Annual review of chemical and biomolecular engineering最新文献

High-pressure processing (HPP), also known as high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), is essential in contemporary food engineering. This review evaluates its significance through aspects like microbial safety, nutritional and sensory quality, sustainability, market acceptance, economic viability, and technological versatility. By critically examining the current state and potential of HPP, this article highlights that, despite emerging alternatives, food engineering remains strongly reliant on high pressure as an irreplaceable technology due to its unique benefits in ensuring sustainable, high-quality, and safe food products.

Chemical engineers have played a vital role in the pharmaceutical industry for more than a century, bridging the gap between scientific discovery and large-scale drug manufacturing. This review examines the evolution in the role of chemical engineers and their impact on the development of small molecules, biologics, and emerging modalities such as oligonucleotides and gene therapies. We provide historical context, from early breakthroughs in insulin and penicillin production to the integration of continuous processing and advanced modeling. Key areas of focus include reaction engineering, separations, crystallization, fluid dynamics, process control, and continuous manufacturing. Looking ahead, chemical engineers will be central to addressing challenges in sustainability, advanced delivery systems, and the application of artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies. As therapeutic complexity grows, the application of engineering fundamentals, integrated with life and natural sciences, remains essential for ensuring safe, efficient, and scalable manufacturing of medicines that advance global health.

Sodium-based batteries are gaining momentum as a cost-effective, sustainable alternative to lithium-based batteries, driven by the global demand for scalable energy storage. At the same time, polymer electrolytes are being widely pursued as safer, more electrochemically stable alternatives to liquid electrolytes. Sodium polymer electrolytes require advancement in various aspects, such as ion transport and electrode compatibility, before application in rechargeable sodium-ion or sodium metal batteries. This review examines the progress in characterization of the bulk properties of sodium polymer electrolytes, molecular interactions in the bulk, and their interfaces/interphases with electrodes, with attention paid to differences between characterization methodology and select properties of sodium versus lithium analogs. Highlighted topics include ionic conductivity, sodium transference, ion speciation, electrochemical stability, safety, and electrochemical and chemical characterization of interfaces, interphases, and with sodium sulfur cathodes.

Tissue engineering aims to restore, maintain, or improve damaged tissues through the use of polymer scaffolds that support cellular growth and regeneration. Copolymerization enables the fine-tuning of thermal, structural, and mechanical polymer properties, facilitating scaffold fabrication via techniques like electrospinning and 3D printing. Functionalization and bioconjugation approaches, including thiol-ene click chemistry, allow for targeted surface modification without altering bulk properties, improving interaction with biological environments and enhancing the specificity and functionality of polyester-based scaffolds. This review highlights the central role of polymer reaction engineering in advancing aliphatic polyesters for tissue engineering, focusing on recent innovations in synthetic strategies and functionalization techniques that expand their applicability in regenerative medicine.

The conversion of CO₂ into fuels and chemicals requires significant energy input to break C-O bonds and create C-C and C-H bonds. This review explores the energy and capital barriers to CO₂ utilization, using ethylene production as a case study by comparing CO₂ electroreduction with other carbon mitigation options, including carbon capture and sequestration. The world's energy and capital resources are limited-scarce, in the parlance of economics-and choosing to use them to implement one path to decarbonization displaces other options for decarbonization or other priorities. These opportunity costs are significant and should not be ignored. Instead of breaking the C-O bonds in CO₂ to produce chemicals and fuels, society should prioritize the higher CO₂ mitigation efficiencies of alternative approaches, such as carbon capture and sequestration, new process and catalyst technologies for key molecules, and capital-efficient hydrogen production.

The phase diagram of colloidal systems strongly depends on the nature of interparticle interactions, which reflect the physical mechanisms that stabilize the particles in the medium. In systems with dominant short-range attractions, where interactions act over distances much shorter than the particle diameter, the extended law of corresponding states asserts that an interaction potential can be described by three key parameters: effective diameter, interaction strength, and second virial coefficient. If these parameters are the same, then different systems exhibit identical phase behavior, structure, and dynamics. In this review, we outline the origin and formulation of this law and the evidence that supports it. We further examine its applicability to protein solutions near liquid-liquid phase separation and to colloidal systems with short-range attraction and long-range repulsion, exploring the possibility of a universal phase diagram and extending its relevance for understanding the nature of these complex fluids.

The emergence of the United States as the leading global producer of oil and gas has driven increased interest in the greenhouse gas emissions from US energy supply chains. Methane emissions are a major portion of these greenhouse gas emissions, and the spatial and temporal patterns of methane emissions from oil and gas sources are complex. A wide variety of measurement and modeling approaches for estimating methane emissions from US oil and gas supply chains have emerged over the last decade, and this review summarizes their current status and prospects for improvement. Although no single measurement method or modeling approach will be successful in accurately characterizing all emissions, the integration of multi-scale measurement and modeling approaches can provide accurate and comprehensive estimates of emissions.

Irreversible electroporation (IRE) is a nonthermally mediated tissue ablation modality that makes use of short pulsed electric fields to destroy cancerous lesions in situ. In the past two decades, IRE has established itself not only as an effective means to ablate small, unresectable tumor masses but also as a tool particularly qualified to modulate the tumor microenvironment in a way that dismantles pathways of cancer immunosuppression and permits the development of a systemic antitumor immune response. However, despite its immune-stimulating tendencies, for most cancers conventional IRE alone is insufficient to establish an immune response robust enough to fully eliminate disseminated disease and prevent recurrence. Here, we describe the current understanding of the histological and immunological effects of IRE, as well as recent efforts to optimize IRE parameters and develop rational combination therapies to increase the efficacy of the resulting immune response.

The Savannah River Site has been successfully processing and immobilizing nuclear waste since 1996. However, recent developments in both the scientific understanding of chemical principles and the engineering of immobilizing nuclear-waste systems demand a review of the state of the art. These recent advances have significance to other locations that immobilize nuclear waste. The subject matter of this review may find special applicability to chemical engineers interested in hazardous chemical processes (such as processing toxic and radioactive nuclear waste) and to those in the nuclear industry curious about current research in nuclear-waste processing at a site that has eclipsed the quarter-century mark of large-scale (136 million L total) nuclear-waste processing.