ROSSETTI I.

The economic sustainability of renewable based sources is a matter of debate and the technology is changing very fast. We here considered three examples of exploitation of bioethanol as renewable source: a) centralised hydrogen prodution; b) heat and power cogeneration (residential scale); c) ethylene production. Bioethanol can be a suitable...

The production of hydrogen through photoreforming of aqueous solutions of organic compounds is considered as a way to exploit solar energy storage in the form of hydrogen. The photocatalytic reforming can be promoted by a photocatalyst, optimally a solid semiconductor able to absorb the major quota of solar energy. In this work, glucose was...

The photoreforming of glucose has been studied over TiO2 photocatalyst with different photoreactors, focusing on the effect of the reaction conditions: temperature, pressure, catalyst and substrate concentration. The effect of pressure was particularly significant, decreasing hydrogen evolution rate, but improving the conversion of the...

The photocatalytic reduction of CO2 into solar fuel is considered a promising approach to solving the energy crisis and mitigating the environmental pollution caused by anthropogenic CO2 emission. Some powder photocatalysts have been demonstrated as efficient, but their drifting properties, along with difficult separation (catalyst and...

The deposition of V-based catalysts for the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane to propene on cordierite honeycomb monoliths was optimised as a strategy to decrease the contact time in a structured reactor with respect to a conventional fixed bed one. 10 wt% VOx supported over SiO2 or Al2O3 were used as catalysts, deposed over the monolith...

Photocatalytic processes are acquiring increasing attention as a means to exploit solar energy to promote chemical transformations. Reactor design and modelling is a fundamental step to set the basis for the possible scale up of the technology. To this purpose, we have modelled the radiation flow depending on reactor geometry for different...

Photocatalytic processes are acquiring increasing attention as a mean to exploit solar energy in promoting chemical transformations. Numerous applications can be found in the literature on the use of semiconductors for water treatment or to produce renewable fuels. Very challenging applications combine also the two concepts. These topics are...

Solar irradiation data collected at the latitude of Milan city, near the 45th parallel North, and original activity data of some high-performing photocatalysts (i.e., commercial TiO2 P25, TiO2 prepared by flame spray pyrolysis, 0.2% wt/wt Au/P25) have been used to evaluate the feasibility and the efficiency of an ideal solar photoreactor for...

The continuous-flow production of active pharmaceutical ingredients is a spreading applicative research field. Process simulation tools are effective means for in silico process design, but care is needed. A paradigmatic example is the synthesis of ibuprofen. First, the most appropriate thermodynamic models must be selected. The rich databases...

Photocatalysis has been used to reduce nitrate ions from waste and drinking water. A semibatch photoreactor was developed for this process and commercial nanostructured TiO2 (P25) and TiO2 in nanosized form prepared by flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) were used as catalysts. Several noble metals were added as co-catalyst on both titania samples and...

In the current research, the productivity of CO2 photoreduction has been boosted by performing the reaction in an innovative photocatalytic reactor, which allows for operation up to 20 bar. A set of photocatalysts were used, including three types of pristine TiO2, i.e., one commercially prepared (Evonik P25), one home-prepared by flame spray...

The possibility to exploit renewable sources for the production of bulk chemicals is attractive and bio-ethanol has been recently proposed as platform to produce hydrogen via steam reforming and bio-ethylene by dehydration. Another compound with huge industrial applications is ethylene oxide, which may be in principle obtained in two steps...

The salting out of acetonitrile from water in the presence of ammonium bicarbonate was studied at atmospheric pressure from 4 to 35 °C. The coexisting phases were analyzed independently with H1 nuclear magnetic resonance, ion chromatography, calorimetry, and titrations. The binodal region was described with semiempirical functions and with the...

Photocatalysis has been used for the oxidation of ammonia/ammonium in water. A semibatch photoreactor was developed for this purpose, and nanostructured TiO2-based materials, either commercial P25 or prepared by flame spray pyrolysis (FSP), were used as catalysts. In the present work, we investigated the effect of (i) metal co-catalysts, (ii)...

Titanium dioxide‐based photocatalysts have been used to perform the photo‐oxidation of ammonium/ammonia to molecular nitrogen. Different light sources were employed, i.e., UV, LED visible light and natural sunlight, and their performance was compared in order to understand which setup was the most efficient. It was found that under selected...