Development of Renewable Woodceramics Synthesized from Cashew Nuts Shell Oil

The international issue to be addressed towards realizing a low-carbon society is to reduce the amount of carbon-based underground reserves such as coal, petroleum, and coke, and strongly encouraged to use carbon neutral biomass-derived resources. Woodceramics is a hybrid porous carbon material composed of wood-based biomass and phenolic resin, characterized by high far-infrared emissivity and large specific surface area. Woodceramics has been studied as heating elements and humidity and gas sensors, etc. If this is applied to the inner walls of aging and grain drying furnaces for vegetables and fruits, both ripening and drying are greatly promoted and fossil fuels used in boilers can be significantly reduced. In fact, it can produce black garlic with far infrared rays using a woodceramics brick efficiently. Furthermore, as a substitute for phenolic resin, if plant-based liquefied materials from cashew nut shell oil can be prepared and can be used for manufacturing woodceramics, then all carbon neutral circulating woodceramics made from wood-based biomass is possible to manufacture. On the other hand, woodplastics is a composite material that can be made of wooden materials and plastics, and able to expect the effective use of wood-based biomass and waste plastics.

Corrosion Inhibition of Amino Pentadecylphenols (APPs) Derived from Cashew Nut Shell Liquid on Mild Steel in Acidic Medium

In this study, corrosion inhibiting properties of amino pentadecylphenols (APPs) derived from Cashew Nut Shell Liquid (CNSL) on mild steel in aerated 0.10 M HCl at 303 K were studied using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and potentiodynamic polarization measurements. Both methods indicated the potential of a mixture of amino pentadecyphenols to serve as a corrosion inhibitor in mild steel in 0.10 M HCl. Corrosion inhibition efficiencies were observed to increase with increase in the inhibitor concentration, with maximum corrosion inhibition of about 98% at inhibitor concentration of 600 ppm. The adsorption of the inhibitor on mild steel surface was found to obey Temkin adsorption isotherm, signifying physical adsorption of the inhibitor molecules on mild steel surface.

Prediction of performance, combustion and emission characteristics of diesel-thermal cracked cashew nut shell liquid blends using artificial neural network

This paper explores the use of artificial neural networks （ANN） to predict performance, combustion and emissions of a single cylinder, four stroke stationary, diesel engine operated by thermal cracked cashew nut shell liquid （TC-CNSL） as the biodiesel blended with diesel. The tests were performed at three different injection timings （21°, 23°, 25℃A bTDC） by changing the thickness of the advance shim. The ANN was used to predict eight different engine-output responses, namely brake thermal efficiency （BTE）, brake specific fuel consumption （BSFC）, exhaust gas temperature （EGT）, carbon monoxide （CO）, oxide of nitrogen （NOx）, hydrocarbon （HC）, maximum pressure （Pm~,,） and heat release rate （HRR）. Four pertinent engine operating parameters, i.e., injection timing （IT）, injection pressure （IP）, blend percentage and pecentage load were used as the input parameters for this modeling work. The ANN results show that there is a good correlation between the ANN predicted values and the experimental values for various engine performances, combustion parameters and exhaust emission characteristics. The mean square error value （MSE） is 0.005621 and the regression value ofR2 is 0.99316 for training, 0.98812 for validation, 0.9841 for testing while the overall value is 0.99173. Thus the developed ANN model is fairly powerful for predicting the performance, combustion and exhaust emissions of internal combustion engines.

Biobased Aromatic-Aliphatic Polyols from Cardanol by Thermal Thiol-Ene Reaction

Cardanol is a natural phenol which is obtained from high vacuum distillation of cashew nut shell liquid.It contains a hydrocarbon chain of 15 carbon atoms in the meta position,either with one,two or three nonconjugated double bonds.This article describes thermal thiol-ene reaction to synthesize new cardanol-based polyols for polyurethanes with aromatic-aliphatic structure.Phenolic hydroxyl group was blocked by alkoxylation and 2-mercaptoethanol was added to the double bonds of propoxylated cardanol.The resultant product is a mixture of polyols that may contain one,two,three or four hydroxyl groups,as a function of the number of double bonds reacted with 2-mercaptoethanol.Similar polyols,but with much higher functionality,were also synthesized from condensation of cardanol-based novolacs with formaldehyde.These cardanolbased polyols were further utilized to prepare rigid polyurethane foams(PUs)with excellent physical and mechanical properties,useful for various applications in chemical and food industries.