in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).In recent years, many chemical companies have adopted the concept of sustainable development as a core business value. In this context and with focus on early phases, we present a novel design framework that comprises four stages of process modeling and multiobjective evaluation considering monetary and nonmonetary aspects. Each stage is characterized by the available information as a basis for process modeling and assessment. Appropriate modeling approaches, and evaluation indicators for economy, life-cycle environmental impacts, environment, health, and safety (EHS) hazard, and technical aspects are selected for each defined stage. The proposed framework is demonstrated on the design of a methyl methacrylate (MMA) process: considering 17 synthesis routes, the framework is mimicked step-by-step, to select the route with the best multiobjective performances, and to produce an optimized process flowsheet. As a validation of the framework, evaluation profile of six routes over all stages are compared, and crucial points are identified that should be estimated considerably well in early stages of the framework.

No abstract

No abstract

This study is devoted to deducing exact elastic constants of an anisotropic solid material without using any advance information on the elastic constants by incorporating a displacement-distribution measurement into resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS). The usual RUS method measures free-vibration resonance frequencies of a solid and compares them with calculations to find the most suitable set of elastic constants by an inverse calculation. This comparison requires mode identification for the measured resonance frequencies, which has been difficult and never been free from ambiguity. This study then adopts a laser-Doppler interferometer to measure the displacement-distribution patterns on a surface of the vibrating specimen mounted on pinducers; comparison of the measured displacement distributions with those computed permits us to correctly identify the measured resonance frequencies, leading to unmistakable determination of elastic constants. Because the displacement patterns are hardly affected by the elastic constants, an exact answer is surely obtained even when unreasonable elastic constants are used as initial guesses at the beginning of the inverse calculation. The usefulness of the present technique is demonstrated with an aluminum alloy and a langasite crystal.

The binding affinity between human immunoglobulin G (IgG) and protein A was studied by the homebuilt wireless-electrodeless quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). Protein A was immobilized on the electrodeless AT-cut quartz plate of 0.05 mm thick and its fundamental resonance frequency near 34 MHz was measured by a noncontacting manner using a line antenna. The vibrational analysis was performed to ensure higher sensitivity of the electrodeless QCM. A flow-cell system was fabricated to continuously measure the resonance frequency during the injection sequence of the IgG solutions with concentrations of 1-20,000 ng/mL. The exponential frequency changes were recorded to determine the affinity based on the Langmuir kinetics. The equilibrium constant K(A) significantly varied between 6 x 10(6) and 6 x 10(10) M(-1), depending on the IgG concentration, which is attributed to various formations of IgG-protein A complexes.