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To determine the potential for improving biomass enzymolysis, a combined oxidization and liquid ammonia pretreatment (OD-LAT) was employed for bamboo. The effects of oxidant, bamboo ages, and species on the pretreatment effectiveness and subsequent enzymolysis were studied. Under the optimal OD-LAT pretreatment and enzymolysis of the B-NA bamboo Neosinocalamus affinis, the glucan and xylan conversion reached 83.85% and 78.66%, respectively, and approximately 59.7-68.5 g of fermentable sugars can be produced per 100 g of dry bamboo, which was an approximately 5-8 fold increase compared with untreated sample. The H2O2 loading of 1.0 was the optimal oxidant dosage for the OD-LAT process. The OD-LAT pretreatment was only suitable for bamboo under three-year-old, and it significantly improved the enzymolysis of B-NA and B-BM, while it was limited to B-DO and B-PP. The pretreatment effects of bamboo were not only related to composition but also to the bamboo age, species, macro-structures and micro-structures.

Abstract Microorganisms used in syngas fermentation require nutrients to grow and convert syngas (CO, H2 and CO2) into various products. Many of the essential nutrients can be provided by biochar. Poultry litter biochar (PLBC) contains minerals and trace metals and has a high pH buffering capacity, making it suitable as a nutrient supplement. The effects of PLBC loadings from 1 to 20 g L−1 on syngas fermentation were determined in 250 ml bottle assays. Results showed that 10 and 20 g L−1 PLBC significantly increased ethanol production compared to standard yeast extract (YE) medium. Fermentations in a 3L continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) with 10 g L−1 PLBC with and without 4-morpholineethanesulfonic acid (MES) showed 64% and 36% more ethanol production, respectively, than standard medium. The acetic acid accumulated at the beginning of fermentation was completely converted to ethanol in all media tested in the CSTR. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using PLBC medium without costly MES in the CSTR to enhance ethanol production from syngas for potential use at commercial scale.

A template‐agent can affect defect formation as well as influence interface properties, due to the rapid growth of perovskite film from the solution. Herein, diethylammonium iodide (DAI) is used as an effective template‐agent to control the perovskite crystallization during preparation. It is found that a very small amount of DAI in chlorobenzene (CB) can slow down the perovskite growth of the CH3NH3PbI3 (MAPbI3) film with more large grain size and compacted crystal‐grains resulting in the lesser grain boundaries (GBs) in favor of carrier transport in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Moreover, some redundant PbI2 can be digested to form DA2PbI4. One part of DA2PbI4 can form the sub‐grains with the composition of (DA2PbI4)0.2(PbI2)0.8 to passivate the GB defects, and other part can cover the surface to passivate the surface defects in large MAPbI3 grains. Using an optimized DAI concentration of 0.5 mg mL−1 in CB solution, the corrsponding MAPbI3 PSC achieves an increased power conversion efficiency of 20.31% with suppressed current–voltage hysteresis. This DAI passivation strategy provides a simple approach to effectively assist the grain‐growth for improved device performance.

Abstract To obtain high yield and high concentration glucose from corncob residues (CRs), tetrahydrofuran (THF) + H2O co-solvent pretreatment was employed. The pretreatment parameters were firstly optimized by Box-Behnken Design of response surface method, and the maximum glucose yield (498.2 mg/g CRs) was obtained via enzymatic hydrolysis after pretreated under optimized conditions (53.7% THF concentration, 202.3 °C, 1.05 h). Then, the pretreated CRs under optimized conditions (optimized-CRs) were enzymatically hydrolyzed at high solid loading (15%–20%) and low enzyme input (5–8 FPU/g cellulose). The high concentration glucose production (128.6 mg/mL) was obtained from optimized-CRs after enzymatic hydrolysis at 20% solid loading with 10 FPU/g cellulose for 72 h, and then showed potential for reduction of enzyme input. Finally, the interactions between the 9 substrate-related factors and cellulose conversion were analyzed through correlation analysis, and found that Klason lignin remained in the cellulose-rich fractions and pseudo lignin condensed on the surface of the recovered substrate were the predominant inhibitors for enzymatic hydrolysis.

Abstract The prime purpose of this work is to prepare a novel kind of Pickering interfacial solid catalysts for biodiesel production to meet the requirements of highly efficiency and environmental benign. To achieve this goal, the core–shell P[xSPA-yDABCO]@SiO2@Fe3O4 composite materials with a shell of photo-responsive and base catalytic sites were manufactured by means of layer-by-layer fabrication method. The modified materials, entirely characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra, X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and magnetization versus magnetic (VSM) techniques, demonstrated sufficient catalytic active sites and photo-responsive sites. Among all the so-prepared catalysts, P[3SPA-2DABCO]@SiO2@Fe3O4 performs extremely well and can stabilize soybean oil-in-methanol Pickering emulsion for 24 h, achieving a biodiesel yield up to 98.2% at a catalyst dosage of 5 wt% after the reaction time of 5 h at 60 °C. Furthermore, the double responsive solid catalyst can be readily separated from the mixture of reaction by an external magnet and UV irradiation, and still presented superior catalytic activity after 6 cycles.

Ancillary services and other interconnected services are important especially in a competitive operation environment. Since these services are costs related, they should be allocated in order to send the correct price signal to market participants. An average sensitivity method is proposed for allocating services to simultaneous transactions. It can provide results close to power flow-based methods, while requiring as little computational time as traditional sensitivity-based approaches. Except for rare cases, it satisfies the requirement of allocation quantity, allocation ratio, and application feasibility. Test results indicate that the average sensitivity method is a successful allocation algorithm.