Is the nano-age here to stay or will a bubble soon burst? This thought-provoking page-turner takes a critical glance at how nanotechnology has affected virtually all areas of our lives. From the pharmaceutical industry to energy production and storage, many fields have been truly revolutionized during the nano-age. The internationally renowned author explores the topic in nine entertaining chapters.

The book deals with the environmentally friendly cleaning materials functionalized with TiO2, a widely known semiconductor giving rise to redox reactions under artificial or solar irradiation. The role of Titanium dioxide in the worldwide community is introduced first. The fundamental working principles of heterogeneous photocatalysis follow and a critical section on the semiconductor bulk and surface properties open the way to the differences between TiO2 blend features with respect to analogous thin film layouts. Then follows the main section of the book which deals with the techniques applied to manufactured commercial devices, ranging from glasses to textiles and from concrete and other construction materials to paintings. Also road asphalt and other devices, such as photocatalytic air conditioning machines are outlined. Last generation materials, not yet commercialized, and the deposition techniques applied to prepare them are also widely discussed. The final part of the book covers the difficult and modern topic of standardization and comparison of performance of photocatalytic processes and in particular the guidelines proposed by various worldwide organizations for standardization are discussed. The book covers the general matters as well as the practical applications with the supporting methods discussed in detail. This book brings together a team of highly experienced and well-published experts in the field, providing a comprehensive view of the applications of supported titanium dioxide.

Single-Atom Catalysis: A Forthcoming Revolution in Chemistry reviews the latest developments, including whether or not this technology can become a technically and economically viable choice and whether existing challenges can be overcome to encourage its uptake. Beginning with an introduction to single-atom catalysis and current developments in the field, the book then reviews its role in potentially disruptive technologies, with a particular focus on applications in synthetic organic chemistry, solar hydrogen technologies and low platinum/platinum-free fuel cells. Other sections cover the steps needed for single-atom catalysis to become an industrially viable technology and its future outlook. Based on the extensive experience of its award-winning author, this book provides an authoritative guide on this novel approach.

Glycerol: The Renewable Platform Chemical provides a valuable overview of the glycerol market, including industrial applications and sustainable production of glycerol. Replacing previous works on the subject, this useful resource describes glycerol, also known as glycerine, and its chemical derivatives, especially the new bioglycerol-derived products. The monograph also discusses how the industrial use of glycerol as raw material for producing commodity chemicals depends on broader scope and lower cost of the catalytic process used to convert glycerol of varying purity grades into valued monomers. New chapters on glycerol polymers, the use of glycerol as antifreeze, and its sustainable production offer relevant information for researchers and professionals from academics and industry alike. The book features new processes, such as low cost and biocompatible glycerol polymers as a major alternative to the conventional polymers, with the first practical applications now emerging in the biomedical and patient care markets. The book offers both a source of inspiration for new projects and a reliable source of information on how glycerol is replacing petrochemicals in many real world applications.

Renewable hydrogen produced using solar energy to split water is the energy fuel of the future. Accelerated innovation in both major domains of solar energy (photovoltaics and concentrated solar power) has resulted in the rapid fall of the solar electricity price, opening the route to a number of practical applications using solar H2. New thermochemical water splitting using concentrated solar power (CSP) as well as CSP coupled to electrolysis has the potential to convert and store solar energy into clean hydrogen using a tiny fraction of the world's desert area to meet our present and future global energy needs. Photovoltaics, in turn, has the versatility required for supporting the creation of a distributed energy generation infrastructure in developing countries especially now that the price of PV solar electricity has fallen to unprecedented low levels. In all these cases, solar H2 will be used to store energy and release it on demand either for fuel cells (to power homes and boats) or internal combustion engines and turbines (for powering cars, trucks and in thermoelectric power units). This book on solar hydrogen is unique in its field and is a timely treatment of a hot topic in industry, academic, political and environmental circles. With reference to many examples as well as to new technologies, this accessible book provides insight into a crucial technology for our common future and numerous colour pictures contribute to the book's readability. Written by experts in the field who are engaged at the forefront of research, the book supplies readers with last minute insight from the frontiers of research. The book will be of interest to Politicians, solar PV companies, hydrogen and sustainability researchers, environmentalists, managers in the automotive and nautical industries, undergraduate and graduate students in physics, chemistry, energy and materials science.

By-products of global biodiesel manufacturing are a global fact and the immense amount of glycerol by-product stacking unsold until mid 2005 gave a visual image of the huge loss of energy and material resources. This was due to the lack of suitable conversion processes for this, the oldest organic molecule known to man, despite various experiments by some biodiesel producers. The large surplus of glycerol by-product which entered the chemical market has caused closure of existing glycerol plants and the discovery of processes that use glycerol as a raw material for the production of value-added chemicals and even of energy. This was followed by 3-4 years of intense research activity worldwide, where human chemical ingenuity opened up a number of practical avenues to convert glycerol into value added products of mass consumption. For instance, the batteries of your laptop and iPod, as well as your car's antifreeze will soon be based on glycerol, the same sweet viscous substance currently present in soaps. Reporting and commenting on such achievements this book aims to inform chemistry professionals, including managers and technologists, on the large potential of glycerol as versatile biofeedstock for the production of a variety of chemicals, polymers and fuels. Whilst filling a gap in the current literature, this nicely illustrated book is written in a clear, concise style and presents the numerous uses of glycerol as a new raw material which are starting to have an impact on industry worldwide. Elucidation of the principles governing the new chemistry of glycerol goes along with updated industrial information that is generally difficult to retrieve. Through its 10 chapters, the monograph tells the story of a chemical success -- that of converting glycerol into value added products -- and highlight the principles that made it possible. Whether as solvent, antifreeze, detergent, monomer for textiles or drug, new catalytic conversions of glycerol have been discovered that are finding application for the synthesis of products whose use range from everyday life to the fine chemical industry. Readers are also shown how a number of practical limitations posed by glycerol chemistry, such as the low selectivity encountered employing traditional stoichiometric and older catalytic conversions, were actually solved based on the understanding of the fundamental chemistry of glycerol and by application of catalysis science and technology. Readers also find a thorough discussion on the sustainability issues of bioglycerol production covering societal, environmental and economic dimensions to reflect the needs of politicians and citizens of today who require cross border research. By explaining the advantages and problems as well as offering solutions the book aids understanding as to whether biodiesel and glycerol refineries are convenient and economically sound. Chemical research on glycerol has shown that given a strong economic input, chemists are able to rapidly devise a whole set of new upgrading processes for the biorefinery and that the latter integrated unity for production energy and chemicals is not just dream of environmentally-minded scientists but an inevitable reality of today. Due to the ever decreasing energy return on energy invested, global society is being forced to switch from fossil to renewable fuels until cheap and abundant energy of solar origin becomes a reality. In this evolution, biofuels, particularly biodiesel, will certainly play a role and therefore, glycerol will be a key raw material for the biorefinery for many years to come. The book's users include industry's top managers and management consultants and also R&D and marketing managers. Along with technical content of a high quality, this is also a strategic book for top managers of the chemical, biofuel, oleochemical and detergent industries.