This issue...

  Brieflies

  View from the Inside

  Humble Weed Becomes Model

   Microscopic Shock Waves

  Working Science

  People

  Site Seeing

  E-mail Reminder






















This issue...

  Brieflies

  View from the Inside

  Humble Weed Becomes Model

   Microscopic Shock Waves

  Working Science

  People

  Site Seeing

  E-mail Reminder

Brieflies ...

A new technique speeds analysis of the composition of solutions by coupling capillary electrophoresis (CE) with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS). The CE/FCS technique, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, capitalizes on the selectivity of the CE separation technique and the sensitivity and rapid analysis times of the FCS optical technique to quickly identify small molecules in very dilute solutions. This work is reported in Analytical Chemistry 70(21):4463-4471. The rapid analysis possible with the CE/FCS technique will have many applications in the analytical chemistry field, particularly for bioscience-related analyses. This work is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Contact: Richard Keller, Los Alamos National Laboratory, (505) 667-3018, keller@lanl.gov

Room-temperature ionic liquids may be suitable and environmentally safer replacements for the flammable, toxic, and volatile organic compounds currently used in liquid-liquid separation processes. They also do not emit vapors and are easily recycled. Professor Robin D. Rogers' team at the University of Alabama demonstrated that partitioning of organic solutes between an ionic liquid and water corresponds approximately to the distribution of the same solutes between molecular organic solvents and water. This is the first time that ionic liquids have been used for water-organic separations. The team conducted experiments with a water-immiscible, room-temperature ionic liquid (butylmethylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate) to demonstrate partitioning of substituted benzene derivatives. The researchers are now testing the hypothesis that the partitioning is due to the charged state and/or relative hydrophobicity of the solute being tested. This research, which is supported by the Office of Basic Energy Science, may lead to development of novel clean separation technologies that can be used in applications such as removing organic contaminants from wastewater and remediating soils. For more information, see the article in Chemical Communications 1998, p. 1765. Contact: Robin D. Rogers, University of Alabama, (205) 348-4323, rdrogers@bama.ua.edu

Disophil, a new material for sequestering radionuclides, was created by Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee with support from the Office of Basic Energy Sciences. The scientists' basic research on sequestration of metal ions in solution and in polymers demonstrated the effectiveness of diphosphonic acids for capturing metal ions. Incorporating diphosphonic acids into silica gel resulted in Diphosil, a functionalized porous silica that selectively sorbs radioactive actinide ions and other highly charged metal ions from acidic aqueous solutions. Dr. James V. Beitz, Argonne, has shown that Diphosil can be converted into a glassy form by heating. Radionuclides sorbed into Diphosil can be encapsulated and chemically fixed in a nonporous glassy silica by thermal densification at a significantly lower process temperature than borosilicate nuclear waste glass. Using Diphosil, only the sorbed metals ions are incorporated into the final waste form, resulting in a 100-fold or more reduction in the volume than the currently used borosilicate-based nuclear waste glass processing. Contact: James V. Beitz, Argonne National Laboratory, (630) 252-7393, beitz@anl.gov
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