Transformation kinetics and pathways of tetracycline antibiotics with manganese oxide

Tetracycline antibiotics including tetracycline (TTC), oxytetracycline (OTC) and chlorotetracycline (CTC) undergo rapid transformation to yield various products in the presence of MnO₂ at mild conditions (pH 4-9 and 22 °C). Reaction rates follow the trend of CTC > TTC > OTC, and are affected by pH and complexation of TCs with Mg²⁺ or Ca²⁺. Experimental results of TTC indicate that MnO₂ promotes isomerization at the C ring to form iso-TTC and oxidizes the phenolic-diketone and tricarbonylamide groups, leading to insertion of up to 2 O most likely at the C9 and C2 positions. In contrast, reactions of OTC with MnO₂ generate little iso-OTC, but occur mainly at the A ring’s dimethylamine group to yield N-demethylated products. CTC yields the most complicated products upon reactions with MnO₂, encompassing transformation patterns observed with both TTC and OTC. The identified product structures suggest lower antibacterial activity than that of the parent tetracyclines.     

微波技术在废水处理中的应用

文章简述了微波直接辐射和微波再生技术在废水处理中的应用.指出了微波技术在废水处理中存在的问题,并对其发展前景进行了展望.     

微波消解-ICP/MS法同时测定鱼肉中的砷和汞

采用微波消解处理鱼肉样品,用电感耦合等离子体质谱法测定样品中砷和汞。通过试验优化微波消解参数、酸体系及赶酸温度,用在线加入内标方法消除基体干扰及仪器漂移对测定的影响。方法在0μg/L～40. 0μg/L范围内线性良好,砷和汞的方法检出限分别为0. 002 mg/kg和0. 001 mg/kg,实际样品6次测定结果的RSD为5. 4%～15. 6%,加标回收率为90. 0%～110%。将该方法用于测定芹菜和扇贝标准物质,测定值在标准值不确定度范围内。     

Safety investment optimization in process industry: A risk-based approach

Process plant safety is a critical indicator of organizational performance. Adequate investment into safety practices to avoid future accident cost is therefore a beneficial strategy. The current approach to such investments in the process industry is driven largely by simple risk-based heuristics, insurance market premiums, organizational culture and management judgment. There is, however, an absence of an overarching methodology to assist such an effort. Therefore, there is a need for developing a robust decision-making framework for enabling systematic and optimal allocation of financial resources across all significant risk elements within a process plant.The present work proposes a safety investment optimization (SIO) framework for a typical process plant. Such an optimization approach targets maximal reduction of risk values across all potential hazards within the constraint of a given safety investment budget at the incipient stage of establishing a plant such that it saves future cost to company by reducing the risk from accidents. At the same time the framework takes into account the need to comply with the regulatory requirements imposed by the government. Additionally, access to insurance market as a strategy to transfer risk is also integrated. Finally, the residual risks are managed through investments in selective safeguards while ensuring that the benefits over-weigh the cost of such an exercise. For illustrating the application of the framework, a representative process plant with a select number of risk scenarios is chosen and all steps suggested by the framework are demonstrated quantitatively. It is anticipated that the proposed SIO framework will help optimal resource allocation for managing the risks implicit in a typical process plant.     

A systems-based approach for modeling of microbiologically influenced corrosion implemented using static and dynamic Bayesian networks

Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) is a microbial community assisted degradation of materials affecting chemical processing and oil and gas industries. MIC has been implicated in incidents involving loss of containment of hazardous hydrocarbons which have led to fires and explosions, economic and environmental impact. The interplay between abiotic environmental factors and dynamic biotic factors in MIC are poorly understood. There is a lack of mechanistic understanding of MIC and very few models are available to predict or assess MIC threat. Here we report on the development of a model to assess the susceptibility to MIC. The high-resolution model utilizes 60 independent nodes, including operational and historical failure analysis data, and is built by combining empirical relationships between the abiotic and biotic variables impacting MIC. Both static and dynamic Bayesian-network (BN) approaches were used to combine heuristic and quantitative states of variables to ultimately yield a susceptibility measure for MIC. A confidence-in-information metric was generated to reflect the amount of data used in the estimation. A susceptibility to MIC of 45%–60% was estimated by the model for ten different scenarios simulated using case-studies from literature. The susceptibility to MIC estimated by these scenarios was further interpreted in the context of these cases. This systems-based MIC model can be utilized as an independent estimator of susceptibility or can be incorporated as a sub-model within comprehensive safety threat assessment models currently utilized in industry.     

Mitigation of operational failures via an economic framework of reliability,availability, and maintainability (RAM) during conceptual design

Abnormal process situation may lead to tremendous negative impact on sustainability, wellbeing of workers and adjacent communities, company's profit, and stability of supply chains. Failure of equipment and process subsystems are among the primary causes of abnormal situations. The conventional approach in handling failure-based abnormal situations has usually focused on operational strategies. Such an approach overlooks the critical role of process design in mitigating failure, while simultaneously considering the effects of such failure on process economic performance. The aim of this work is to introduce a systematic methodology that accounts for failure early enough during the conceptual design stages. Once a base-case design is developed, the methodology starts by identifying the sources of failure that are caused by reliability issues including equipment, operational procedures, and human errors for a given process system or subsystem. This allows for the identification of critical process subsystem(s) that are more failure-prone or cause greater downtime than other subsystems. Bayesian updating and Monte Carlo techniques are utilized to determine the appropriate distributions for the failure and repair scenario(s), respectively, in question. Markov analysis is used to determine the system availability. Next, the process revenue is described as a function of inherent availability. The effects of failures are incorporated into profitability calculations to establish an economic framework for trading off failure and profitability. In the proposed framework, the economic potential of alternative design scenarios is evaluated and an optimization formulation with the objective of maximizing incremental return on investment (IROI) is utilized to make a design decision. A case study on an ethylene plant is solved to demonstrate the applicability and value of the proposed approach.     

The importance of (process safety) leadership

It is indeed an honour to be invited to contribute the inaugural Trevor Kletz & Sam Mannan Guest Perspective on Process Safety. Unfortunately I did not ever meet Trevor, though I worked at a plant he was a design consultant on, but I worked with Sam for several years, together focused on how we could improve process safety outcomes.For this paper I want to write about a key area in process safety that I believe underpins everything we do. If we get it really wrong, we can't come back from the brink. If we get it a little wrong, we can usually recover, with a lot of work and effort. If we get it right, things just work. So, what am I talking about, is it design, maintenance, operations? No, I am talking about leadership. This underpins everything else we do in process safety yet is an oft neglected aspect. I think this is a fitting start to this series, because both Trevor and Sam believed in effective communication, which is a key element of leadership. I hope it will set the scene for future articles to incorporate aspects of leadership when others will delve into more detailed topics.     

Thermal hazards analysis of styrene in contact with impurities

Styrene is a reactive monomer commonly used to produce polystyrene and other copolymers. Unintended thermal runaway polymerization reactions of styrene keep reoccurring and have led to catastrophic consequences. One of the possible causes of these runaway incidents involves the contamination of the styrene monomer by incompatible species, which was not adequately investigated and documented. This study focuses on the quantification of thermal runaway hazards of styrene in contact with a series of contamination substances by adopting calorimetric analysis. Both Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) and Advanced Reactive System Screening Tool (ARSST) were employed to examine the exothermic characteristics of styrene mixed with contaminating substances at different concentration levels and mixing conditions. Key safety parameters of the exothermic reaction, such as the onset temperature, the overall heat release, the maximum self-heating rate, as well as the activation energy, were obtained. The results indicated that the thermal runaway polymerization of purified styrene was significantly altered by the presence of contaminant species. Water effectively retarded and quenched the runaway polymerization at a higher temperature range. Alkaline had no substantial effect on the thermal runaway characteristics. The presence of acid solution under both static contact and vigorous mixing condition significantly promoted the thermal polymerization of styrene. A trace amount of concentrated acid initiated violent exothermic activity even at room temperature; and the severity of the reaction was profoundly impacted by the mass-transfer. Our study demonstrates significant implications in the prevention of runaway incidents during transportation and storage of styrene.     

多环芳烃污染土壤化学氧化修复技术应用研究

本文在分析了PAHs法污染土壤修复常用技术基础上,以化学氧化修复技术为例,结合案例,探讨了该技术在多环芳烃污染土壤修复中的应用,对打赢蓝天碧水净土保卫战具有积极的现实意义。