected noteworthily by the metals, sizes, and shapes of noble-metal nanostructures.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.285-291
• /
• 2016

In chemical-looping combustion, pure oxygen is transferred to fuel by solid particles called as oxygen carrier. Chemical-looping combustion process usually utilizes a circulating fluidized-bed process for fuel combustion and regeneration of the reduced oxygen carrier. The performance of an oxygen carrier varies with the active metal oxide and the raw support materials used. In this work, spraydried Mn-based oxygen carriers were prepared with different raw support materials and their physical properties and oxygen transfer performance were investigated to determine that the raw support materials used are suitable for spray-dried manganese oxide oxygen carrier. Oxygen carriers composed of 70 wt% $Mn_3O_4$ and 30 wt% support were produced using spray dryer. Two different types of $Al_2O_3$, ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ and ${\alpha}-Al_2O_3$, and $MgAl_2O_4$ were applied as starting raw support materials. The oxygen carrier prepared from ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ showed high mechanical strength stronger than commercial fluidization catalytic cracking catalyst at calcination temperatures below $1100^{\circ}C$, while the ones prepared from ${\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ and $MgAl_2O_4$ required higher calcination temperatures. Oxygen transfer capacity of the oxygen carrier prepared from ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ was less than 3 wt%. In comparison, oxygen carriers prepared from ${\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ and $MgAl_2O_4$ showed higher oxygen transfer capacity, around 3.4 and 4.4 wt%, respectively. Among the prepared Mn-based oxygen carriers, the one made from $MgAl_2O_4$ showed superior oxygen transfer performance in the chemical-looping combustion of $CH_4$, $H_2$, and CO. However, it required a high calcination temperature of $1400^{\circ}C$ to obtain strong mechnical strength. Therefore, further study to develop new support compositions is required to lower the calcination temperature without decline in the oxygen transfer performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
• /
• 2016.11a
• /
• pp.59-75
• /
• 2016

Reduced or black $TiO_{2-x}$ materials with oxygen-deficiency have been achieved by creating oxygen vacancies and/or defects at the surface using different methods. Fascinatingly, they exhibited an extended absorption in VIS and IR instead of only UV light with bandgap decrease from 3.2 (anatase) to ~1 eV. However, despite the dramatic enhancement of optical absorption in black $TiO_{2-x}$ materials, they have failed to show expected visible light-assisted water splitting efficiency. This was ascribed to the high concentration of the surface defects and/or oxygen vacancies, considered as an electron donor to enhance donor density and improve the charge transportation in black $TiO_2$ can also act as charge recombination centers, which eventually decrease photocatalytic activity. Therefore, a black ot reducd $TiO_2$ material with optimized properties would be highly desired for visible light photocatalysis. In this report, a new controlled magnesiothermic reduction has been developed to synthesize reduced black $TiO_{2-x}$ in the presence $H_2/Ar$ for photocatalytic $H_2$ production from methanol-water system. The material possesses an optimum band gap and band position, oxygen vacancies, and surface defects and shows significantly improved optical absorption in the visible and infrared region. The synergistic effects enable the reduced $TiO_{2-x}$ material to show an excellent hydrogen production ability along with long-term stability under the full solar wavelength range of light and visible light, respectively, in the methanol-water system in the presence of Pt as a co-catalyst. These values are superior to those of previously reported black $TiO_2$ materials. On the basis of all the results, it can be realized that the outstanding activity and stability of the reduced of $TiO_{2-x}$ NPs suggest that a balanced combination of different factors like $Ti^{3+}$, surface defects, oxygen vacancy, and recombination center is achieved along with optimized bandgap and band position during the preparation employing magnesiothermic reduction in the presence of $H_2$. The controlled magnesiothermic reduction in the presence of $H_2$ is one of the best alternative ways to produce active and stable $TiO_2-based$ photocatalyst for $H_2$ production.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.1152-1156
• /
• 2009

Silent information regulator 2 (Sir2) or sirtuins are NAD(+)-dependent deacetylases, which hydrolyze the acetyllysine residues. In mammals, sirtuins are classified into seven different classes (SIRT1-7). SIRT1 was reported to be involved in age related disorders like obesity, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s disease. Activation of SIRT1 is one of the promising approaches to treat these age related diseases. In this study, we have used HipHop module of CATALYST to identify a series of pharmacophore models to screen SIRT1 enhancing molecules. Three molecules from Sirtris Pharmaceuticals were selected as training set and 607 sirtuin activator molecules were used as test set. Five different hypotheses were developed and then validated using the training set and the test set. The results showed that the best pharmacophore model has four features, ring aromatic, positive ionization and two hydrogen-bond acceptors. The best hypothesis from our study, Hypo2, screened high number of active molecules from the test set. Thus, we suggest that this four feature pharmacophore model could be helpful to screen novel SIRT1 activator molecules. Hypo2-virtual screening against Maybridge database reveals seven molecules, which contains all the critical features. Moreover, two new scaffolds were identified from this study. These scaffolds may be a potent lead for the SIRT1 activation.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.7-18
• /
• 2015

Objectives: Lawsone (1,4 naphthoquinone) is a non redox cycling compound that can be catalyzed by DT diaphorase (DTD) into 1,2,4-trihydroxynaphthalene (THN), which can generate reactive oxygen species by auto oxidation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the toxicity of the phytomarker 1,4 naphthoquinone and its metabolite THN by using the molecular docking program AutoDock 4. Methods: The 3D structure of ligands such as hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$), nitric oxide synthase (NOS), catalase (CAT), glutathione (GSH), glutathione reductase (GR), glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate hydrogen (NADPH) were drawn using hyperchem drawing tools and minimizing the energy of all pdb files with the help of hyperchem by $MM^+$ followed by a semi-empirical (PM3) method. The docking process was studied with ligand molecules to identify suitable dockings at protein binding sites through annealing and genetic simulation algorithms. The program auto dock tools (ADT) was released as an extension suite to the python molecular viewer used to prepare proteins and ligands. Grids centered on active sites were obtained with spacings of $54{\times}55{\times}56$, and a grid spacing of 0.503 was calculated. Comparisons of Global and Local Search Methods in Drug Docking were adopted to determine parameters; a maximum number of 250,000 energy evaluations, a maximum number of generations of 27,000, and mutation and crossover rates of 0.02 and 0.8 were used. The number of docking runs was set to 10. Results: Lawsone and THN can be considered to efficiently bind with NOS, CAT, GSH, GR, G6PDH and NADPH, which has been confirmed through hydrogen bond affinity with the respective amino acids. Conclusion: Naphthoquinone derivatives of lawsone, which can be metabolized into THN by a catalyst DTD, were examined. Lawsone and THN were found to be identically potent molecules for their affinities for selected proteins.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.22-30
• /
• 2014

Self-photoinitiating acrylate (SPIA) which can undergo self-initiation under UV irradiation was synthesized by a Michael addition in the presence of a base catalyst. The SPIA polymerizations were investigated by photo-differential scanning calorimeter (photo-DSC) and surface physical properties such as pendulum hardness and pencil hardness. The results showed that the SPIA can cure upon UV irradiation by itself without a photoinitiator. But we found out that both the curing rate and the conversion were too low for the self-curing reaction of SPIA. In order to improve the SPIA curing properties, we introduced the SPIA/cationic hybrid system and observed the effects of the addition of commercial free radical type monomer and photoinitiator on the curing behaviors. SPIA/cationic hybrid system was the best suitable to improve the SPIA curing properties. The kinetic analysis indicated that the cationic monomer and photoinitiator apparently accelerated the cure reaction and rate of the hybrid SPIA system, mostly due to the synergistic effect of cationic monomer and photoinitiator increasing the mobility of active species and the generation of reactive species (free radical, cation) during the photopolymerization process. The physical properties showed that, unlike typical free radical system, the hybrid systems did not show oxygen inhibition effect because of cationic reaction on the coating surface.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.59 no.1
• /
• pp.1-5
• /
• 2021

The PEM(Proton Exchange Membrane)water electrolysis uses the same PEM electrolyte membrane as the PEM fuel cell and proceeds by the same reaction but the opposite direction. The PEM fuel cell has many methods of degradation analysis since many studies have been conducted on the degradation and durability of the membrane and catalyst. We examined whether PEM fuel cell durability evaluation method can be applied to PEM electrolytic durability evaluation. During the PEM electrolytic degradation process, LSV(Linear sweep voltammetry), CV(Cyclic voltammetry), Impedance, SEM(Scanning Electron Microscope) and FT-IR(Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy) were analyzed and compared under the same conditions as the PEM fuel cell. As the PEM fuel cell, hydrogen passing through the membrane was oxidized at the Pt/C electrode, and the hydrogen permeation current density was measured to analyze the degree of degradation of the PEM membrane. Electrode degradation could be analyzed by measuring the electrode active area (ECSA) by CV under hydrogen/nitrogen flowing conditions. While supplying hydrogen and air to the Pt/C electrode and the IrO2 electrode, the impedance of each electrode was measured to evaluate the durability of the electrode and membrane.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.315-320
• /
• 2022

This study discussed its implications for the meaning in life, which began to emerge through existential psychotherapy in the era of coronavirus infection 19 (COVID-19). In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are making efforts to live a meaningful life, and individuals and communities are making efforts to find meaning in how to live a meaningful life. Humanity has a premise for a peaceful life, and since the past, interest in the meaning in life has continued. The deadly virus called COVID-19, which hit the world in December 2019, created stress such as anxiety, alienation, and depression in people, endangering the lives of individuals and communities. Research on the meaning in life was active even before COVID-19, but I think it is necessary to look at the changes in people's meaning in life and how COVID-19 is affecting each individual amid the global pandemic of the virus. In other words, clarifying the meaning of our lives in the era of COVID-19 is a coping to reduce stress and a catalyst to improve the quality of life. This study aims to provide basic research to prepare ways to improve the quality of life in the era of COVID-19 by examining various perspectives and results on the meaning in life.