Facile fabrication of MOF-decorated nickel iron foam for highly efficient oxygen evolution

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as efficient electrocatalysts due to the features of high specific surface area, rich pore structure and diversified composition. It is still challenging to synthesize self-supporting MOF-based catalysts using simple and low-cost fabrication methods. Herein, we successfully fabricated Ni-doped MIL-53(Fe) supported on nickel-iron foam (Ni-MIL-53(Fe)/NFF) as efficient electrocatalyst. A facile two-step solvothermal method without adding any metal salts was used, which can simplify the fabrication process and reduce the experimental cost. In the fabrication process, the bimetallic Ni-MIL-53(Fe)/NFF was in situ converted from an intermediate NiFe₂O₄/NFF. The obtained material exhibits outstanding electrocatalytic oxygen evolution performance with a low overpotential of 248 mV at 50 mA cm^?2, and a small Tafel slope of 46.4 mV dec^?1. This work sheds light on the simple and efficient preparation of bimetallic MOF-based material, which is promising in electrocatalysts.     

Nano fibrillated cellulose-based foam by Pickering emulsion: Preparation,characterizations, and application as dye adsorbent

An ecofriendly and biodegradable porous structure was prepared from drying aqueous foams based on nano fibrillated cellulose (NFC), extracted from softwood pulp by subcritical water/CO₂ treatment (SC-NFC). The primary aim of this work was to use the modified SC-NFC as stabilizer for a water-based Pickering emulsion which upon drying, yielded porous cellulosic materials, a good dye adsorbent. In order to exploit the carboxymethylated SC-NFC (CMSC-NFC, with a degree of substitution of 0.35 and a charge density of 649 μeqv/g) as a stabilizer for water-based Pickering emulsion in subsequent step, an optimized quantity of octyl amine (30 mg/g of SC-NFC) was added to make them partially hydrophobic. A series of dry foam structures were prepared by varying the concentrations of treated CMSC-NFCs and 4 wt% was found to be the optimum concentration to yield foam with high porosity (99%) and low density (0.038 g/cc) along with high compression strength (0.24 MPa), superior to the conventionally extracted NFC. The foams were applied to capture as high as 98% of methylene blue dyes, making them a potential green candidate for treating industrial effluent. In addition, the dye adsorption kinetics and isotherms were found to be well suited with second order kinetics and Langmuir isotherm models.     

An intelligent EGWO-SCA-CS algorithm for PSS parameter tuning under system uncertainties

This paper proposes a novel hybrid technique called enhanced grey wolf optimization-sine cosine algorithm-cuckoo search (EGWO-SCA-CS) algorithm to improve the electrical power system stability. The proposed method comprises of a popular grey wolf optimization (GWO) in an enhanced and hybrid form. It embraces the well-balanced exploration and exploitation using the cuckoo search (CS) algorithm and enhanced search capability through the sine cosine algorithm (SCA) to elude the stuck to the local optima. The proposed technique is validated with the 23 benchmark functions and compared with state-of-the-art methods. The benchmark functions consist of unimodal, multimodal function from which the best suitability of the proposed technique can be identified. The robustness analysis also presented with the proposed method through boxplot, and a detailed statistical analysis is performed for a set of 30 individual runs. From the inferences gathered from the benchmark functions, the proposed technique is applied to the stability problem of a power system, which is heavily stressed with the nonlinear variation of the load and thereby operating conditions. The dynamics of power system components have been considered for the mathematical model of a multimachine system, and multiobjective function has been framed in tuning the optimal controller parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been assessed by considering two case studies, namely, (i) the optimal controller parameter tuning, and (ii) the coordination of oscillation damping devices in the power system stability enhancement. In the first case study, the power system stabilizer (PSS) is considered as a controller, and a self-clearing three-phase fault is considered as the system uncertainty. In contrast, static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) and PSS are considered as controllers to be coordinated, and perturbation in the system states as uncertainty in the second case study.     

单组份聚氨酯炮孔填塞剂应用性试验

炮孔填塞是爆破施工过程中的一个关键环节,也是践行精细爆破设计理论的重要措施。传统的炮泥填塞存在着诸多不足,为此,研制了以聚氨酯为基材的TK炮孔填塞剂,通过大量基础性能研究和隧道现场工业性试验,论证了其作为炮孔填塞材料可降低炸药单耗,提高单循环进尺和炮孔利用率,减小空气冲击波、爆破噪声等有害效应的影响,且是安全可靠的。TK炮孔填塞剂优良的填塞效果、方便快捷的施工方法及显著的经济效益,方便于在爆破工程中推广应用。     

Stabilization of natural gas foams using different surfactants at high pressure and high temperature conditions

Natural gas foam can be used for mobility control and channel blocking during natural gas injection for enhanced oil recovery, in which stable foams need to be used at high reservoir temperature, high pressure and high water salinity conditions in field applications. In this study, the performance of methane (CH₄) foams stabilized by different types of surfactants was tested using a high pressure and high temperature foam meter for surfactant screening and selection, including anionic surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate), non-anionic surfactant (alkyl polyglycoside), zwitterionic surfactant (dodecyl dimethyl betaine) and cationic surfactant (dodecyl trimethyl ammonium chloride), and the results show that CH₄-SDS foam has much better performance than that of the other three surfactants. The influences of gas types (CH₄, N₂, and CO₂), surfactant concentration, temperature (up to 110°C), pressure (up to 12.0 MPa), and the presence of polymers as foam stabilizer on foam performance was also evaluated using SDS surfactant. The experimental results show that the stability of CH₄ foam is better than that of CO₂ foam, while N₂ foam is the most stable, and CO₂ foam has the largest foam volume, which can be attributed to the strong interactions between CO₂ molecules with H₂O. The foaming ability and foam stability increase with the increase of the SDS concentration up to 1.0 wt% (0.035 mol/L), but a further increase of the surfactant concentration has a negative effect. The high temperature can greatly reduce the stability of CH₄-SDS foam, while the foaming ability and foam stability can be significantly enhanced at high pressure. The addition of a small amount of polyacrylamide as a foam stabilizer can significantly increase the viscosity of the bulk solution and improve the foam stability, and the higher the molecular weight of the polymer, the higher viscosity of the foam liquid film, the better foam performance.     

A generalized CFD model for evaluating catalytic separation process in structured porous materials

A hybrid multiphase model is developed to simulate the simultaneous momentum, heat and mass transfer and heterogeneous catalyzed reaction in structured catalytic porous materials. The approach relies on the combination of the volume of fluid (VOF) and Eulerian–Eulerian models, and several plug-in field functions. The VOF method is used to capture the gas–liquid interface motion, and the Eulerian–Eulerian framework solves the temperature and chemical species concentration equations for each phase. The self-defined field functions utilize a single-domain approach to overcome convergence difficulty when applying the hybrid multiphase for a multi-domain problem. The method is then applied to investigate selective removal of specific species in multicomponent reactive evaporation process. The results show that the coupling of catalytic reaction and interface species mass transfer at the phase interface is conditional, and the coupling of catalytic reaction and momentum transfer across fluid–porous interface significantly affects the conversion rate of reactants. Based on the numerical results, a strategy is proposed for matching solid catalyst with operating condition in catalytic distillation application.     

Facile synthesis of Ni doped CoWO4 nanoarrays grown on nickel foam substrates for efficient urea oxidation

Urea electrolysis is a promising technology for hydrogen production, which can alleviate environmental pollution of urea-rich wastewater. It's worth noting that electrochemistry activity can be significantly improved by reasonably regulating the electron configuration around the active site for the doped materials. In this work, a series of well-tuned Ni doped CoWO₄ nanoarrays on Ni foam supports have been prepared through a typical hydrothermal approach for the first time. Moreover, the resulting Ni–CoWO₄-2 material significantly promotes urea oxidation performance with an applied potential of 1.35 V at 50 mA cm^?2, which is lower than that of water oxidation reaction (1.60 V). Density functional theory results suggest that the Ni doped CoWO₄ has larger urea adsorption energy compared with CoWO₄ and the CO(NH₂)₂ molecule is strongly adsorbed on surface of Ni doped CoWO₄, which is beneficial to accelerate the kinetics of the reaction and improve the electrocatalytic activity of the urea electrolysis.     

Mixed-dimensional niobium disulfide-graphene foam heterostructures as an efficient catalyst for hydrogen production

Besides developing a large number of catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline electrolytes, its conversion efficiency remained low. Herein, we have developed mixed-dimensional heterostructures of niobium disulfide (NbS₂) with graphene foam grown on nickel foam (NbS₂-Gr-NF). The strong lateral fusion results in activating the catalytic sites of NbS₂, the three-dimensional substrate provides easy access of electrolyte to active sites and increased electrochemically active surface area, while enhanced conductivity provides faster transfer of electrons to and from active sites. Therefore, NbS₂-Gr-NF heterostructures resulted in an exceptionally high current density of 500 mA cm⁻² at a very low overpotential of 306 mV in 1 M KOH solution and even can achieve the current density values of 914 mAcm⁻² at 338 mV only at a slight increase in overpotential (32 mV). Moreover, a Tafel value of ~72 mV dec⁻¹ confirms that as-developed heterostructure provides fast reaction kinetics where the reaction is mainly controlled by the Volmer step. Achieving such high current density at a faster rate with high stability makes NbS₂-Gr-NF heterostructures a potential candidate for water-splitting, especially in alkaline electrolytes.     

Acoustic damping flexible polyurethane foams: Effect of isocyanate index and water content on the soundproofing

High-efficiency sound absorbing flexible polyurethane foams (FPUFs) are manufactured using nonpolar polyester resin, methylene diphenyl diisocyanate, and other reagents by one-shot bulk polymerization. In this study, the impact of the isocyanate index (90, 100, and 110) and water content (2.5 and 5%) on the microphase separation and soundproofing behavior of FPUFs are examined using atomic force microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, optical microscope, and an impedance tube device. The results reveal that the increase of the isocyanate index and water content leads to the increase of the cell size, cell size distribution, open-cell content, cell wall roughness, and microphase separation. Also, maximum sound absorption coefficient (α) reaches to 0.98 and the average of α in the frequency range of 1500–4000 Hz increases from 0.7 to 0.87 by increasing the water content from 2.5 to 5% and isocyanate index from 90 to 110; therefore, acoustic damping performance enhances up to 26.24% due to the synergic effects of microphase separation on the viscose media formation, open-cell content, cell wall roughness, cell size, and cell size distribution. In conclusion, FPUFs with an optimal amount of microphase separation and drainage flow can be a promising candidate for sound insulating materials. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47363.