Novel hollow mesoporous 1D TiO2 nanofibers as photovoltaic and photocatalytic materials

Hollow mesoporous one dimensional (1D) TiO(2) nanofibers are successfully prepared by co-axial electrospinning of a titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) solution with two immiscible polymers; polyethylene oxide (PEO) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) using a core-shell spinneret, followed by annealing at 450 °C. The annealed mesoporous TiO(2) nanofibers are found to having a hollow structure with an average diameter of 130 nm. Measurements using the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method reveal that hollow mesoporous TiO(2) nanofibers possess a high surface area of 118 m(2) g(-1) with two types of mesopores; 3.2 nm and 5.4 nm that resulted from gaseous removal of PEO and PVP respectively during annealing. With hollow mesoporous TiO(2) nanofibers as the photoelectrode in dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC), the solar-to-current conversion efficiency (η) and short circuit current (J(sc)) are measured as 5.6% and 10.38 mA cm(-2) respectively, which are higher than those of DSSC made using regular TiO(2) nanofibers under identical conditions (η = 4.2%, J(sc) = 8.99 mA cm(-2)). The improvement in the conversion efficiency is mainly attributed to the higher surface area and mesoporous TiO(2) nanostructure. It facilitates the adsorption of more dye molecules and also promotes the incident photon to electron conversion. Hollow mesoporous TiO(2) nanofibers with close packing of grains and crystals intergrown with each other demonstrate faster electron diffusion, and longer electron recombination time than regular TiO(2) nanofibers as well as P25 nanoparticles. The surface effect of hollow mesoporous TiO(2) nanofibers as a photocatalyst for the degradation of rhodamine dye was also investigated. The kinetic study shows that the hollow mesoporous surface of the TiO(2) nanofibers influenced its interactions with the dye, and resulted in an increased catalytic activity over P25 TiO(2) nanocatalysts.     

Use of Oil-in-water Pickering Emulsion Stabilized by Nanoparticles in Combination With Polymer Flood for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Efficient flooding agents are required to produce additional oil from mature reservoir. In this work, oil-in-water Pickering emulsion systems stabilized using nanoparticles, surfactant, and polymer have been developed and tested for enhanced oil recovery with and without a conventional polymer flood. Stability of nanoparticles in the dispersion of surfactant-polymer solution was tested using zeta-potential before use. Several flooding experiments have been conducted using Berea core samples at 13.6 MPa and temperatures of 313 and 353 K. It has been observed that a combination of 0.5 PV polymer flood with 0.5 PV Pickering emulsion was efficient and have resulted in 1–6% additional oil recovery as compared to 0.5 PV Pickering emulsion flooding alone. The injection of polymer flood have shown to enhance the pressure drop in the core sample after emulsion flooding and considered as an important factor for an additional recovery of oil. The effect of temperature on the viscosity of flooding agents in relation to pressure drop and oil recovery have also been investigated. Viscosity and pressure drop of emulsion flood systems have shown to marginally decrease with increase in temperature. Studies on nanoparticle retention using SEM have shown that nanoparticles were retained in the core sample during emulsion flooding which may be detrimental for permeability of core sample. It is observed that Pickering emulsion flood with polymer flood would be effective for the enhanced oil recovery suitable for matured reservoirs.     

Removal of phenol from aqueous solution and resin manufacturing industry wastewater using an agricultural waste: rubber seed coat.

Activated carbon prepared from rubber seed coat (RSCC), an agricultural waste by-product, has been used for the adsorption of phenol from aqueous solution. In this work, adsorption of phenol on rubber seed coat activated carbon has been studied by using batch and column studies. The equilibrium adsorption level was determined to be a function of the solution pH, adsorbent dosage and contact time. The equilibrium adsorption capacity of rubber seed coat activated carbon for phenol removal was obtained by using linear Freundlich isotherm. The adsorption of phenol on rubber seed coat activated carbon follows first order reversible kinetics. The suitability of RSCC for treating phenol based resin manufacturing industry wastewater was also tested. A comparative study with a commercial activated carbon (CAC) showed that RSCC is 2.25 times more efficient compared to CAC based on column adsorption study for phenolic wastewater treatment.     

Environmentally compatible next generation green energetic materials (GEMs)

This paper briefly reviews the literature work reported on the environmentally compatible green energetic materials (GEMs) for defence and space applications. Currently, great emphasis is laid in the field of high-energy materials (HEMs) to increase the environmental stewardship along with the deliverance of improved performance. This emphasis is especially strong in the areas of energetic materials, weapon development, processing, and disposal operations. Therefore, efforts are on to develop energetic materials systems under the broad concept of green energetic materials (GEMs) in different schools all over the globe. The GEMs program initiated globally by different schools addresses these challenges and establishes the framework for advances in energetic materials processing and production that promote compliance with environmental regulations. This review also briefs the principles of green chemistry pertaining to HEMs, followed by the work carried out globally on environmentally compatible green energetic materials and allied ingredients.     

Computer code to predict the heat of explosion of high energy materials

The computational approach to the thermochemical changes involved in the process of explosion of a high energy materials (HEMs) vis-à-vis its molecular structure aids a HEMs chemist/engineers to predict the important thermodynamic parameters such as heat of explosion of the HEMs. Such a computer-aided design will be useful in predicting the performance of a given HEM as well as in conceiving futuristic high energy molecules that have significant potential in the field of explosives and propellants. The software code viz., LOTUSES developed by authors predicts various characteristics of HEMs such as explosion products including balanced explosion reactions, density of HEMs, velocity of detonation, CJ pressure, etc. The new computational approach described in this paper allows the prediction of heat of explosion (DeltaH(e)) without any experimental data for different HEMs, which are comparable with experimental results reported in literature. The new algorithm which does not require any complex input parameter is incorporated in LOTUSES (version 1.5) and the results are presented in this paper. The linear regression analysis of all data point yields the correlation coefficient R(2)=0.9721 with a linear equation y=0.9262x+101.45. The correlation coefficient value 0.9721 reveals that the computed values are in good agreement with experimental values and useful for rapid hazard assessment of energetic materials.     

Direct Analysis of Mitochondrial Damage Caused by Misfolded/Destabilized Proteins

Protein quality control is essential for cellular homeostasis. In this study, we examined the effect of improperly folded proteins that do not form amyloid fibrils on mitochondria, which play important roles in ATP production and cell death. First, we prepared domain 3 of the dengue envelope protein in wild type and four mutants with widely different biophysical properties in misfolded/aggregated or destabilized states. The effects of the different proteins were detected using fluorescence microscopy and Western blotting, which revealed that three of the five proteins disrupted both inner and outer membrane integrity, while the other two proteins, including the wild type, did not. Next, we examined the common characteristics of the proteins that displayed toxicity against mitochondria by measuring oligomer size, molten globule-like properties, and thermal stability. The common feature of all three toxic proteins was thermal instability. Therefore, our data strongly suggest that thermally unstable proteins generated in the cytosol can cause cellular damage by coming into direct contact with mitochondria. More importantly, we revealed that this damage is not amyloid-specific.     

Performance analysis of a bufferless OBS node considering the streamline effect

In this letter, we describe and analyze a phenomenon unique to bufferless optical burst switched (OBS) networks called the streamline effect. This is the phenomenon wherein bursts within an input stream to a core node only contend with those from other input streams but not among themselves. It causes the burst loss probabilities at a link to depend strongly on the number of input streams to the link and their relative burst rates. We derive a burst loss probability formula that can account for all the observed burst loss behaviors. The accuracy of the analytical formula is confirmed through various simulation scenarios.     

Mean LBP and modified fuzzy C-means weighted hybrid feature for illumination invariant mean-shift tracking

Object tracking is a critical task in surveillance and activity analysis. Two main issues for tracking are appearance (illumination) and structural (size of a target) variations of the object. We propose a method which is robust and addresses these issues by incorporating features that are less variant to these changes. The proposed features are mean local binary pattern (mLBP), an illumination invariant texture feature, and modified fuzzy c-means (MFCM) weighted color histogram to handle both illumination and scale changes. These features are combined to form a hybrid mean-shift (MS) vector and used in the MS vector framework for target tracking. Experimental results using standard benchmark videos show that the proposed scheme can lead to better localization and robust tracking in challenging illumination scenarios, when compared to several existing tracking algorithms.     

Removal of nitrogen containing reducing agents from water coolant systems using ion exchange resin and membranes

Oxidizing environment prevailing in water coolant systems aggravates the corrosion of structural materials. Reducing agents are added to the reactor coolant systems to control the oxidants and mitigate material corrosion. Maintenance of required concentration of the reducing agents in the system and their removal after completing the processes can be done using ion exchange resins as well as ion exchange membranes. In this article, a comparative study on the efficacy in removing the reducing agents from aqueous solutions by the cation exchange resin and membranes such as sulfonated polysulfone and nafion is evaluated. Some of the membranes were synthesized in the laboratory and characterized by SEM, FTIR and pure water flux studies. Nitrogen containing reducing agents such as hydrazine, hydroxylamine, and ammonium hydroxide have been chosen for the study. Results indicate that strong acid cation exchange (SAC) resin taken in a column and sulfonated polysulfone (SPSf) membrane as a stack are found to be equally efficient in purification of coolant system from the added reducing agents. Uptake of metal ions was observed to be higher on SAC resin column in presence of reducing agent. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134, 44588.