V. Van Speybroeck

Nitrogen oxides, NOx, are formed in combustion engines. They contribute to acid rain and the formation of ozone and are hazardous for men and environment. In this article, a process was investigated that can 'capture' the NOx from the exhaust gases using heteropoly acids and can later release them for processing. One of the main conclusions is that the mobility of the captured and released molecules is the key to control the reaction. This can now be used to optimize and commercialize the technology.

Stikstofoxiden, aangeduid als NOx, worden gevormd in verbrandingsmotoren. Ze dragen bij tot zure regen, de vorming van ozon en zijn dus schadelijk voor mens en milieu. In dit artikel werd een proces onderzocht dat de NOx kan ‘vangen’ uit de uitlaatgassen aan de hand van heteropolyzuren en later terug kan vrijgeven voor verdere verwerking. Een van de belangrijkste vaststellingen is dat de mobiliteit van de opgeslagen en vrijgegeven moleculen de sleutel is voor het controleren van het proces. De conclusies van het onderzoek kunnen nu verder gebruikt worden voor de optimalisering en commercialisering van het proces.

http://www.ugent.be/nl/actueel/nieuws/persberichten/stikstofoxide-nox-ve...

NOx adsorption on Phosphotungstic acid is entropy-driven due to the watermolecules that are released.

Structural analysis of modified DNA with NMR is becoming ever more difficult with increasingly complex compounds under scrutiny for use in medical diagnosis, therapeutics, material science and chemical synthesis. To facilitate this process, we develop a molecular modeling approach to predict proton chemical shifts in sufficient agreement with experimental NMR measurements to guide structure elucidation. It relies on a QM/MM partitioning scheme and first principle calculations to predict the spatial structure and calculate corresponding proton chemical shifts. It is shown that molecular dynamics simulations that take into account solvent and temperature effects properly are of utmost importance to sample the conformational space sufficiently. The proposed computational procedure is universally applicable to modified oligonucleotides and DNA, attaining a mean error for the proton chemical shifts of less than 0.2 ppm. Here, it is applied on the Drew-Dickerson d(CGCGAATTCGCG)2 dodecamer as a benchmark system and the mispair-aligned N3T-ethyl-N3T cross-linked d(CGAAAT*TTTCG)2 undecamer, illustrating its universal use as computational tool to assist in structure elucidation. For the proton chemical shifts in the cross-linked system our methodology yields a strikingly superior description, surpassing the predictive power of (semi-)empirical methods. In addition, our methodology is the only one available to make an accurate prediction for the protons in the actual cross-link. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first computational study that attempts to determine the chemical shifts of oligonucleotides of this size and at this level of complexity.

An ecient protocol is presented to compensate for the basis set superposition error (BSSE) in DFT molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using localized Gaussian basis sets. We propose a classical correction term that can be added a posteriori to account for BSSE. It is tested to what extension this term will improve radial distribution functions (RDFs). The proposed term is pairwise between certain atoms in dierent molecules and was calibrated by tting reference BSSE data points computed with the counterpoise method. It is veried that the proposed exponential decaying functional form of the model is valid. This work focuses on hydrogen-bonded liquids, i.e. methanol, and more specic on the intermolecular hydrogen bond, but in principle the method is generally applicable on any type of interaction where BSSE is significant. We evaluated the relative importance of the Grimme-dispersion versus BSSE and found that they are of the same order of magnitude, but with an opposite sign. Upon introduction of the correction, the relevant RDFs, obtained from MD, have amplitudes equal to experiment.

The epoxidation of cyclohexene has been investigated on a metal–organic framework MIL-47 containing saturated V+IV sites linked with functionalized terephthalate linkers (MIL-47-X, X=OH, F, Cl, Br, CH3, NH2). Experimental catalytic tests have been performed on the MIL-47-X materials to elucidate the effect of linker substitution on the conversion. Notwithstanding the fact that these substituted materials are prone to leaching in the performed catalytic tests, the initial catalytic activity of these materials correlates with the Hammett substituent constants. In general, substituents led to an increased activity relative to the parent MIL-47. To rationalize the experimental findings, first-principles kinetic calculations were performed on periodic models of MIL-47 to determine the most important active sites by creating defect structures in the interior of the crystalline material. In a next step these defect structures were used to propose extended cluster models, which are able to reproduce in an adequate way the direct environment of the active metal site. An alkylperoxo species V+VO(OOtBu) was identified as the most abundant and therefore the most active epoxidation site. The structure of the most active site was a starting basis for the construction of extended cluster models including substituents. They were used for quantifying the effect of functionalization of the linkers on the catalytic performance of the heterogeneous catalyst MIL-47-X. Electron-withdrawing as well as electron-donating groups have been considered. The epoxidation activity of the functionalized models has been compared with the measured experimental conversion of cyclohexene. The agreement is fairly good. This combined experimental–theoretical study makes it possible to elucidate the structure of the most active site and to quantify the electronic modulating effects of linker substituents on the catalytic activity.