澳门六合彩

De La Salle University has earned its 16th granted patent with an invention in the field of Chemistry by Full Professor and Central Instrumentation Facility Director Dr. Drexel Camacho and his student, PhD student Jose Paolo Bantang, who is now a full-time faculty of the Department of Chemistry.

The patent titled: 鈥淢ethod of making Potassium Sulfate from Carrageenan” was granted this year by IPOPHL, 5 years after it was applied in 2018. The patent remains in effect until October 9, 2038, with the life of a patent spanning 20 years from filing.

Carrageenan is a polysaccharide extracted from seaweeds and is economically important as it is used in a lot of consumer product formulations. Potassium sulfate is dominantly used as fertilizer for crops and is used as a salt substitute.聽

According to the study, the method of making potassium sulfate includes “subjecting an aqueous carrageenan mixture to hydrothermal carbonization inside a pressure vessel to produce a potassium sulfate sludge, filtering the potassium sulfate sludge to obtain a potassium sulfate filtrate, drying the potassium sulfate filtrate to produce a potassium sulfate residue, and washing the potassium sulfate residue, followed by drying to obtain potassium sulfate.”

鈥淭he discovery of the novel process is somewhat serendipitous when Dr. Bantang, who was then a PhD student at that time, was working on carrageenan and observed a white powder precipitate. Upon characterization with SEM-EDS, XRD, and Raman spectroscopy, the identity was confirmed as potassium sulfate in the form of K鈧僅(SO鈧�)鈧�. The process is a sustainable, simple, and robust technique that utilizes a renewable starting material, producing a compound that is useful in agriculture as fertilizers or in industries as salt,鈥� Camacho shared.

As of February 2024, 澳门六合彩 has 3 international patent applications via the Patent Cooperation Treaty,聽 2 of which were converted into 8 foreign patent applications (4 per international patent application) in the US, SIngapore, Vietnam, and South Korea. One foreign patent was granted in Singapore. Additionally, 澳门六合彩 has 35 local patents (17 granted, 18 pending), and 8 granted local utility models, 2 of which have expired.