Modular electrochemical production of hydrogen using Mott–Schottky Co9S8/Ni3S2 heterojunction as a redox mediator

Modular electrochemical production (MEP) system could decouple the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and pairing with a redox mediator (RM), respectively. Herein, Mott–Schottky Co₉S₈/Ni₃S₂ heterojunction was constructed, which was employed as a RM to separate the hydrogen and oxygen production in space and time in MEP system for H₂. The MEP system for H₂ involved a two−step electrochemical−electrochemical (EC−EC) looping process. The reversible redox reaction of Co₉S₈/Ni₃S₂ was paired with HER in step 1 and subsequently paired with OER in step 2. The Mott–Schottky hetero-structures enabled the redistribution of Ni central charge and accelerated the electron transfer from semiconductor Ni₃S₂ to metallic Co₉S₈ on the interface. This made the formation of Lewis acid at the Ni₃S₂ in the heterojunction, which bonded with the OH⁻ Lewis base, facilitating the electrochemical redox kinetics of Co₉S₈/Ni₃S₂. Thus, the Co₉S₈/Ni₃S₂ RM presented a high area capacitance (29.60 F/cm² at 5 mA/cm²), and an excellent stability upon operation over 5000 cycles (15 days). The MEP system can continuously produce H₂ for 1502 s at 10 mA/cm² with a Faradaic efficiency of 100%. The MEP system possessed a high energy efficiency (83%), requiring a lower cell voltage than that of a conventional water electrolysis system. The MEP system for H₂ enabled flexible utilization of renewable solar energy by photovoltaic (PV) panels, thereby facilitating solar-to-hydrogen conversion.     

Fate of Organic Pollutants in a Full-Scale Drinking Water Treatment Plant Using O3-BAC

This research investigated the fate of organic pollutants in each unit of a full-scale O₃-BAC (biological activated carbon) drinking water treatment plant with micro-polluted raw water under different temperatures. Total organic matters were largely removed with low DBPs (disinfection by-products) formed. Large molecules were broken into smaller ones by O₃ and middle-sized ones totally removed. Concentration of polysaccharide decreased except under high temperature. Small molecule contaminant species of refractory industrial additives, hydrocarbons, aromatics, herbicides, possible DBPs, etc., were detected. Some species passed through treatment process, some were removed and also new species formed.     

Traffic management in frame relay networks

In CCITT documents, frame relay is referred to as an ISDN frame mode bearer service. Layer 3 messages are carried across a frame relay network in frames and, compared with X.25 for instance, the layer 2 protocol in the network is minimal. Frame relay networks are expected to carry a mixture of different types of traffic and a suggested traffic classification scheme is given in this paper. Also considered are the important issues of buffer management and congestion control and how these might be implemented in frame relay network nodes. Most of these concerns relate to the U (user) plane and, unless otherwise stated, the paper concentrates exclusively on traffic management in the U-plane.     

Why Ni/CeO2 is more active than Ni/SiO2 for CO2 methanation? Identifying effect of Ni particle size and oxygen vacancy

An impregnated Ni/CeO₂ catalyst with an array structure and a phyllosilicate-based Ni/SiO₂ catalyst prepared by hydrothermal method were designed for CO₂ methanation. The as-synthetized Ni/SiO₂ catalyst exhibits a high Ni content of 25.9 wt%, while its CO₂ conversion at low temperature is far lower than that of Ni/CeO₂, whose Ni content is only 10.0 wt%. TEM and XRD results show that the Ni/CeO₂ catalyst possesses very tiny Ni particle size of around 1.2 nm, which leads to large H₂ uptake capacity. XPS and Raman analyses indicate that Ni/CeO₂ obtains more oxygen vacancies resulting in promotion of the CO₂ activation. The combined effect of the Ni/CeO₂ catalyst to enhance chemisorption of H₂ and CO₂ leads to high low-temperature activity.     

The Trellis security infrastructure for overlay metacomputers and bridged distributed file systems

Researchers often have non-privileged access to a variety of high-performance computer (HPC) systems in different administrative domains, possibly across a wide-area network. Consequently, the security infrastructure becomes an important component of an overlay metacomputer: a user-level aggregation of HPC systems.The Trellis security infrastructure (TSI) is layered on top of the widely-deployed secure shell (SSH) and systems administrators only need to provide unprivileged accounts to the users. The contribution of TSI is in demonstrating that a single sign-on (SSO) system, for a variety of use-case scenarios, can be implemented without requiring a completely new security infrastructure. We describe the use of TSI for a Canada-wide overlay metacomputer, for computational workloads (i.e., CISS-3) that spanned 22 administrative domains, at its peak had over 4000 concurrent jobs, and included a new distributed file system (i.e., Trellis NFS).     

Enhanced oral bioavailability of lurasidone by self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system in fasted state

Objective: The purpose of this work was to develop a new formulation to enhance the bioavailability and reduce the food effect of lurasidone using self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems (SNEDDSs).

Methods: The formulation of lurasidone-SNEDDS was selected by the solubility and pseudo-ternary phase diagram studies. The prepared lurasidone-SNEDDS formulations were characterized for self-emulsification time, effect of pH and robustness to dilution, droplet size analysis, zeta potential and in vitro drug release. Lurasidone-SNEDDSs were administered to beagle dogs in fed and fasted state and their pharmacokinetics were compared to commercial available tablet as a control.

Results: The result showed lurasidone-SNEDDS was successfully prepared using Capmul MCM, Tween 80 and glycerol as oil phase, surfactant and co-surfactant, respectively. In vitro drug release studies indicated that the lurasidone-SNEDDS showed improved drug release profiles and the release behavior was not affected by the medium pH with total drug release of over 90% within 5?min. Pharmacokinetic study showed that the AUC_(0–∞) and C_max for lurasidone-SNEDDS are similar in the fasted and fed state, indicating essentially there is no food effect on the drug absorption.

Conclusion: It was concluded that enhanced bioavailability and no food effect of lurasidone had been achieved by using SNEDDS.     

Thermal swing adsorption process for removing trace impurities from a multi-component gas mixture: (Landfill gas)

Several thermal swing adsorption process configurations for removing trace impurities from landfill gas are compared. It is shown that significant improvements in process performance can be realized by properly integrating the bulk fractionation and trace removal adsorption systems. Rules of thumb are outlined for designing efficient thermal swing adsorption processes to remove trace impurities from a multicomponent gas mixture.     

双碳目标下纺织产业的绿色创新与发展

为助力纺织产业快速实现双碳目标,总结了阻碍纺织产业碳排放量降低的因素。依据纺织品生命周期的6个阶段,即纤维生产、纺纱织造、染整加工、成衣制造、消费使用、回收再利用,总结了国内外的绿色创新研究现状,提出了“提升一批”“替代一批”“更新一批”“规范一批”的4R降碳准则。在此基础上,从产业转型升级、清洁能源占比提升、绿色消费理念转换和循环再利用体系构建4大方向,指出纺织产业全面减碳的绿色创新路径,并建议结合碳汇、碳捕集与封存、碳交易等管理方式,实现纺织产业的碳达峰与碳中和目标。     

Impacts of La addition on formation of the reaction intermediates over alumina and silica supported nickel catalysts in methanation of CO2

This study aimed to investigate impacts of Al₂O₃ and SiO₂, the supports of Ni catalysts with distinct properties, and the additive of La on catalytic behaviors and reaction intermediates formed during methanation of CO₂. The results showed that the addition of La to either Ni/Al₂O₃ or Ni/SiO₂ led to the reduced size of metallic nickel, the reduced reduction degree of nickel oxide, the increased alkalinity number and the increased activity for methanation of CO₂. Furthermore, the addition of La to the Ni/SiO₂ catalyst could suppress the formation of CO via the reverse water gas shift (RWGS) reaction. Ni/SiO₂ was much more active than the Ni/Al₂O₃, even though nickel size was much bigger. The in situ Diffuse Reflection Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (DRIFTS) studies showed that the addition of La to Ni/Al₂O₃ interfered with integration of hydroxyl group with *CO₂ species and formation of the bicarbonate and carbonate, while favored formation of the formate specie, enhancing the catalytic activity. For Ni/SiO₂, instead of formate, CO* became the main reaction intermediate. The strong absorption of CO* favored its further conversion and explained the low selectivity of the silica-based catalysts toward CO. The addition of La to Ni/SiO₂ catalyst facilitated further hydrogenation of CO* species to CH₄ and promoted the catalytic activity.