The bulk polymerization of vinyl chloride is still at the present time far from being well understood. In spite of the economic importance of the process, the detailed quantitative behavior of the reactor has not been elucidated. Immediate reasons for this, are given by the physical complexities of particle formation (arising from oligomer precipitation in solution), and heterogeneous polymerization kinetics, recalling that the process starts with one liquid monomer phase and finishes with three phases: liquid and gaseous monomer, and solid polymer.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Radio Chemistry / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis advisor: Rudolph Hon / Thesis advisor: Yvette Kuiper / Chloride-based deicers (NaCl, CaCl₂, MgCl₂), also referred to as road salt, are the most common substances used in maintaining safe roadway surfaces during the winter months. Upon application, road salt reacts with the accumulated snow or ice to form brine equilibrium solutions along the liquidus line in the salt-water system. Dissolved salts dissociate, leading to increased concentrations of the respective ions in nearby soils, surface water, and groundwater. Of the ions present in road salt, chloride has the advantage of tracking all chloride deicers at the same time and since chloride ions are conservative tracers in soils it stays unaffected by ionic exchange interferences. This study explores the mechanisms of chloride return flows by investigating chloride dissolved loads, chloride concentrations in stream waters, seasonal patterns, and changes over the course of four years in two separate watersheds in Massachusetts with differing degrees of urbanization. The chloride tracking technique used in this study is based on calibrated chloride concentrations obtained from specific conductance signals recorded every 15 minutes by automatic recording systems at two locations, one in rural central Massachusetts and the other in urban eastern Massachusetts. These systems are maintained by the USGS, which also provide the simultaneously recorded stream flow datasets. The dissolved chloride load carried by each river is calculated for each single 15-minute interval by multiplying water volume with the corresponding chloride concentration, resulting in a total of over 34,000 data points per annum per site. Hydrograph separation techniques were used to separate dissolved load transported by each river into two separate flow components, event flow resulting from precipitation events, and baseflow resulting from groundwater discharge. Well defined hydrograph baseflow supported periods yield consistent chloride concentrations independent of the season at either urban or rural study sites. Comparison of direct runoff dissolved chloride loads with the total annual dissolved loads suggests that only a small fraction of the deicers actually removed during the overland runoff events and that a minimum of 60% of the total load discharged each year in both urban and rural systems is transported by groundwater. From groundwater recharge by brines rural watersheds are currently retaining as much as 95% of the total chloride applied to roadways each year while urban and suburban watersheds may only retain 75% of the total chloride applied to roadways each year. The increased retention of chloride in rural areas is likely due to the decreased amount of chloride transported during winter seasons as event flow compared to urban watersheds. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Geology and Geophysics.

In this work the method of isotopic substitution in neutron diffraction is used to measure the partial structure factors of several binary systems. Molten sodium chloride at 820(5) °C is investigated and an improvement is made on the previously available data. The applicability of a simple model pair potential for the asymptotic decay of the pair correlation functions is discussed. The glass forming system zinc chloride is also investigated in both the molten phase at 332(5) °C and the glassy phase at 25(1) °C. The measured partial pair distribution functions show that the zinc atoms are fourfold coordinated in both the glass and the liquid and that the first sharp diffraction peak in the total structure factor is mainly due to the zinc-zinc correlations. A simple ionic model can account for several factors associated with the ultimate decay of the partial pair correlation functions.

ClC proteins encompass a large protein family consisting of both voltage-dependent chloride channels and chloride/proton exchangers that are found in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. These proteins mediate Cl- flux across the plasma membrane or intracellular membranes of many cell types including neurons, epithelial cells, and skeletal muscle in mammals. Mutations in genes encoding these channels also contribute to several human diseases. The mechanism of ion conduction through ClC proteins is becoming better defined, largely due to the availability of a crystal structure of a bacterial ClC transporter. Because crystal structures only capture a snapshot a protein in a single conformation, however, the large conformational changes associated with channel opening and closing have remained largely undefined. In the cation channel field, ion conduction and conformational changes that occur during channel gating have been studied using peptide toxin inhibitors isolated from animal venoms. However, only one peptide toxin inhibitor of a chloride channel of known molecular identity has ever been identified. Georgia anion toxin 1 (GaTx1), inhibits the CFTR chloride channel, which is unrelated to ClC proteins on the levels of both three dimensional structure and primary sequence. Here, we describe the characterization of the inhibitory activity of Leiurus quinquestriatus hebraeus scorpion venom against the ClC-2 chloride channel. We found that the venom from this scorpion contains a peptide component that is capable of inhibiting the ClC-2 chloride channel. This component was isolated using standard chromatography techniques, and found that the active component is a 3.2 kDa peptide composed of 29 amino acids. We showed that the active toxin, Georgia anion toxin 2 (GaTx2), interacts with ClC-2 with an affinity in the picomolar range, and appears to slow channel opening. Finally, GaTx2 is not capable of inhibiting other members of the ClC protein family, other major chloride channels, or voltage-gated potassium channels. This toxin will provide a new tool for structure/function studies of ClC-2, and will hopefully serve as only the first toxin inhibitor available for this protein family.

Thesis (M.A. Sc.)--Centre for Building Studies, Concordia University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-93). Available also on the Internet.

No description available.

Published Article / Corrosion of rebar in concrete is commonly associated with the free chloride in the pore water in the cement matrix. Knowing the quantity of chloride in concrete is important because chloride can promote corrosion of steel reinforcement when moisture and oxygen are present. The problem ofphysical extraction and the measurement of the free chloride content in pore water solutions extracted from cement pastes has received attention in literature but has not been explained in full detail. However, the variability of results obtained from the different methods used by various investigators only serves to confuse the issue. This investigation describes the use of a tumbler designed to prepare homogeneous samples and the use of a pore water expression device designed to extract free chloride in cement paste and concrete samples.

published_or_final_version / Zoology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy