Biomechatronic design combines mechanical and electric product design principles with biotechnology [1]. Systematic conceptual design, used for decades in product development for mechanical product ...
Reproducible manufacturing of the pore system is indispensable to many technical applications using porous materials. An adequate system of monitoring production is required for quality assurance of the product. The type and structure of the pore system determine, for example, the accessibility of molecules to the pore system, the speed of the diffusion processes and the available surface area for the application. Classic examples of such applications are adsorbents for liquid chromatography and supports for catalysts and solid phase synthesis. Standards methods for the determination of physical parameters of porous materials (specific surface area, specific pore volume or average pore diameter) are nitrogen adsorption and mercury intrusion [1, 2]. These techniques can be used to measure pores from about 4A (nitrogen adsorption) or 35A (mercury intrusion) upwards. However, it is generally not possible to draw conclusions on the accessibility of a pore system to larger molecules in day-to-day use, e.g. catalytic reactions on organic molecules or the chromatography of biopolymers. Furthermore, nitrogen-adsorption and mercury-intrusion tests provide hardly any information on the speed of transport processes for molecules dissolved in liquids. Pore accessibility and the kinetics of transport processes are, however, decisive criteria for the quality and economy of adsorptive separation processes, catalysis and synthesis on surfaces. An ideal complement to nitrogen adsorption and mercury intrusion is inverse gel permeation chromatography (GPC, also often called SEC) described in detail below [3, 4, 5] using Sachtopore (Fig. 1), a material for technical adsorption processes and for liquid chromatography, as an example [6, 7]. Since measurements using inverse GPC are also made in the liquid phase, the results provide information on the pore accessibility and the speed of exchange of substances for chromatographic applications. The method also determines standard propterties, of course, such as pore volume, surface area, and average pore diameter.
Comprehensive characterisation is unavoidable when developing porous high-tech materials and for quality control measurements during production. This involves a combination of different measuring techniques. These include scanning electron microscopy, gas sorption measurement, mercury intrusion porosimetry, laser diffraction and pycnometry. We describe a number of these methods of characterisation using a novel, porous, titanium dioxide-based solid support for chromatography.
Experts working in a wide range of industries are constantly searching for ways to improve product performance and streamline production. Yet everyone involved in the development, formulation or manufacture of a product, where components are in particulate form during the process, knows that variability in a powder's behaviour presents a significant challenge. With over 50 % of manufactured products in powder form at some stage of their production, the economic significance of powders is clear. Consistent, high quality manufacture of plugs and sockets, the appropriate formulation of pharmaceuticals or the energy-efficient production of cement for example, all demand an understanding of powder flowability that, up to now, has mostly come from experience.
Triglycerides are the major components in edible oils. This note describes a method for analyzing intact triglycerides by LC/MS and the type of information available.
