Treatment of Bone Waste Using Thermal Plasma Technology

Daily meat consumption produces a lot of bone waste, and dumped bone waste without treatment would result in environmental hazards. Conventional treatment methods of waste bones have some disadvantages. Herein, an investigation of bone waste treated using thermal plasma technology is presented. A high-temperature plasma torch operated at 25.2 kW was used to treat bone waste for seven minutes. The bone waste was finally changed into vitric matter and lost 2/3 of its weight after the treatment. The process was highly efficient, economical, convenient, and fuel-free. This method could be used as an alternative for disposal of bone waste, small infectious animals, hazardous hospital waste, etc.     

Sn self-doped α-Fe2O3 nanobranch arrays supported on a transparent,conductive SnO2 trunk to improve photoelectrochemical water oxidation

We produced hierarchically branched Fe₂O₃ nanorods on a Sb:SnO₂ transparent conducting oxide (TCO) nanobelt structure as photoanodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting. Single-crystalline SnO₂ nanobelts (NBs) surrounded by Fe₂O₃ nanorods (NRs) were synthesized by thermal evaporation, then underwent chemical bath deposition and annealing. When Fe₂O₃ was crystallized by annealing, Sn was diffused from SnO₂ NBs and incorporated to Fe₂O₃ NRs, which was confirmed through Energy dispersive spectroscopy. Unlike previous high temperature sintering (∼800 °C), Sn doped hematite NRs were obtained at a low temperature (∼650 °C). This occurred since SnO₂ NBs directly connected to Fe₂O₃ NRs are an abundant source of Sn dopant. The 3D hematite NRs on SnO₂ NBs annealed at 650 °C produce a photocurrent density of 0.88 mA/cm² at 1.23 V vs. RHE, which is 3 times higher than that of hematite NRs on a fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) glass substrate annealed at the same temperature. The enhanced photocurrent is attributed to the improved electrical conductivity of Fe₂O₃ NRs by Sn doping, the efficient electron transport pathway by TCO nanowire and the increased surface area by hierarchically branched structure.     

Effects of a perfluorinated compound as an additive on the power conversion efficiencies of polymer solar cells

A perfluorinated compound, 4-amino-2-(trifluoromethyl)benzonitrile (ATMB), was applied as an additive to polymer solar cells (PSCs) with P3HT [poly(3-hexylthiophene)]:PCBM [[6,6]-phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester] blend films. The addition of 6 wt% ATMB to a P3HT:PCBM layer led to an increased power conversion efficiency of 5.03% due to the enhanced short circuit current and fill factor when compared with that of the reference cell without an additive. On the other hand, the devices with 4-aminobenzonitrile as an additive, not containing fluorine atoms in the molecule, displayed lower PCEs than that of the reference cell. The UV-visible absorption spectra, X-ray measurements and carrier mobility studies revealed that ATMB facilitated ordering of the P3HT chains, resulting in higher absorbance, larger crystal size of P3HT and enhanced hole mobility. XPS depth profiling measurements also showed that the additive molecules were predominantly positioned in the range of 25 nm under the surface of the P3HT:PCBM film, leading to improved fill factor.     

Experimental study on mitigating the cathode flooding at low temperature by adding hydrogen to the cathode reactant gas in PEM fuel cell

Severe flooding can be critical in a fuel cell vehicle operating at a high current density, and in a fuel cell vehicle at the initial stage of start up. It is often difficult to remove the condensed water from the cathode gas diffusion layer (GDL) of the fuel cell because of the surface tension between the water and the GDL. In this research, in order to remove the condensed water from the cathode GDL, a small amount of hydrogen was injected into the cathode reactant gases. The results showed that the hydrogen addition method successfully removed the liquid water from the cathode GDL. Water removal was verified for various hydrogen flow rates and hydrogen addition durations. Furthermore, the dew point temperature of the outlet gas at the cathode was observed to determine the amount of water removed from the cathode GDL. In addition, the water droplet in the cathode gas flow channel was visualized by using a transparent cell. Furthermore, degradation tests are also performed. Considering the degradation test, the hydrogen addition method is expected to be effective in mitigating cathode flooding.     

Analysis of earthquake management design for nuclear power plants (NPPs) incorporated with artificial intelligence (AI) method

It has been studied to analyze the operations in nuclear power plants (NPPs) where the human error could make a trigger to the nuclear disaster following the earthquake in South Korea. The earthquake warning system and its related control algorithm are modeled by the machine learning (ML) of artificial intelligence (AI) where the neural networking is done as a major role. The AI-based control system could give the very good performance in the earthquake incident which is shown by the system dynamics (SD) based simulations. Hence, the nuclear safety system needs the AI based alarming technology which could be a much more advanced control system incorporated with the conventional multiple-barrier concept in NPPs.     

Contents-aware partitioning algorithm for parallel high efficiency video coding

Multimedia Tools and Applications - We introduce a new parallelization method for high-efficiency video coding (HEVC), which resolves the shortcomings of the existing tile-based parallel processing...     

Properties of recombinant 4-α-glucanotransferase from Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum JCM 1217 and its application

Food Science and Biotechnology - To determine the physiochemical properties of the 4-α-glucanotransferase from Bifidobacterium sp., the bllj_0114 gene encoding 4-α-glucanotransferase was...     

Effect of propolis phenolic compounds on free fatty acid receptor 4 activation

Food Science and Biotechnology - Propolis is known to have multiple biological and pharmacological properties including the regulation of energy homeostasis. Although phenolic compounds are...     

Application of Cudrania tricuspidata leaf extract as a washing agent to inactivate Listeria monocytogenes on fresh-cut romaine lettuce and kale

The present study aimed to examine the antimicrobial activity of silkworm thorn (Cudrania tricuspidata) leaf extract (CTLE) and its application as a washing agent for fresh-cut romaine lettuce and kale. The antimicrobial activities of CTLE at various concentrations against Listeria monocytogenes were determined using disc diffusion and viable cell count assays, and CTLE exhibited strong inactivation of L. monocytogenes. In particular, after the treatment with 0.4% CTLE, the protein content of L. monocytogenes cells was significantly (P < 0.05) decreased from 507.21 to 254.58 μg mL⁻¹, and damaged cells were observed by scanning electron microscopy. CTLE washing resulted in approximately 2-log reduction of microbial growth, similar to that of 0.01% NaOCl. In addition, CTLE washing did not affect the quality of romaine lettuce and kale. Therefore, these results suggest that CTLE is applicable as a new washing agent for inactivating L. monocytogenes on fresh-cut romaine lettuce and kale.