Polymer nanocomposite powders and melt spun fibers filled with silica nanoparticles

Nanocomposite powders from polypropylene filled with surface modified and unmodified fumed silica have been prepared from polymer solution to achieve improved mixing and have been forwarded to fiber melt spinning. The surface of the fumed silica was modified with dodecyl alkoxy silanes. Crystallization velocity and viscosity of the PP nanocomposites thereof were determined to ensure good melt spinning processing conditions for all composite compositions. Upon addition of untreated filler particles, a shear thinning and an increased crystallization velocity of the polymer melt was found, while only minor changes were detected in the presence of surface modified fumed silica particles. The composites and the polymer fibers made from these powder composites by melt spinning were mainly characterized by optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), mechanical measurements, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and solid‐state NMR. The unmodified fumed silica was found to have a strong influence on the mechanical fiber properties, while the surface modified silica only a small one. Fibers were additionally characterized with respect to the uniformity, the PP crystallinity, moisture absorption, and the water contact angle. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 218–227, 2007     

海外瞭望

Naturex收购HP植物制剂公司Naturex公司(Avignon,法国)宣布收购意大利HP植物制剂公司(米兰)。Naturex是一家植物萃取物供应商,最近曾收购了位于米兰的HammerPharma公司。HP植物制剂公司主要致力于营养保健品行业中所用到的植物萃取物的配方设计及销售。对于这一收购行动,Naturex公司总裁兼首席执行官Jacques Dikansky说:“两家公司的联合将使我们同目前已有的意大利客户之间的联系更为紧密,并有助于我们扩大这一市场,使其在整个欧洲市场具有战略意义。”芬美意收购丹尼斯克食用香精业务芬美意公司(日内瓦)已同意以33.6亿丹麦克朗的价…     

纯低温余热电站项目介绍

山东东华水泥有限公司是隶属于淄博矿业集团有限责任公司的子公司，东华水泥5000t／d新型干法水泥熟料线是淄矿建设“煤、电、材”产业链的建材板块龙头项目，第一条5000t／d水泥熟料生产线已于2005年2月投产，目前生产稳定，产品质量优良。配套200万吨粉磨站于2005年11月顺利投产。东华公司根据本公司的实际情况，结合国家资源综合利用的产业政策，委托天津水泥工业设计院设计，利用5000t／d水泥熟料生产线的余热配套一座纯低温余热电站（同时对2号5000t／d水泥熟料生产线配套余热电站进行规划）。     

Evaluation of nucleation activation energy in metal CVD processes

A new approach to evaluate activation energy for nucleation in metal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is presented. Deposition is performed by laser induced chemical vapor deposition (LCVD) using a low laser power and a high scan speed, so that only discrete particles in the initial nucleation stage are formed. The nucleation activation energy is then obtained from a relationship between the laser-induced surface temperature distribution and the particle distribution. The activation energy is directly related to the nucleation barrier, and hence the difference in the nucleation activation energies on different substrates may be used to explain the chemical selectivity which is often observed during metal CVD processes. This approach is experimentally applied to aluminum CVD using dimethylethylamine alane (DMEAA) precursor, and its nucleation activation energy is found to be 25kcal/mol on silicon surface.     

Preparation and characterization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes supported PtRu catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

A series of PtRu nanocomposites supported on H₂O₂-oxidized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were synthesized via two chemical reduction methods—one used aqueous formaldehyde (HCHO method) and the other used ethylene glycol (EG method) as the reducing agents. The effects of the solvents (water and ethylene glycol) and the surface composition of the MWCNTs on the deposition and the dispersion of the metal particles were investigated using N₂ adsorption, TEM, ICP-AES, FTIR and TPD. The wetting heats of the MWCNTs in corresponding solvents were also measured. The characterizations suggest that combination of the surface chemistry of the MWCNTs with the solvents decides the deposition and the dispersion of the metal nanoparticles. These nanocomposites were evaluated as proton exchange membrane fuel cell anode catalysts for oxidation of 50 ppm CO contaminated hydrogen and compared with a commercial PtRu/C catalyst. The data reveal superior performances for the nanocomposites prepared by the EG method to those by the HCHO method and even to that for the commercial analogue. Structure–performance relationship of the nanocomposites was also studied.     

煤与垃圾衍生燃料的流化床混烧试验研究

使用鼓泡流化床燃烧炉进行了煤与垃圾衍生燃料(RDF)的混烧实验研究,分析了燃烧尾气中O2、CO、CO2、H2O、NOx、CH4、SO2、HCl、HCN浓度的变化,并对各成分之间的浓度进行了相关性分析。研究结果表明在750~900℃的范围内,高温利于SO2的脱除;NO的浓度随床温的提高而增加,NO2的浓度与床温的关系不大;HCl的浓度随床温的升高而增加,说明高温不利于HCl的脱除;在空气量较低的情况下,CO、CH4、N2O、HCN等气体的浓度较高,相关分析表明,这些气体浓度之间有较强的正相关关系,说明这些气体适宜于还原气氛下生成;随着HCl气体浓度的增加,SO2浓度降低,说明HCl的存在可促进石灰石脱除SO2的反应,同时还证实煤与RDF混烧可使尾气中的SO2和HCl气体浓度均有所下降。     

Classification of defects in steel strip surface based on multiclass support vector machine

In this paper, we use support vector machine to classify the defects in steel strip surface images. After image binarization, three types of image features, including geometric feature, grayscale feature and shape feature, are extracted by combining the defect target image and its corresponding binary image. For the classification model based on support vector machine, we utilize Gauss radial basis as the kernel function, determine model parameters by cross-validation and employ one-versus-one method for multiclass classifier. Experiment results show that support vector machine model outperforms the traditional classification model based on back-propagation neural network in average classification accuracy.     

Physically-based modeling,simulation and rendering of fire for computer animation

We give an up-to-date survey on techniques and methods for fire simulation in computer graphics. Physically-based method prevails over traditional non-physical methods for realistic visual effect. In this paper, we explore visual simulation of fire-related phenomena in terms of physically modeling, numerical simulation and visual rendering. Firstly, we introduce a physical and chemical coupled mathematical model to explain fire behavior and motion. Several assumptions and constrains are put forward to simplify their implementations in computer graphics. We then give an overview of present methods to solve the most complicated processes in numerical simulation: velocity advection and pressure projection. In addition, comparisons of these methods are also presented respectively. Since fire is a participating medium as well as a visual radiator, we discuss techniques and problems of these issues as well. We conclude by addressing several open challenges and possible future research directions in fire simulation.     

Detecting and tracking dim small targets in infrared image sequences under complex backgrounds

This paper presents a unified framework for automatically detecting and tracking dim small targets in infrared (IR) image sequence under complex backgrounds. Firstly, the variance weighted information entropy (variance WIE) followed by a region growing technique is introduced to segment the candidate targets in a single-frame IR image after background suppression. Then the pipeline filter is used to verify the real targets. The position and the size of the detected target are then obtained to initialize the tracking algorithm. Secondly, we adopt an improved local binary pattern (LBP) scheme to represent the target texture feature and propose a joint gray-texture histogram method for a more distinctive and effective target representation. Finally, target tracking is accomplished by using the mean shift algorithm. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method can effectively detect the dim small targets under complex backgrounds and has better tracking performance compared with the gray histogram based tracking methods such as the mean shift and the particle filtering.