Effect of O2 and temperature on the catalytic performance of Ni/Al2O3 and Ni/MgAl2O4 for the dry reforming of methane (DRM)

Al₂O₃ and MgAl₂O₄ supported 10% (w/w) Ni catalysts having a dispersion of 1.5 and 2.0% are active for DRM at 600 and 750 °C. High temperature reduction of both the calcined catalysts resulted in metallic Ni being formed, suggesting strong support metal interactions. The CH₄ and CO₂ conversion during DRM are relatively constant with time-on-stream, and are higher for Ni/MgAl₂O₄ than Ni/Al₂O₃. Carbon-whiskers are also detected on both catalysts. O₂ co-feed of 2.6% (v/v) and increasing reaction temperature to 750 °C helped in decreasing the amount of carbon deposited, except for Ni/MgAl₂O₄ at 600 °C. Furthermore, higher conversions and H₂/CO ratios are achieved. It appears that on spent Ni/MgAl₂O₄ a different type of carbon species was formed, and this carbon species was difficult to remove by oxygen at 600 °C. Thus, co-feeding O₂, using an appropriate temperature, and choosing a suitable support can reduce the carbon present on the nickel catalysts during DRM.     

Preparation of Gd2Zr2O7 nanoceramics from two-step thermal treatment and the aqueous durability analysis

Gd₂Zr₂O₇ ceramics demonstrate important prospect in the immobilization of high-level radioactive wastes (HLWs). In this study, Gd₂Zr₂O₇ nanoceramics were fabricated using two-step method, where Gd₂Zr₂O₇ nanopowder was firstly synthesized by solvothermal method and Gd₂Zr₂O₇ nanoceramics were subsequently sintered via self-propagating chemical furnace plus quick pressing (SCF/QP). The characterization results display that the Gd₂Zr₂O₇ nanocrystalline ceramics with average grain size of 78 nm and bulk density of 5.53 g cm⁻³ were successfully prepared. The results of MCC-1 static leaching experiments show that the normalized release rate (LR_i) of Gd is 2.2 × 10⁻² g m⁻²•d⁻¹ on the first day and converges to 1.2 × 10⁻³ g m⁻²•d⁻¹ after 42 days. Zr shows superior chemical stability as the 21 days LR_Zr value is as low as 2.7 × 10⁻⁶ g m⁻²•d⁻¹, which becomes constant as the leaching duration prolongs.     

Influence of reduction temperature on Ni particle size and catalytic performance of Ni/Mg(Al)O catalyst for CO2 reforming of CH4

Hydrotalcite-derived Ni/Mg(Al)O is promising for CH₄–CO₂ reforming. However, the catalysts reported so far suffer from sever coking at low temperatures. In this work, we demonstrate that a significant improvement of coke-resistance of Ni/Mg(Al)O can be achieved by fine tuning the Ni particle size through adjusting the reduction condition of catalyst. Ni particles having average size within 4.0–7.1 nm are in situ generated by reducing the catalyst at a selected temperature within 923–1073 K. Controllability of Ni particle size is related to the formation of Mg(Ni,Al)O solid solution upon hydrotalcite decomposition. It is found that the catalyst reduced at 973 K exhibits high activity, stability, and coke-resistance even at reaction temperature as low as 773 K. In contrast, the catalyst reduced at 923 K has low activity and deactivates due to Ni oxidation, while those reduced at 1023 and 1073 K suffer from sintering and severe coking. STEM and O₂-TPO reveal that coke deposition is directly proportional to the Ni particle size but becomes negligible at a size below 6.2 nm. It is evidenced that a critical size of about 6 nm is required to inhibit coking effectively. CO₂ temperature-programmed surface reaction indicates that the deposited carbon on small Ni particles can be easily removed by the CO₂ activated at the Ni–Mg(Al)O interfaces, accounting for the better resistance to coking.     

Difference angle quantization index modulation scheme for image watermarking

In this paper, we propose a new angle quantization index modulation (AQIM) method, called the difference AQIM (DAQIM) method. The proposed method aims to improve the watermarking performance against gain attacks. Unlike the original AQIM method (Ourique et al., Angle QIM: a novel watermark embedding scheme robust against amplitude scaling distortions, in: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. 2, 2005, pp. 797–800), the DAQIM method quantizes the difference of the two angles instead of the angles themselves. The main advantage of the DAQIM method is to disperse the interference to the watermark signal from one angle to more angles. Thus, the watermark has a higher ability to resist attacks. We perform a theoretical analysis of the document-to-watermark ratio (DWR) based on our proposed method. We show that our proposed method can obtain a lower embedding distortion compared to the AQIM and the gradient direction watermarking (GDWM) (Nezhadarya et al., IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur., 6(4), 2011, 1200–1213), methods under the same robustness and payload conditions. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms common existing methods in terms of the robustness against various attacks such as the JPEG quantization noise, additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), cropping effect and mean filtering.     

Uncertainty analysis and robust control of fuel delivery systems considering nitrogen crossover phenomenon

In this paper, the fuel delivery subsystem (FDS) with hydrogen recirculation and anode bleeding is applied in proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system, which is utilized to supply hydrogen to the anode of stack and recirculate fuel back to the supply line. As the diffusion of nitrogen from cathode to anode is inevitable in a real PEMFC during long-term operation. To prevent system performance decline due to nitrogen accumulation. Therefore, this paper firstly develops a control-oriented nonlinear dynamic FDS model involving gas diffusion. Additionally, the FDS is very sensitive to operating environment, uncontrolled operation conditions may cause stack degradation. Specifically, a method based on Monte Carlo simulation is proposed to identify the key parameter boundaries. Then the gas distribution in FDS due to nitrogen crossover is analyzed in detail. After this, a hybrid robust methodology based on sliding mode algorithm is also proposed to maintain adequate hydrogen pressure supply, suitable hydrogen and nitrogen content in the system in presence of nitrogen crossover and renewed uncertainties. Finally, the performance of the presented controller is compared with nonlinear PID (NPID) control and nonlinear multi-input-multi-output (NMIMO) control through a hardware-in-the-loop test bench. Experimental results show that the hybrid controller is accurate and suitable for control purpose, the nitrogen content is restricted to the given range and the variation of output voltage is limited to the desired boundaries, the feasibility and effectiveness are validated.     

A novel function-structure concept network construction and analysis method for a smart product design system

The rapid growth of data and the requirement of designers to track massive data to obtain design stimuli have posed challenges to conceptual design, thereby promoting the development of data-driven design. Concept networks precisely capture design information from a large volume of unstructured and heterogeneous textual data and saliently decrease time and labor cost for designers to read texts, which creates new opportunities for developing a smart product design system. To advance data-driven design, this study proposes the novel function-structure concept network (FSCN) construction method, which combines sentence parsing and word/phrase extraction to integrate functional and structural information. Furthermore, a network analysis method is proposed to explore design information associations that contain both explicit and implicit associations together and thereby recommend them simultaneously to designers as inspirational stimuli to support design ideation. This approach can enhance designers' capabilities to build associations between design information, conceive new design ideas during conceptual design, and increase creativity for solving design problems. The proposed FSCN construction and analysis method can be used as an auxiliary tool to visualize associations among design information so as to inspire idea generation in the early stage of conceptual design. An illustrative example was used to validate the practicability of the proposed methodology. The code of the proposed method is available at https://github.com/KWflyer/FSCN.     

汶川和芦山地震灾区农村民房震害分析与重建建议

5.12汶川特大地震和4.20芦山强烈地震中,农村民房的震害造成了巨大的人员伤亡和经济损失。基于震害现场调研,概述了近年来中国西南地区的几次地震中农房总体受损情况,从农房的建设选址不当造成的震害、灾区常见的几种农房结构类型的震害特征等两个方面分析了农房震害的主要原因,即地表破坏、缺少必要的结构设计环节、施工质量低劣、抗震构造措施差和房屋抗震意识薄弱。在此基础上,从农村建设场地的科学规划、具有良好抗震性能的农房结构方案和农房建设过程中的科学管理等方面提出了重建建议。     

专栏评述：青藏高原重大滑坡动力灾变与风险防控关键技术研究

青藏高原隆升是新近纪以来全球最重大的地质事件,其隆升过程对区域地质环境影响深远,使其成为全球地质环境最脆弱地区之一。青藏高原地质条件极为复杂,地壳隆升、高地应力、地震、冻融、暴雨等内外动力强烈,重大滑坡频发,链生灾害剧烈,已严重影响川藏铁路、川藏高速、水能资源开发等国家重大工程建设,严重威胁区域人居与财产安全。2018年10月和11月的两次白格滑坡即为一典型案例,链生灾害造成的直接经济损失超过100亿元人民币。     

月球原位能源支撑技术探索构想

随着探月工程规模的不断扩大,仅仅依靠太阳能电池或小型放射性同位素电源将难以为月基活动提供充足持续的能源供应,研发月球原位能源供给技术是各类月基活动的关键基础。本文基于月壤和月岩恒温层与月球表面存在巨大温差的特性,提出了利用该温差进行发电的月基原位能源支撑技术构想,设计了月球温差热电材料热伏发电技术和月球温差磁悬浮发电技术及实施构想。月球温差热电材料热伏发电系统直接利用热电材料实现昼夜连续工作的热电转换,将月表辐射能（白天）以及月壤的热能（夜晚）连续转化为电能;月球温差磁悬浮发电系统和技术利用氨-铝热虹吸管取热和磁悬浮透平发电机发电的方案将月球表面与月球月岩恒温层之间的温差转换为电能。两类月基温差发电技术具有无机械摩擦、效率高、寿命长、质量轻的优点,可为探月活动原位能源供给提供相关技术支撑。     

Electrically conductive aluminosilicate/graphene nanocomposite

Highly electrically conductive ceramic material based on aluminosilicate/graphene nanocomposite has been prepared by high pressure (400 MPa) compaction of montmorillonite intercalated with polyaniline followed with the high temperature (1400 °C) treatment in argon atmosphere. Tablets pressed from polyaniline/montmorillonite intercalate exhibits strong texture due to the disk-shaped montmorillonite particles and, consequently, the high anisotropy in conductivity. The high temperature induced phase transformation of montmorillonite into cristobalite and mullite preserved the aluminosilicate layered structure and created good conditions for formation of graphene sheets from polyaniline layers intercalated in montmorillonite. Therefore, the texture and anisotropy in conductivity remain preserved in resulting aluminosilicate/graphene tablets, while the in-plane conductivity in aluminosilicate/graphene tablets is 23,000× higher than the conductivity of uncalcined polyaniline/montmorillonite tablets. Simple fabrication method of aluminosilicate/graphene tablets is very promising for the manufacturing of the electrically conductive and tough ceramic material, which can be exposed to corrosive environment as well as to high temperatures.