Alessandro Galia

Alessandro Galia
University of Palermo | UNIPA · Dipartimento dell'Innovazione Industriale e Digitale (DIID)

PhD

About

171
Publications
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4,711
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Publications

Publications (171)
Article
Full-text available
The cathodic reduction of pressurized CO2 (PrCO2CR) at suitable cathodes can allow to produce various chemicals, such as formic acid/formate (FA) and carbon monoxide or synthesis gas, with high faradic efficiencies (FEs) and productivities. Here, we have performed the conversion of CO2 in an undivided pressurized electrochemical reactor using silve...
Article
We studied the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of digested sewage sludge (DSS) as model of waste biomass in batch and continuous reactors. HCOOH and KOH were used to improve the slurry pumpability. HTL experiments were conducted at the same kinetic severity factor in a batch reactor of 25 mL of volume and in a continuously operated tubular reactor...
Article
Electrochemical conversion of CO2 in the aqueous electrolyte into value-added chemicals is considered one of the most promising strategies to valorize waste-CO2. In the last decade, high attention was focused on the electrochemical synthesis of formic acid (FA) via CO2 reduction using Sn cathodes. To improve the final concentration of FA in aqueous...
Article
Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of sewage sludge (SS) was performed in the presence of metallic Zn, Fe and Ni to investigate their effect on the performances of the process in terms of product yields and quality. Experiments were performed in subcritical water at 350 °C for 10 min using each metal individually and in the presence of homogenous hydr...
Article
Particle morphology and surface properties of metal oxides are topics of great importance in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. Herein, we have developed a molecular-colloidal coassembly approach combined with an ultrasonic-assisted precipitation method to fabricate [email protected]γ-Al2O3 composites with tuneable pore size and well-defined oct...
Article
A scientometric analysis of articles published from 1986 to 2022 on batch hydrothermal liquefaction of microalgae, macroalgae, lignocellulosic biomass, sewage sludge and organic wastes in water was performed. We found that biocrude yield can be correlated with the kinetic severity factor (KSF) and scattering of experimental data increases in the su...
Article
Full-text available
Recently, it has been shown that the electrochemical treatment of wastewater polluted by recalcitrant organics and containing chlorides can be significantly improved adopting proper operative conditions such as suitable anodes and cathodes and low current density. In particular, it has been shown that the use of suitable cathodes such as carbon fel...
Article
Full-text available
In the last years, an increasing attention has been devoted to the utilization of anodic oxidation (AO) technologies for the treatment of wastewater polluted by recalcitrant organics. Recently, Ti 4 O 7 was proposed as a promising anode for AO for the treatment of various organics. Here the potential utilization of commercial Ti 4 O 7 anodes has be...
Chapter
This chapter is devoted to special heat engines. It is a broad group that includes salinity gradient heat engine technologies of different nature and that cannot be included within the classes of osmotic heat engines and reverse electrodialysis heat engines. The chapter is divided into three different parts, each one presenting the latest achieveme...
Article
The work herein was focused to study the effect of the microplastics on the yield and quality of biocrude (BC) produced by hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of real municipal sludge (RMS). HTL experiments with RMS containing 3 % w/w microplastics were conducted at 325 °C and 30 min both in the absence and in the presence of CoMo/Al2O3, NiMo/Al2O3 and...
Article
In the last years, large attention has been devoted to the electrochemical treatment of wastewater polluted by recalcitrant organics and containing chlorides. However, the utilization on an applicative scale of this route is limited by the fact that usually it is not possible to achieve high removals of organics without the generation of significan...
Article
Electrochemical conversion of CO2 to CO or syngas (CO/H2 mixture) is considered one of the most promising approaches to valorise waste-CO2. To develop the process on industrial scale, it would be necessary to use selective and inexpensive electrodes and to obtain high productivities with low energy consumption. In this frame, Ni−NC catalysts are co...
Article
Full-text available
Pruning is an important horticultural practice for the management of olive orchards ( Olea europaea L.) that generates a considerable amount of residues every year. Olive orchards are increasingly expanding beyond the Mediterranean Basin to new growing Countries (Australia, California, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) and this will certainly lead to l...
Article
Full-text available
In the last years, an increasing attention has been devoted to the utilization of electroFenton (EF) and EF based technologies for the treatment of wastewater polluted by recalcitrant organics. It has been shown that the performances of EF can be strongly improved using ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, e.g., the photo‐electroFenton (PEF) method, or pr...
Article
The electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide is considered one of the most promising strategies to convert waste-CO2 into value-added chemicals. This review focuses on the synthesis of formic acid/formate in aqueous electrolyte using Sn-based cathodes; this material is considered relatively cheap and shows promising results in terms of faradaic...
Article
Full-text available
In the last decade, the electrochemical conversion of CO 2 to formic acid, FA, using Sn‐based cathodes, was widely investigated. In this work, the technical feasibility and economic viability of this process were evaluated considering the most promising electrochemical routes reported in the literature. Five case studies, based on the utilisation o...
Article
Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of municipal sludge (MS) was studied at 325°C and 30 min at 10 and 30% w/w concentration of MS using formic acid (FA) as a green liquid hydrogen donor both in the absence and in the presence of heterogeneous catalysts. Pellets of commercial NiMo/Al2O3, CoMo/Al2O3 and felt of activated carbon ACF 1600 were used as cat...
Article
Thermally regenerative ammonia battery is a very promising approach to use waste heat to generate electrical energy. However, according to literature, the price of electric energy obtained by this device is much higher than alternative renewable technologies (such as wind, solar, geothermal, etc.). In particular, to make the process more viable for...
Article
Full-text available
Electrochemical reduction of pressurized CO2 is proposed as an interesting approach to overcome the main hurdle of the CO2 electrochemical conversion in aqueous solution, its low solubility (ca. 0.033 M), and to achieve good faradaic efficiency in CO using simple sheet silver cathodes and undivided cells, thus lowering the overall costs of the proc...
Article
In the last years, an increasing attention has been devoted to the utilization of electro-generated chlorinated oxidants for the treatment of wastewater polluted by recalcitrant organics and/or for the disinfection of water contaminated by pathogen microorganisms. In this review, more recent and relevant findings were presented and critically discu...
Article
Full-text available
Cinchonidine-functionalized β-cyclodextrin was used as stabilizing agent for platinum nanoparticles dispersed in water, but also as chiral modifier for the asymmetric hydrogenation of ethyl pyruvate at 30 °C under 40 bar of hydrogen. This functionalized cyclodextrin allowed getting more stable, more catalytically active and also more enantioselecti...
Article
In this paper, the utilization of assisted reverse electrodialysis (A-RED), recently used for pre-desalination, is proposed as a general method to reduce the energy requirements of electrolysis processes and evaluated for two model processes: (i) the cathodic conversion of carbon dioxide to formic acid; (ii) the anodic treatment of water contaminat...
Article
Full-text available
Ni‐Cu‐Al layered double hydroxide (Ni‐Cu‐Al LDH) was proposed as electro‐Fenton‐like catalyst for 8‐hydroxyquinoline‐5‐sulfonic acid (8‐HQS) removal in water. The properties of prepared catalysts were characterized by X‐ray, SEM and EDAX analyses. The effect of numerous operative parameters on the removal of 8‐HQS and TOC was studied. Very high rem...
Article
Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of municipal sludge (MS) was performed at 350 °C for 30 min (subcritical water) and at 400 °C for 0 min (supercritical water) at fixed kinetic severity (LogR0 = 8.9) in static and stirred batch reactors to study the effect of the flow regime on the energy recovery (ER) of the process and on the quality of the product...
Article
Electrochemical processes are considered very effective methods for the treatment of wastewater contaminated by organics resistant to conventional biological processes and various inorganic pollutants. Large sites that treat wastewaters usually deal with a large number of waters often characterized by different salinity contents, that could be pote...
Article
The electrochemical oxidation of organics in paper mill wastewater belonging to Halfa industries (Tunisia) was performed by galvanostatic electrolyses using electro-Fenton (EF) process. The effect of several operating parameters, such as applied current density, electrodes material, air pressure and the presence of sodium chloride (NaCl) was evalua...
Article
Full-text available
The modification of polymer architectures by reaction with chemically adsorbed hydroxyl radicals has been thoroughly investigated by electrolyzing dilute aqueous solutions of the biocompatible polymer poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP), using an undivided electrolytic cell with a Ti/IrO2–Ta2O5 (DSA®) anode. Several electrolyses were performed to assess t...
Article
Full-text available
In the past few years, thermally regenerative ammonia battery (TRAB) has been proposed as an effective tool to recover waste heat at temperatures below 130 °C. Most of the literature available is devoted to the power production step, with less attention being given to the regeneration step (e.g. the removal of ammonia from the anolyte). In this pap...
Article
Full-text available
The electrochemical reduction of pressurized carbon dioxide at tin cathode is considered a very promising process for the production of formic acid. Here the process was studied in an undivided cell with the aim of developing a simple theoretical model. First, a large series of polarization and electrolyses was performed in order to evaluate the ki...
Poster
Full-text available
It has been calculated that the energy dissipated wherever the rivers get to the sea corresponds to an amount of about 2 TW of power [1]. Recovering part of this energy could attenuate the dependency of our economic system from fossil fuels. The techniques conceived to exploit this blue energy are grouped within the family of the salinity gradient...
Poster
Full-text available
In the last years, many efforts have been devoted to the development of electrochemical processes for the effective treatment of wastewater contaminated by organic pollutants resistant to conventional biological processes and/or toxic for microorganisms [1-5]. It was shown that some electrochemical approaches, including the direct anodic oxidation...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
It is widely accepted that one of the most important issue to be faced by the scientific community is how to sustain the modern way of living and the related energy demand. While a long term target is the transition to a full-renewable energy system, a closer exigency is the optimization of the processes already existing. It has been calculated tha...
Article
The interesterification of rapeseed oil was performed in a batch reactor using for the first time low surface area massive tin(II) oxide as heterogeneous catalyst and methyl acetate as acyl acceptor. The effect of reaction temperature, methyl acetate to oil molar ratio and catalyst loading on the performances of the process were investigated. Yield...
Article
Production of biocrude through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of sewage sludge (SS) and Chlorella vulgaris was investigated. NiMo/Al2O3 (KF 851), CoMo/Al2O3 (KF 1022) and activated carbon felt, tested as catalysts at 598 K for 30 min, did not change the biocrude yield but significantly improved its quality. Quantitative sulfur removal and lower ox...
Article
The effect of air pressure on electro-Fenton (PrEF process) was evaluated using two organic substances (maleic acid and Acid Orange 7) as model organic pollutants. First experiments were performed using a conventional carbon felt (CF) cathode. At room pressure, a slow removal of maleic acid was obtained, together with the generation of formic acid....
Article
In the last years, the electrochemical conversion of oxygen to hydrogen peroxide at carbon felt has been largely studied in order to define a new route for the production of H2O2 and to optimize the electro-Fenton process, which is based on the cathodic generation of H2O2. In particular, many studies regarding electro-Fenton process were carried ou...
Article
The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to formic acid was performed for the first time in a pressurized filter-press cell with a continuous recirculation of the electrolytic solution (0.9 L) at a tin cathode. It was shown that the performances of the system are comparable or slightly better than that of a batch system with a smaller volume...
Article
Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a promising technology for the production of biocrude oil from microalgae. Although this catalyst-free technology is efficient under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions, the biocrude yield and quality can be further improved by using heterogeneous catalysts. The design of robust catalyst that preserve th...
Article
The treatment of toxic organic pollutants by electro-Fenton (EF) presents some drawbacks such as the necessity to work at low pH and the low solubility of oxygen in water contacted with air or oxygen at room pressure that results often in slow and relatively low abatements. Here, the coupled adoption of natural heterogeneous catalysts and of relati...
Article
Alginate, a carbohydrate abundant in the outer cell wall of macroalgae, was subjected to catalytic aqueous phase reforming (APR) to produce hydrogen using a 3% Pt/C commercial catalyst. The performance of the process was evaluated according to the conversion of the carbon to gas, the hydrogen yield and the hydrogen selectivity. The catalyst and fee...
Poster
Full-text available
Municipal, domestic, animal and food processing wastewater have a theoretical carbon content sufficient to energetically sustain the whole water infrastructure. However, it is a common practice to use additional energy to remove it instead of trying to convert it (1). It is possible, indeed, to directly convert this organic content into electricity...
Article
In this work, four air-breathing microbial fuel cells (AB-MFC) were operated for 1 month in order to determine if the methodology of inoculation affects the steady-state performance of this type of MFCs. For this purpose, anaerobic and aerobic sludge were fed to two identical AB-MFCs without any external carbon source into a tight sealed environmen...
Article
A conceptual analysis of coupling a concentrating solar power plant with a biorefinery process consisting in the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of microalgae to biocrude was performed. The configuration of the CSP-HTL plant was designed to allow continuous operation considering 10 kT of microalgae processed each year using, for the first time, a t...
Article
The electrochemical generation of H2O2 can be performed in aqueous solutions by cathodic reduction at carbonaceous cathodes of oxygen coming from air. The performances of the process in terms of concentration of H2O2 and current efficiency (CE) are limited by the low solubility of oxygen in water at atmospheric pressure. However, the solubility of...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A conceptual analysis of the coupling of a concentrating solar power plant with a chemical process for hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of microalgae to biocrude was performed. The two plants were considered coupled by molten salt recirculation that granted energetic supply to the chemical process. Preliminary estimations have been done considering...
Article
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can allow the treatment of organic pollutants resistant to conventional biological processes by electro-Fenton (EF) process performed in the cathodic compartment. However, EF usually results in a partial mineralization of pollutants. Here, we have studied the possible treatment of such organics in a MFC by a sequential c...
Article
Recently, electro-Fenton (EF) process has been shown as a promising, facile, effective, low cost and environmentally-friendly alternative for synthesizing polymer nanogels suitable as biocompatible nanocarriers for emerging biomedical applications. Here, the electrochemically-assisted modification of poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) by EF process was s...
Article
Catechol, one of the most abundant compounds in olive mills wastewaters, which is generated in the Fenton degradation of various aromatic compounds, is a toxic, possible carcinogen, persistent pollutant and it is not readily biodegradable. Hence, its degradation requires the utilization of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). Here, the electrochemi...
Article
Available for 50 days at: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1Wks25bbJ5VMAA Waste minimization and circular thinking are to be achieved in order to cope with the limited amount of resources of our planet. In this perspective, bio-electrochemical systems (BESs) can contribute to the global balance with their ability to extract chemical residual energy...
Article
Atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) is often used for grafting from fluorinated polymers. Nevertheless, the possibility to initiate an ATRP from a C−F functionality and the activity of the catalysts in the presence of fluoride anions are essentially unexplored. Therefore, we investigated the thermodynamics and kinetics of C−F bond activatio...
Article
Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are bio-electrochemical devices which convert the chemical energy content of organic fuels into electricity, thanks to the ability of anode respiring bacteria to give electrons to the anode. This result is usually achieved under anaerobic conditions, obtained with a sealed anode chamber. Despite this, Shewanella oneidens...
Article
Many researchers have shown that selected anodic processes allow an effective treatment of a very large set of wastewater contaminated by pollutants resistant to biological processes. In the meantime, various authors have shown that carbon dioxide can be converted to higher value products such as formic acid or synthesis gas by cathodic reduction a...
Poster
Full-text available
Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) is an emerging bio-technology which exploits the capability of bacterial communities to interact with electrodes. The scheme of a traditional MFC (Fig. 1A) and a Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFC) are very similar. Two chambers are connected through a proton exchange Membrane. In the anodic chamber an organic fuel (substrate) is o...
Chapter
Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is a process for direct electricity production from salinity gradients, based on the use of suitable exchange membranes. To develop the RED process on an applicative scale and to add value to the overall process, a key role is entrusted to the selection of electrodic system, redox species, and electrode materials. In p...
Article
The reduction of carbon dioxide to formic acid at a tin cathode was studied in both divided and undivided cells. In the first stage of the study, the effect of some operating parameters, including the working potential and the nature of the supporting electrolyte and of the cathode, on both the cathodic reduction of CO2 and the anodic oxidation of...
Article
In this work the sterilization with dense carbon dioxide of poly(l-lactic acid) (PLLA) porous scaffolds intended for tissue engineering applications was investigated with the main objective of confirming the three-dimensional efficacy of the treatment and of analysing the scaffold properties after CO2 treatment. For this purpose the scaffold was co...
Article
The ring opening polymerization (ROP) of ϵ-caprolactone (CL) in the presence of β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) was performed in batch reactors both at room pressure and with the reaction system pressurized with CO2, N2 or Ar. Significant enhancements of the polymerization rate was observed when the ROP was carried out with wet β-CD under pressure. For examp...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Autohydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass in liquid hot water has been widely studied owing to its high efficiency and relatively low cost. In the perspective of industrial applications, continuous or semi-continuous processes are more interesting than batch systems. Moreover, microwave heating of pretreatment systems has been proposed...
Article
A facile electrosynthesis route for the preparation of polymer nanogels based on the in situ production of hydroxyl radicals is reported for the first time. Electro-Fenton process with continuous H2O2 electrogeneration and Fe2 + regeneration performs better than electro-oxidation with a boron-doped diamond or dimensionally stable anode for promotin...
Article
The treatment of wastewater contaminated by organics was performed under a continuous mode using, for the first time, micro electrochemical cells in series. Both electro-Fenton (EF) with graphite cathode and electrochemical oxidation (EO) at boron doped diamond anodes were used. EO gave higher abatement of TOC but drastically higher energetic consu...
Article
The electro-generation of H2O2 and the abatement of the model organic pollutant Acid Orange 7 (AO7) in water by an electro-Fenton process were performed under moderate air pressures (up to 11 bar) for the first time to our knowledge. An increase of the pressure gave rise to a drastic enhancement of the concentration of hydrogen peroxide. In systems...
Article
For the first time a microbial reverse electrodialysis cell (MRC) was used for the treatment of water contaminated by Cr(VI). It has been recently shown that both inorganic and organic pollutants can be removed by reverse electrodialysis processes (RED) using water with different salinity without the supply of electric energy. However, a high numbe...
Article
The utilization of poly(vinylchloride) (PVC) and poly(vinylidenefluoride) (PVDF) as macroinitiators for atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) was studied performing electroanalytical investigations and “grafting from” experiments to evaluate the potential modification of such commercial polymers by ATRP. Th...
Article
Full-text available
A semiquantitative analysis by means of midinfrared FT-IR spectroscopy was tuned for the simultaneous determination of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin in industrial crops such as giant reed (Arundo donax L.) and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). Ternary mixtures of pure cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin were prepared and a direct correlati...
Article
The electrochemical conversion of dichloroacetic acid into chloracetic acid is performed in three different microdevices: a simple microfluidic cell; a microfluidic stack equipped with various electrode chambers in series and three microfluidic cells in series. The synthesis of chloracetic acid is performed successfully at low cell potentials witho...
Article
The simultaneous generation of electric energy and the treatment of wastewaters contaminated by an organic pollutant resistant to conventional biological processes, Acid Orange 7 (AO7), was achieved for the first time using proper redox processes by reverse electrodialysis using salinity gradients. The stack was fed with two aqueous solutions with...
Article
The role of the polymer interfacial area on free radical grafting of acrylic acid (AA) onto poly(vinylidenefluoride) (PVDF) was studied at 65°C using supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) as a solvent and swelling agent, benzoylperoxide (BPO) as chemical initiator and PVDF nanoparticles as polymer matrix. Under adopted conditions PVDF particles do n...
Article
The interesterification of rapeseed oil was performed for the first time by using tin octoate as Lewis acid homogeneous catalysts and methyl or ethyl acetate as acyl acceptors in a batch reactor, within the temperature range 393–483 K. The yields in fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) and triacetin (TA) after 20 h of reaction time increased from 8% and...