An efficient and practical catalytic system for the oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes/ketones using catalytic amounts of Bi(NO₃)₃ and Keto-ABNO (9-azabicyclo [3.3.1]nonan-3-one N-oxyl) with air as the environmentally benign oxidant was developed. Various primary and secondary alcohols were smoothly oxidized to the corresponding products under mild conditions, and satisfactory yields were achieved. Moreover, this methodology avoids the use of a ligand and base. The gram-scale reaction was demonstrated for the oxidation of 1-phenyl ethanol, and the product of acetophenone was obtained at an isolated yield of about 94%.

In this work, the distribution and partition behavior of ionic liquids (ILs) in nanopores with rough surfaces are investigated by a two-dimensional (2D) classical density functional theory model. The model is consistent with the equation of state that combines the perturbed-chain statistical associating fluid theory and the mean spherical approximation theory for bulk fluids. Its performance is verified by comparing the theoretical predictions with the results from molecular simulations. The fast Fourier transform and a hybrid iteration method of Picard iteration and Anderson mixing are used to efficiently obtain the solution of density profile for the sizable 2D system. The molecular parameters for IL-ions are obtained by fitting model predictions to experimental densities of bulk ILs. The model is applied to study the structure and partition of the ILs in nanopores. The results show that the peak of the density profile of counterions near a rough surface is much higher than that near a smooth surface. The adsorption of counterions and removal of co-ions are enhanced by surface roughness. Thus, the nanopore with a rough surface can store more charge. At low absolute surface potential, the partition coefficient for ions on rough surfaces is lower than that on smooth surfaces. At high absolute surface potential, increasing surface roughness leads to an increase in the partition coefficient for counterions and a decrease in the partition coefficient for co-ions.

EPC-SAFT-DFT is a powerful tool for studying the properties of confined ionic liquids for CO₂ separation, in which efficient algorithms are required to obtain the calculation efficiently. In this work, the feasibility of accelerating the ePC-SAFT-DFT calculation with the Chebyshev pseudo-spectral collocation method was discussed for the confined ionic liquid (IL)–CO₂ systems. In addition, a general scheme was proposed to search the electrical boundary potential. The new algorithm was further combined with the general scheme to model the confined IL–CO₂ systems. It was found that the Chebyshev pseudo-spectral collocation method can improve the efficiency of the ePC-SAFT-DFT calculation significantly. Moreover, the new algorithm can be further combined with the general scheme to efficiently describe the density profile of the IL–CO₂ system inside the electroneutral nanopores.