Natural clay being locally abundant and cheap material in Algeria can be easily activated to become a promising adsorbent for phenol removal from aqueous solution. The natural clay before and after activation was characterized using XRD and IR techniques. The effects of various experimental parameters, such as initial phenol concentration, temperature, pH, contact time, and adsorbent dose on the adsorption extent were investigated. Langmuir adsorption model was used for the mathematical description of the adsorption equilibrium and the equilibrium data fixed very well with this model. The activated natural clay had the monolayer adsorption capacity equal to 15 mg/g at pH value of 5.0 and 23°C; adsorption measurements show that the process is very fast and physical in nature. The extent of the phenol removal increased with decrease in the initial concentration of the phenol and contact time of solution. The results showed that as the amount of the adsorbent was increased, the percentage of phenol removal increased accordingly. Thermodynamic parameters showed that the adsorption of phenol on activated natural clay was exothermic.

A rapid and easy solvent free one-pot synthesis of 5-arylidene-2-imino-4-thiazolidinones by condensation of the thioureas with chloroacetic acid and an aldehyde under microwave-irradiation is described.

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A series of original atropisomeric iminothiazolines 1 in which X ) OH or (and) Y ) OH were prepared from the corresponding methoxy precursors. The resolution of the atropisomeric enantiomers on chiral support is reported, and the barriers to enantiomerization are given. These barriers were determined either by off-line racemization studies or by treatment of the plateau-shape chromatogram during chromatography on chiral support. When X ) OH, the barriers are quite low due to the development of a hydrogen bond between the proton of the OH group and the nitrogen of the imino group. For these compounds, plateau shape chromatograms were obtained during HPLC on chiral support. DFT calculations confirmed the occurrence of hydrogen bonding all along the rotation process and produced calculated barriers in close agreement with the experimental data. Compound 1i (OH, OH) in which both X and Y are hydroxy groups was particularly easy to prepare by demethylation with BBr 3 of the dimethoxy precursor. Since the above-mentioned precursor is readily available from N,N′-bis(2-methoxyphenyl)thiourea and 1-chloropropan-2-one, 1i (OH, OH) is a good candidate for further functionalization. Atropisomerism in a 12-membered bridged bisether prepared from 1i (OH, OH) is reported as an illustrating example.