Bulk chemicals future developments

As for other recyclable heterogeneous catalysts, zeolites and related materials can also contribute to the development of environmentally friendly processes in the synthesis of bulk and fine chemicals. The concept of a biomass refinery, capable of separating, modifying and exploiting the numerous constituents of renewable resources, is gaining worldwide acceptance today with a very broad outlook. This chapter has attempted to show that this particular area of carbohydrate chemistry is in itself very rich, both in already acquired knowledge and potential future developments. 

The development of low erosion doped graphites has reached a point where chemical erosion at elevated temperatures can be suppressed. The important parameter appears to be the atomic distribution of metal carbide dopants. The future development must go in the direction of the production of doped bulk CFC materials. 

Herein we review recent progress in the rational moulding of SMMs into new materials and devices. Many different structural types have been shown to lead to SMM behavior, and the interested reader is addressed to dedicated reviews [14-17] and the remainder of this volume. Our choice has been to focus on the family of Mn complexes, which exhibit the highest Tb and the greatest chemical versatility among known SMMs. Their synthesis, structure, reactivity and physical behavior are briefly outlined in Sects. 1.2 and 1.3. Section 2 is devoted to the preparation of new bulk materials containing SMMs, whereas Sect. 3 focusses on the organization of SMMs into bidimen-sional nanostructures. A perspective view of the future developments in the field is eventually provided in Sect. 4. 

In keeping with the industry s tendency to develop filtration media to deal with die need for finer filtration, we also feature an article by Ken Sutherland on the use of membranes in the bulk chemical industry, taking a look at how these work in practice and the possible future developments for this sector of the industry. 

In the future, biorefineries will process a variety of biomass-based feedstocks in order to produce new base chemicals for the production of many new and already existing bulk chemicals and polymers. White biotechnology will play an important role in this development, as it does already in the production of pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals and speciality chemicals. 

Trace impurities in noble metal nanoclusters, used for the fabrication of highly oriented arrays on crystalline bacterial surface layers on a substrate for future nanoelectronic applications, can influence the material properties.25 Reliable and sensitive analytical methods are required for fast multi-element determination of trace contaminants in small amounts of high purity platinum or palladium nanoclusters, because the physical, electrical and chemical properties of nanoelectronic arrays (thin layered systems or bulk) can be influenced by impurities due to contamination during device production25 The results of impurities in platinum or palladium nanoclusters measured directly by LA-ICP-MS are compared in Figure 9.5. As a quantification procedure, the isotope dilution technique in solution based calibration was developed as discussed in Chapter 6. 

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