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Solid acid catalyst is a promising alternative to the counterpart homogeneous acid for esterification reaction from the viewpoint of reusability and environmental concerns. This work aims to develop sulfonated mesoporous silica-carbon composite as solid acid catalyst for the esterification. The catalyst was synthesized from sodium silicate as the silica precursor and polyethylene glycol (PEG) as both carbon precursor and template via a sol-gel route in an aqueous system. Then, it was carbonized to produce mesoporous silica-carbon composite. Using the proposed method, the surface area of the silica-carbon composite could reach as high as 1074.21 m2/g. Although the surface area decreased to 614.02 m²/g when it was functionalized with sulfonate groups, the composite had a high ionic capacity of 5.3 mEq/g and exhibited high catalytic activity for esterification reaction of acetic acid with ethanol. At a reaction temperature of 80 °C, the acetic acid conversion reached 76.55% in 4 h. In addition, the catalyst had good reusability, which can be comparable with the commercial catalyst Foltrol F-007. It appears that the sulfonated silica-carbon composite prepared from sodium silicate using PEG as the carbon source a promising candidate as catalyst for esterification and the related area. Copyright © 2021 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).

Here, we reported the utilization of coconut shell charcoal used for solid acid catalysts and its performance in the esterification reaction of acetic acid and methanol. The graphitization of coconut shell charcoal was carried out by the calcination and KOH activation at the temperature of 400 °C for an hour and continued at the temperature of 800 °C for an hour under nitrogen flow resulted in graphitic carbon. The effect of the addition of KOH activation was observed by varied the weight ratio of coconut shell charcoal as raw material (RM) and KOH. The selected weight ratio of RM:KOH was 1:1, 1:2, and 1:4. The resulted graphitic carbon was sulfonated by heating with the sulfuric acid to obtain a solid acid catalyst. The sulfonic time was evaluated for 5 and 10 hours. The generated particles were characterized to examine the morphology, the crystallinity, the specific surface area, the chemical bonding, and the ionic capacity using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-Ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen gas absorption-desorption, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and titration method, respectively. The best condition for graphitization of raw material is the use of RM:KOH = 1:4, resulting in the highest surface area reaching 1259.67 m2/g and the most dominant of the sulfonic group of −SO3 bond. Furthermore, increasing the sulfonating time from 5 to 10 hours led to the increase of the yield of esterification reaction from 85% to 96.57% for graphite synthesized using RM:KOH = 1:4. Copyright © 2020 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).

Electrochemical synthesis of hydroxyapatite particles was performed from a homogeneous solution of Na2H2EDTA.2H2O, KH2PO4 and CaCl2 without stirring to investigate the mechanism of hydroxyapa-tite formation. We found that OH- ions generated by water reduction at the cathode play an important role in the formation of hydroxyapatite particles. The OH- ions induce the liberation of Ca2+ ions and the dissociation of phosphoric acid, which serve as the reactants for the formation of hydroxyapatite particles. Two layers with a clear boundary were formed during electrolysis. The upper layer comprises the produced particles and the lower layer is a homogeneous solution. The produced particles were held in the region between the electrodes mainly due to the electrostatic interactions of charged particles in an electric field. The hydroxyapatite particles are agglomerates consisting of spherical particles. Aging the suspension for 24 h after electrolysis leads to the transformation of hydroxyapatite to brushite. Thus, if producing hydroxyapatite is desired, the particles should be continuously removed from the system. This method appears to be promising as a continuous process to produce hydroxyapatite parti-cles using an electrochemical method. © 2014 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

The formation reaction of LiFePO4 from decomposition of precursors LiOH, FeSO4.7H2O and (NH4)2HPO4 with mol ratio of Li:Fe:P=1:1:1 was investigated. The experiment was carried out by thermogravimetric differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) method using nitrogen as atmosfer at a constant heating rate to obtain kinetic constant parameters. Several heating rates were selected, there are 5, 7, 10, 15, 17.5, 22.5 and 25 °C/min. Activation energy, pre-exponential factor and reaction order were taken using Kissinger method and obtained respectively 56.086 kJ/mol, 6.95×108 min-1, and 1.058. Based on fitting result between reaction model and experiment were obtained that reaction obeyed the three dimension diffusion model. © 2014 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)