Effects of SO2 on selective catalytic reduction of NO with NH3 over a TiO2 photocatalyst

The effect of SO₂ gas was investigated on the activity of the photo-assisted selective catalytic reduction of nitrogen monoxide (NO) with ammonia (NH₃) over a TiO₂ photocatalyst in the presence of excess oxygen (photo-SCR). The introduction of SO₂ (300 ppm) greatly decreased the activity of the photo-SCR at 373 K. The increment of the reaction temperature enhanced the resistance to SO₂ gas, and at 553 K the conversion of NO was stable for at least 300 min of the reaction. X-ray diffraction, FTIR spectroscopy, thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), elemental analysis and N₂ adsorption measurement revealed that the ammonium sulfate species were generated after the reaction. There was a strong negative correlation between the deposition amount of the ammonium sulfate species and the specific surface area. Based on the above relationship, we concluded that the deposition of the ammonium sulfate species decreased the specific surface area by plugging the pore structure of the catalyst, and the decrease of the specific surface area resulted in the deactivation of the catalyst.     

Recent progress of the gas diffusion layer in proton exchange membrane fuel cells: Material and structure designs of microporous layer

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have become the most attractive power supply units for stationary and mobile applications. The operation, design characteristics, as well as performance of PEMFCs, are closely related to the multiphase transport of mass, heat, and electricity in the cell, a critical of which is the gas diffusion layer (GDL). It is very important to guarantee the transmission of water and gasses under high current density, and which is the weakness of PEMFCs at present. Microporous layer (MPL) is considered to be the key variable for mass transfer, so varieties of works focus on modification of MPL materials and its structure design. However, there is still a lack of special review to summarize and prospect the progress of MPL in recent years. This review article therefore focuses on the insights and comprehensive understanding of four critical issues of the MPL, the porosity, pore size distribution, wettability, structural design and the durability of MPL. At last, the conclusion and recommendations section summarized the future prospects and recommendations for possible research opportunities.     

Sustainability of ride-hailing services in China’s mobility market: A simulation model of socio-technical system transition

As a symbol of sharing economy, ride-hailing services have spread to Asia, where various forms of services have been established according to the existing socio-technical regimes, including legal, policy, and environmental concerns. China, in particular, has accepted ride-hailing services by revising existing institutions. This study analyzes China’s acceptance of ride-hailing services in the socio-technical system context set up for legacy services. Simulation modeling, combined with transition theory and an agent-based model, is used to analyze the data. This study calculates consumer disutility based on mobility market share, reflecting consumer preference, and predicts the sustainability of ride-hailing services. The simulation results conclude that legalization and socio-technical context are of importance for sustainable mobility.     

Optimization of waste quail eggshells as biocomposites for polyaniline in ammonia gas detection

A simple, cost-effective, and novel chemical sensor for ammonia (NH₃) gas detection was developed from polyaniline (PANI)/quail eggshell (QES) composites. QES is a natural waste enriched in calcium carbonate. In this work, pure PANI was synthesized from chemical oxidation method and PANI/QES composites were prepared from physical mixing of QES with the synthesized PANI at different mass ratio. A series of complementary techniques including Fourier transform infrared and ultraviolet-visible spectrometers, scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive detection coupled with mapping, thermogravimetric analysis, and X-ray diffractometer were used to characterize the physicochemical and textural properties of the biocomposites. From the results, PANI/QES composite with a mass ratio of 1 exhibited the lowest NH₃ detection limit of 5.24 ppm with a linear correlation coefficient (R²) of close to unity (0.9932) between the signal and NH₃ gas concentration. As a whole, the PANI/QES biocomposites synthesized from this work exhibited excellent selectivity toward NH₃ gas even in the presence of other gas impurities, such as acetone, ethanol, and hexane. For the sensor reusability, the PANI/QES biocomposites can be reused in the application of NH₃ gas detection for at least 4 cycles.     

Formulation of sage essential oil (Salvia officinalis,L.) monoterpenes into chitosan hydrogels and permeation study with GC-MS analysis

This study deals with the formulation of natural drugs into hydrogels. For the first time, compounds from the sage essential oil were formulated into chitosan hydrogels. A sample preparation procedure for hydrophobic volatile analytes present in a hydrophilic water matrix along with an analytical method based on the gas chromatography coupled with the mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was developed and applied for the evaluation of the identity and quantity of essential oil components in the hydrogels and saline samples. The experimental results revealed that the chitosan hydrogels are suitable for the formulation of sage essential oil. The monoterpene release can be effectively controlled by both chitosan and caffeine concentration in the hydrogels. Permeation experiment, based on a hydrogel with the optimized composition [3.5% (w/w) sage essential oil, 2.0% (w/w) caffeine, 2.5% (w/w) chitosan and 0.1% (w/w) Tween-80] in donor compartment, saline solution in acceptor compartment, and semi-permeable cellophane membrane, demonstrated the useful permeation selectivity. Here, (according to lipophilicity) an enhanced permeation of the bicyclic monoterpenes with antiflogistic and antiseptic properties (eucalyptol, camphor and borneol) and, at the same time, suppressed permeation of toxic thujone (not exceeding its permitted applicable concentration) was observed. These properties highlight the pharmaceutical importance of the developed chitosan hydrogel formulating sage essential oil in the dermal applications.     

Friction compensation controller for load varying machine tool feed drive

The load applied to a machine tool feed drive changes during the machining process as material is removed. This load change alters the Coulomb friction of the feed drive. Because Coulomb friction accounts for a large part of the total friction the friction compensation control accuracy of the feed drives is limited if this nonlinear change in the applied load is not considered. This paper presents a new friction compensation method that estimates the machine tool load in real time and considers its effect on friction characteristics. A friction observer based on a Kalman filter with load estimation is proposed for friction compensation control considering the applied load change. A specially designed feed drive testbed that enables the applied load to be modified easily was constructed for experimental verification. Control performance and friction estimation accuracy are demonstrated experimentally using the testbed.     

An unsupervised approach to generating generic summaries of documents

We present an optimization-based unsupervised approach to automatic document summarization. In the proposed approach, text summarization is modeled as a Boolean programming problem. This model generally attempts to optimize three properties, namely, (1) relevance: summary should contain informative textual units that are relevant to the user; (2) redundancy: summaries should not contain multiple textual units that convey the same information; and (3) length: summary is bounded in length. The approach proposed in this paper is applicable to both tasks: single- and multi-document summarization. In both tasks, documents are split into sentences in preprocessing. We select some salient sentences from document(s) to generate a summary. Finally, the summary is generated by threading all the selected sentences in the order that they appear in the original document(s). We implemented our model on multi-document summarization task. When comparing our methods to several existing summarization methods on an open DUC2005 and DUC2007 data sets, we found that our method improves the summarization results significantly. This is because, first, when extracting summary sentences, this method not only focuses on the relevance scores of sentences to the whole sentence collection, but also the topic representative of sentences. Second, when generating a summary, this method also deals with the problem of repetition of information. The methods were evaluated using ROUGE-1, ROUGE-2 and ROUGE-SU4 metrics. In this paper, we also demonstrate that the summarization result depends on the similarity measure. Results of the experiment showed that combination of symmetric and asymmetric similarity measures yields better result than their use separately.     

An analytical model for optimizing the performance of graphene based silicon Schottky barrier solar cells

In this paper, a model taking into account the effects of carrier loss mechanisms has been developed. The model simulates the photovoltaic properties of the graphene/n-type silicon Schottky barrier solar cells (G/n-Si_SBSC), and it can reproduce the experimentally determined parameters of the G/n-Si_SBSC. To overcome the low efficiencies of G/n-Si_SBSC, their performances have been optimized by modifying the work function of graphene and Si properties, accounted for variation of its thickness and doping level. The obtained results show that the work function of graphene has the major impact on the device performance. Also, the temperature dependence of the G/n-Si_SBSC performance is investigated.     

Stress-deformable state of isotropic double curved shell with internal cracks and a circular hole

This work is devoted to the stress–strain state of isotropic double curved shell with defect system. The construction is weakened by two non-through thickness (internal) cracks of different length and by a circular hole located between cracks. In this study we use the line-spring model. Within the framework of this model cracks are modeled as mathematical cuts of shell’s middle surface. This leads to a two-dimensional problem. The problem is reduced to a system of eight boundary integral equations. To ensure the uniqueness of solution an additional equation is added. In the numerical solution of the problem special quadrature formulas for singular integrals of Cauchy type and the finite difference method are applied. The influence of defects on each other for double curved shell has been investigated. The given theoretical results can be used for the calculation of structural elements with holes, cracks on the strength and fracture toughness in various branches of engineering.