Interview with prof. dr. Saso Sturm; With nanomaterials to cheap energy sources, efficient electric motors, drug delivery systems
Source: https://www.delo.si/
Interviews of Prof. Dr. Spomenka Kobe and Prof. Dr. Jean-Marie Dubois during the annual meeting »2019 Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit and Exhibition”, the world’s biggest sustainability conference. Prof Dr. Kobe was one of the awardees.
We successfully prepared stable aqueous suspensions, containing hierarchically assembled, mesoporous γ‒Al2O3 particles with high surface area. Addition of divalent cations such as Mg2+ or Ca2+ or cellulose nanofibers triggered a formation of various interparticle associations, which hindered or even prevented sedimentation. Preparation of such suspensions is especially important for preparation of advanced, porous ceramic materials relevant in catalysis and adsorption. The work was published in the leading scientific publication dealing with ceramic materials Journal of the European Ceramic Society.
Andraž Kocjan was involved in an interdisciplinary research directed by Sašo Gyergyek and Darko Makovec from the Department for Materials Synthesis and from the Department of Nanostructured Materials in a collaboration with researchers from the Department of Catalysis and Reaction Engineering of the National Institute of Chemistry. The work was published in the renowned scientific journal Green Chemistry, entitled Hierarchical Ru-bearing Alumina/Magnetic Iron-Oxide Composite for the Magnetically Heated Hydrogenation of Furfural. The paper demonstrates application of magnetic heating of nanoparticles in AC-field to drive chemical reaction. The authors showed that conversion of furfural to furfuryl alcohol over the catalyst in the same time interval reached 95% when “targeted” heating by AC magnetic field was used, but only 63% when conventional heating was applied. They were the first to show that a well-designed hierarchical composite (UK patent) can simultaneously serve as a catalyst and heat source to drive a technologically important chemical reaction in a slurry-type reactor.
