Dataset Information

On Tailoring Co-Precipitation Synthesis to Maximize Production Yield of Nanocrystalline Wurtzite ZnS.

ABSTRACT: Pyroelectric materials can harvest energy from naturally occurring ambient temperature changes, as well as from artificial temperature changes, notably from industrial activity. Wurtzite- based materials have the advantage of being cheap, non-toxic, and offering excellent opto-electrical properties. Due to their non-centrosymmetric nature, all wurtzite crystals have both piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties. Nanocrystalline wurtzite ZnS, being a room temperature stable material, by contrast to its bulk counterpart, is interesting due to its still not well-explored potential in piezoelectric and pyroelectric energy harvesting. An easy synthesis method-a co-precipitation technique-was selected and successfully tailored for nanocrystalline wurtzite ZnS production. ZnS nanopowder with nanoparticles of 3 to 5 nm in size was synthesized in ethyl glycol under medium temperature conditions using ZnCl₂ and thiourea as the sources of Zn and S, respectively. The purified and dried ZnS nanopowder was characterized by conventional methods (XRD, SEM, TEM, TG and FTIR). Finally, a constructed in-house pilot plant that is able to produce substantial amounts of wurtzite ZnS nanopowder in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way is introduced and described.

SUBMITTER: Krsmanovic Whiffen R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8000966 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Algal biofuels have the potential to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, but current growing methods fail to produce fuels that meet the multiple standards necessary for economical industrial use. For example, algae grown as monocultures for biofuel production have not simultaneously and economically achieved high yields of the high-quality lipid-rich biomass desired for the industrial-scale production of bio-oil. Decades of study in the field of ecology have demonstrated that simultaneous increases in multiple functions, such as the quantity and quality of biomass, can occur in natural ecosystems by increasing biological diversity. Here, we show that species consortia of algae can improve the production of bio-oil, which benefits from both a high biomass yield and a high quality of biomass rich in fatty acids. We explain the underlying causes of increased quantity and quality of algal biomass among species consortia by showing that, relative to monocultures, species consortia can differentially regulate lipid metabolism genes while growing to higher levels of biomass, in part due to a greater utilization of nutrient resources. We identify multiple genes involved in lipid biosynthesis that are frequently upregulated in bicultures and further show that these elevated levels of gene expression are highly predictive of the elevated levels in biculture relative to that in monoculture of multiple quality metrics of algal biomass. These results show that interactions between species can alter the expression of lipid metabolism genes and further demonstrate that our understanding of diversity-function relationships from natural ecosystems can be harnessed to improve the production of bio-oil.IMPORTANCE Algal biofuels are one of the more promising forms of renewable energy. In our study, we investigate whether ecological interactions between species of microalgae regulate two important factors in cultivation-the biomass of the crop produced and the quality of the biomass that is produced. We found that species interactions often improved production yields, especially the fatty acid content of the algal biomass, and that differentially expressed genes involved in fatty acid metabolism are predictive of improved quality metrics of bio-oil. Other studies have found that diversity often improves productivity and stability in agricultural and natural ecosystems. Our results provide further evidence that growing multispecies crops of microalgae may improve the production of high-quality biomass for bio-oil.

Dataset Information

On Tailoring Co-Precipitation Synthesis to Maximize Production Yield of Nanocrystalline Wurtzite ZnS.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets