Chemical Engineering June 2018 - 9

This wallpaper has built-in fire detection
R
esearchers from the Chinese
Academy of Sciences
(Beijing, China;
www.cas.cn), led by professor
Ying-Jie Zhu, have reported
a " smart " fire-alarm wallpaper prepared
using ultralong hydroxyapatite
nanowires and graphene oxide
thermosensitive sensors. At room
temperature, the graphene-oxide
sensor is an electrical insulator, but
it becomes electrically conductive
at high temperatures. In case of
fire, high temperature will quickly
remove the oxygen-containing
groups of graphene oxide, causing
an alarm to be sent out. After surface
modification of graphene oxide
with polydopamine, the sensitivity
and flame retardancy of the sensor
are further improved, resulting in a
low-temperature fast response and
sustained working time in a flame
(at least 5 min.).
Hydroxyapatite, Ca10(OH)2(PO4)6,
is the major inorganic component
of bone and teeth in vertebrates,
and has been investigated for biomedical
applications. However, hydroxyapatite
materials are usually
brittle because they form particles,
short rods or needles. The team has
found that ultralong hydroxyapatite
nanowires with ultrahigh aspect
ratios have high flexibility and can
solve the problems of brittleness
and poor flexibility.
According to the team, ultralong
hydroxyapatite nanowires are a
promising biomaterial with advantages
such as high biocompatibility,
high flexibility, good mechanical
properties, high thermal stability,
and fire resistance. Therefore, the
nanowires are said to be excellent
building materials for the construction
of flexible fire-resistant inorganic
paper. The smart fire-alarm
wallpaper can be processed into
various shapes, dyed with different
colors, and printed with a commercial
printer and thus can be
used in high-safety interior decoration
of homes.
predicted that two chemical substances, activator
and inhibitor, can, under certain conditions,
react and diffuse with each other to
generate spatiotemporal stationary structures,
which are responsible for the stripes of a zebra,
the spiral of a snail or the markings on leaves.
The new membranes are made by a process
based on interfacial polymerization, where the
reactions occur at the interface between oil and
water layers. The addition of polyvinyl alcohol to
the aqueous phase reduced the diffusion of the
monomer. This process - described in the May
4 issue of Science - generated membranes
with more bumps, voids and islands, which
prove to be better for water desalination.
Microscopic characterization of the Turingtype
membranes reveals that the spatial distribution
of relatively higher-water-permeability
sites agrees well with the corresponding Turing
structures at the nanoscale. These unusual
nanostructures, which are generated by
diffusion-driven instability, enable outstanding
transport properties in both water permeability
and water-salt selectivity.
BIOBUTANOL
Biobutanol offers great promise as a gasoline
substitute because of its high energy density
(29.2 MJ/L for butanol versus 19.6 MJ/L for
ethanol and 32 MJ/L for gasoline). Traditional
(Continues on p. 10)
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Chemical Engineering June 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering June 2018
