Method of forming colloidal lignin particles, comprising the step of dissolving lignin in a mixture of organic solvents, feeding of the said solution into water, and forming acolloidal dispersion of lignin. The used solvents are recovered with methods such as distillation and reused in the process. Water is removed from the colloidal dispersion by ultrafiltration and reused in the process. The concentrated colloidal dispersion is dried by spray drying. The invention can be used in applications where the colloidal nature of lignin will afford an advantage over bulk lignin.

The present invention provides a method for manufacturing a dispersion in which a substance, which is poorly soluble in a dispersion medium, is dispersed with a particle size of a nano-order level. More particularly, the method includes: preparing a solution containing a good solvent and the poorly soluble substance and the surfactant dissolved in the good solvent; rapidly cooling the solution to a temperature at which the poorly soluble substance precipitates in the solution at a temperature lowering rate of 100 to 4,000° C./second to produce ultrafine particles with a particle size of a nano-order level formed of the poorly soluble substance in the good solvent; and (i) separating the good solvent from a mixed solution of the solution and the dispersion medium after mixing the solution and the dispersion medium, or (ii) mixing the dispersion medium to the solution after separating the good solvent from the solution.

A cerium-zirconium based mixed oxide composition have: (a) a Ce:Zr molar ratio of 1 or less, and (b) a cerium oxide content of 10-50% by weight. The composition has (i) a surface area of at least 18 m.sup.2/g, and a total pore volume as measured by N.sub.2 physisorption of at least 0.11 cm.sup.3/g, after ageing at 1100° C. in an air atmosphere for 6 hours, (ii) a surface area of at least 42 m.sup.2/g, and a total pore volume as measured by N.sub.2 physisorption of at least 0.31 cm.sup.3/g, after ageing at 1000° C. in an air atmosphere for 4 hours, and (iii) Dynamic Oxygen Storage Capacity (D-OSC) value as measured by H.sub.2-TIR of greater than 500 μmol/g at 600° C. after aging at 800° C. in an air atmosphere for 2 hours. A process contacts the exhaust gas with the composition Another process is for preparing the composition.

Urea and amine comprising sol-gel hybrid coatings have been developed for numerous applications, including capillary microextraction-high performance liquid chromatographic analysis from aqueous samples. A fused silica capillary may be coated from the inside with surface bonded coating material and may be created by in-situ sol-gel reaction(s). Urea-functionalized coatings can be immobilized on the inner surface of a capillary by condensing silanol groups of capillary and sol-solution. Urea functionalized, sol-gel coated capillaries may be installed, e.g., in HPLC manual injection ports, and optionally pre-concentrated analytes including phenols, ketones, aldehydes, and/or polyaromatic hydrocarbons, from highly polar to non-polar, maybe analyzed by online extraction and high-performance liquid chromatographic. Such coatings may achieve sensitivities with lower detection limits (S/N=3) of 0.10 ng/mL to 14.29 ng/mL, with reproducibilities of <12.0% RSD (n=3), or <10.0% RSD (n=3) by exchanging the capillary of the same size.

A method for treating biomass to manufacture biomass beads adapted to an implementation in a gasification method, the method comprising the following steps: a) providing a biomass powder, for example a wood bark powder, the particle size of the biomass powder preferably being less than 200 μm, b) providing an alginate solution comprising water and alginate, for example potassium alginate or sodium alginate, c) adding the biomass powder to the alginate solution and mixing, whereby a colloidal suspension is formed, d) dropwise adding the colloidal suspension to an ionotropic coagulation bath comprising multivalent ions, whereby biomass beads are formed.

Provided is a method for the preparation of a porous hollow shell WO.sub.3/WS.sub.2 nanomaterial, comprising: (1) adding a hexavalent tungsten salt to a sol A comprising mesocarbon microbeads, and stirring to obtain a sol B; (2) drying and grinding the sol B, and then heating a resulting powder at 200-500° C. for 0.5-2 hours to obtain a porous hollow shell WO.sub.3 nanocrystalline material; (3) placing the porous hollow shell WO.sub.3 nanocrystalline material obtained by Step 2 and a sulfur powder separately in a vacuum furnace, controlling such that a degree of vacuum is −0.01 to −0.1 MPa and a temperature is 200-500° C., and reacting for 0.5-3 hours to obtain a WO.sub.3/WS.sub.2 porous hollow shell nanocrystalline material. Also provided is a porous hollow shell WO.sub.3/WS.sub.2 nanocrystalline material obtained by the method.

This invention relates to azirconium hydroxideor zirconium oxide comprising, on an oxide basis, up to 30 wt % of a dopant comprising one or more of silicon, sulphate, phosphate, tungsten, niobium, aluminium, molybdenum, titanium or tin, and having acid sites, wherein the majority of the acid sites are Lewis acid sites. In addition, the invention relates to a catalyst, catalyst support or precursor, binder, functional binder, coating or sorbent comprising the zirconium hydroxide or zirconium oxide. The invention also relates to a process for preparing zirconium hydroxide, the process comprising the steps of:(a) dissolving a zirconium salt in an aqueous acid, (b) addingone or more complexing agents to the resulting solution or sol, the one or more complexing agents being an organic compound comprising at least one of the following functional groups: an amine, an organosulphate, a sulphonate, a hydroxyl, an ether or a carboxylic acid group, (c) heating the solution or sol formed in step (b), (d) adding a sulphating agent, and (e) adding a base to form a zirconium hydroxide, and (f) optionally adding a dopant.

The disclosure relates to a method for manufacturing a colloidal dispersion of Kraft lignin (KL) nanoparticles, said method comprising the steps of (a) providing KL; (b) dissolving said KL into a solvent, to obtain a solution having a concentration of Kraft lignin of at least 15 mg/ml; and (c) mixing said solution with an antisolvent under mixing conditions, to provide a colloidal dispersion of nanoparticles. Said method is remarkable in that the solvent used in step (b) of dissolving said KL is one or more organic solvents, and in that step (c) of mixing is performed by the addition of the solution of step (b) into an antisolvent being or comprising water. The disclosure also relates to spherical KL nanoparticles with an average diameter size ranging from 9 nm up to 70 nm. The disclosure further relates to various uses of said spherical KL nanoparticle.

Janus particles, including biodegradable, biocompatible, anisotropic, amphiphilic Janus nanocolloids, and their use in stabilizing emulsions and cleansing are described.

Water-soluble copolymers based on a) 50 to 97% by weight of one or more non-ionic, ethylenically unsaturated monomers containing amide groups, b) 0.1 to 10% by weight of one or more ethylenically unsaturated monomers containing silane groups c) 1 to 30% by weight of one or more ionic, ethylenically unsaturated monomers and optionally one or more further ethylenically unsaturated monomers, are useful as protective colloids for inorganic particle and water-insoluble polymer particle dispersions. wherein the figures in % by weight add up to 100% by weight.