Improvement of Isomerization Process of Crude Isoamylene with Tertiary-amyl-alcohol Addition

The present work contributed to a new developed production method for enhancing the quality of isoamylene （IA） by adding a small amount of tertiary amyl alcohol （TAA） to the catalyst of strong acid cation exchange resin. TAA improved the selectivity of 2-methyl-2-butene （2M2B） at a high conversion level for the isomerization of IA. Compared with the other results from the current IA units, the conversion of 2-methyl- 1-butene （2M1B）, the mass ratio of 2M2B to 2M1B and the selectivity of 2M2B were increased from 0.5474, 7.32 and 0.6864 to 0.72, 12 and 0.95, respectively, while the dimers content in the products decreased from 4.38% to below 1.0%. Optimized conditions for IA isomerization consisted of temperature between 28 and 33℃ and system pressure of 0.5 MPa, weight hourly space velocity of 8.0 h-1 with TAA mass fraction of 0.7%-0.9% in raw material. The results in lab supported bases for the developed process in industrial application which was later proved to be successful. In addition, a possible mechanism of the isomerization process was speculated to propose a key step of water formation in the TAA-added isomerization process and a verified experiment was conducted to support this speculation.

Methodology for Design of Reactive Distillation Column and Kinetics for Isoamylene Etherification Catalysed by Amberlyst 35

Isoamylene from the Fischer-Tropsch syncrude can be transformed to valuable fuel oxygenate additives through an equilibrium limited etherification reaction with methanol. A reactive distillation process is established to increase isoamylene conversion. Facing the challenge of improving product purity at the same time, an equilibrium stage model based design methodology is proposed and illustrated step-by-step for converting the Fischer-Tropsch C_5 olefins to tert-amyl methyl ether(TAME) process by using Aspen Plus. Under the guide of the proposed methodology, the design leads to a TAME product purity of higher than 95% and an isoamylene conversion of higher than 90%. The etherification kinetics over Amberlyst 35 is also studied within a temperature range of 60 ℃ to 75 ℃ to shed more light on the feasibility of process development. The methodology provides an effective reactive distillation column design to achieve the target reactant conversion and product purity simultaneously.

Methoxyl methyl ether isoamylene quercetin, a quercetin derivative, protects rat aorta endothelial cells against oxidation and apoptosis

Methoxyl methyl ether isoamylene quercetin （MIAQ） is one of the newly synthesized quercetin derivatives. The present study investigated the effect of MIAQ on rat aorta endothelial cells （RAECs） injured by hydrogen peroxide （H2O2）, as well as the potential mechanisms. We observed that MIAQ at 2.5-10μmol/L significantly enhanced the viability of injured RAECs, and the effect was more potent than quercetin and ct-tocopherol. However, M1AQ at the same concentration failed to show anti-oxidant activity in a cell-free system. In H2O2-injured endothelial cells treated with MIAQ （5-10μmol/L）, the level of nitric oxide （NO） and malondialdehyde was decreased, and the activities of superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase was enhanced. In addition, RAECs treated with MIAQ （2.5-10 μmol/L） exhibited significant inhibiting apoptosis. In conclusion, MIAQ had protective effect on RAECs, possibly through increasing NO production and antioxidases activities, as well as inhibiting apoptosis. These findings suggest that MIAQ is possibly beneficial in the prevention of atherosclerosis and other diseases related to endothelial injury.