Spray Coating of 2- and 3-D Solid Substrates Using a Sulfated Polysaccharide for Marine Antifouling Applications

Marine antifouling coating using functional polymers has emerged as an important tool to combat marine fouling. Owing to their natural abundance, polysaccharides represent a more sustainable option than synthetic polymers and carrageenan, a sulfated polysaccharide, is identified as a promising candidate for further research based on its excellent marine antifouling properties. However, existing research has only explored the application of carrageenan-based coatings for 2D objects, using techniques such as spin-coating. Here, a spray-coating method is proposed to apply carrageenan-based coatings to the surfaces of 2- and 3-D objects. The coated surfaces exhibit high stability under various chemical/physical stresses and high resistance to protein adsorption and marine diatom adhesion.     

A study of the corrosion properties of plasma nitrocarburized and oxidized AISI 1020 steels

Plasma nitrocarburized AISI 1020 steels were oxidized for 15, 30 and 60 min to evaluate their corrosion and microstructural properties. After plasma nitrocarburizing for 3 h at 570°C in a gas mixture comprising 85 vol.% N₂, 12vol.% H₂ and 3 vol.% CH₄, the compound layer composed of ɛ-Fe_2–3(N,C) and γ’-Fe₄(N,C) phases and the diffusion layer above the matrix were observed. The top oxide layer, consisting mainly of magnetite (Fe₂O₄) and hematite (Fe₂O₃) phases, forms after post-oxidation treatment at 500°C. However, the oxide layer was severely degraded by spallation as a result of increases in post-oxidizing time. The difference in corrosion resistance should be attributed to the thickness of the top oxide layer, which was governed by post-oxidizing time.     

Catalytic Combustion of Methane over Rare Earth Stannate Pyrochlore

Well-defined Ln₂Sn₂O₇ powders (Ln = La, Sm and Gd) with a phase-pure pyrochlore structure were synthesized by hydrothermal reaction. The catalytic activities of Ln₂Sn₂O₇ powders for methane combustion were measured. Methane oxidation started at 500 °C and increased with oxidation temperature. Catalytic methane combustion is strongly influenced by the presence of oxygen vacancies that form by breaking Sn–O lattice bonds as the temperature increases. Addition of manganese to the rare earth pyrochlores improved methane oxidation activity. Manganese-doped samarium stannate pyrochlore (Sm₂Sn_1.8Mn_0.2O₇) shows highest the catalytic activity. Light-off and complete oxidation temperatures were measured at about 400 and 650 °C, respectively.     

Sol-Gel Alumina Coating for Improved Cyclic Oxidation Resistance of Silicon Nitride

A 25 nm thick α-alumina layer was deposited on a turbine-grade silicon nitride by sol-gel dip coating and subsequent heat treatment in air at 1200°C. This layer had a nanometer grain structure. Silicon nitride protected by this thin layer showed a significant improvement in oxidation resistance over its uncoated counterpart after 200 cyclic exposures in air at 1250°C. The oxide layer grown on the coated silicon nitride also exhibited superior surface morphology, compared with the uncoated silicon nitride.     

A novel spin-finishing method for antistatic modification of polyester fiber. Surface reaction onto amine-containing copoly(amide-ethers) blended with polyester fiber

Copoly(amide-ethers) containing two types of tertiary amine units were made as antistatic modifiers for poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fibers. The filaments of the copolymers were melt-spun and reacted with three alkylating agents in order to quaternize the tertiary amine into a sulfo-betaine, a carbobetaine, and an ammonium ion. The apparent electric resistivity of the filaments was greatly reduced by this reaction, being in the range of 10⁶ to 10⁸ Ω/cm. However, because these quaternized copolymers incurred decomposition during blend spinning with PET, a blend PET fiber containing one type of copoly(amide-ether) was melt-spun and subjected to quaternization of the amino groups as well as to surface crosslinking with various alkylating and epoxy agents. The quaternized blend fibers obtained showed improved antistatic properties compared with the original blend fiber. Particularly, the fibers crosslinked with epoxy compounds were found to have the best antistatic properties that had ever been attained with this type of modification. The antistatic properties were retained even after dyeing, because both hydrophilic and ionic groups had been effectively immobilized on the surface. Since this quaternization and crosslinking could be conducted on-line with spinning and drawing within a short reaction time, this modification technique is called “spin-finishing method”, which should be superior to the conventional methods in terms of cost performance and productivity.     

Surface crosslinking of high‐density polyethylene beads in a modified plasma reactor

High‐density polyethylene (HDPE) beads were successfully surface‐crosslinked in a modified plasma reactor. The modified plasma reactor treats large amounts of beads, which are uniformly surface‐crosslinked. In this study, effects of the gas pressure, radio‐frequency (RF) power, and the treatment time on the degree of surface crosslinking were systematically investigated. Degree of surface crosslinking was measured by solvent extraction method (boiling xylene method, BXM). The gel content of plasma‐treated HDPE increases from 0.0 to 1.05% within 10 min at 100 mTorr, 200 W. FTIR and DSC analyses show that the crosslinked layer after plasma treatment is limited only at HDPE surface without changing the bulk thermal property of HDPE. Through the analysis of FTIR, it was confirmed that main peaks corresponding to CH₂ bands were decreased and two peaks corresponding to CF₂ and CF₃ were observed after plasma surface modification. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 83: 2921–2929, 2002; DOI 10.1002/app.10295     

Thermal behavior and the determination of the polymer-polymer interaction parameter of polycarbonate and a thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer blends

Summary The surface modification of low-density polyethylene(PE) by liquid phase photograft polymerization with acrylic acid(AA), acrylamide(AM) and glycidyl methacrylate(GMA) was described. The grafting of AA and AM was proved and characterized by electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis(ESCA). It was found that fully hydrophilic surface can be obtained in very short irradiation time. With ESCA and attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy(ATR-IR), it can be confirmed that bifunctional monomer GMA was grafted onto the PE film surface. Through further reaction with GMA grafted film, heparin and protamine were immobilized onto the grafted film surface.     

A study on crystallization kinetics of pentaerythritol in a batch cooling crystallizer

The crystallization kinetics of pentaerythritol (PeE) in aqueous solution in the presence of impurity or not in a batch cooling crystallizer was explored. Also, the solubility and the nucleation and crystal growth kinetics of PeE in aqueous solution were investigated. A second-order dependence of PeE growth rate on supersaturation is observed in pure PeE-water system. The crystal growth rate of PeE-water system in the presence of impurity is proportional to the supersaturation to the 3.5 power. The nucleation and crystal growth behaviors for PeE-water system in a batch cooling crystallizer were grasped according to Mersmann's criteria. The nucleation in this crystallizer was found to act with heterogeneous nucleation. In this system, it suggests that the crystal growth is controlled by a complex mechanism behavior of surface integrated and diffusion limited. Simplified relation was derived for calculation of mean crystal size of product crystals from the batch cooling crystallizer. The obtained relation was verified by a set of experiments.     

Development of refinery scheduling system using mixed integer programming and expert system

This paper presents a hybrid refinery scheduling system combining mathematical programming model and expert system. Mixed-integer linear programming models for crude oil movement between units are merged into the expert system that is for qualitative issues concerning crude vessel unloading operations. The target problem ranging from the crude unloading to the crude charging to distillation towers is decomposed into several module problems for efficiency. Compared with existing scheduling approaches for oil movement, the proposed hybrid refinery scheduling system is very effective in dealing with timing decisions involving vessel unloading operations due to the advantages of an expert system. Since the proposed scheduling system can generate solutions so fast, it is expected to play a key role in the real processes. This paper is dedicated to Professor Wha Young Lee on the occasion of his retirement from Seoul National University.     

Use of cascade reduction potential for selective precipitation of Au,Cu, and Pb in hydrochloric acid solution

Optimization of reduction potential for electroseparation was studied for the recovery of gold, copper, and lead from acidic solution. A linear sweep voltammetric method enabled us to determine characteristic reduction potentials for each metal and the kinetics of the metal deposition indicated by current-voltage curves. In order to precipitate the metal species sequentially, reduction potentials were examined for the individual and mixed solutions of Au(III), Cu(II), and Pb(II). The three metals were reasonably well isolated from the mixed solutions such as Cu(II)/ Pb(II) and Au(III)/Cu(II)/Pb(II) in the order of the corresponding reduction potentials, in particular, the mass transfer controlled reduction potentials, obtained from linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) measurement.