Synthesis and characterization of superoleophobic fumed alumina nanocomposite coated via the sol-gel process onto ceramic-based hollow fibre membrane for oil-water separation

Oily wastewater treatment is a global challenge due to the substantial amount of effluent resulted from many industrial and domestic activities. To overcome the challenge of using existing treatment approach and fouling, superoleophobic coatings were fabricated. In this study, a superoleophobic membrane surface was obtained using the sol-gel technique with perfluorooctanoate (PFO), poly (diallyl dimethylammonium chloride) (PDADMAC), and nanoparticles as complex-polymer nanocomposites. The effects of coating cycles on the surface structure, chemical properties, surface chemistry, and oleophobicity of the surface were examined using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and oil contact angle measurement. The results showed that the coated layer successfully adhered to the substrate surface. However, the chemical stability with respect to oil contact angle (OCA) revealed a decline at pH 7 and pH 9 and maintained stability at pH 3. Besides, oil flux at 63.0 L/m². h was achieved for PDADMAC-Al₂O₃/44 wt% PFO and the highest separation efficiency of 98% was obtained. Furthermore, the oil rejection decreases as the oil concentration increases from 1 to 3 g/L. OCA of 155° was obtained after 5 coating cycles. Apart from mitigating substrate fouling, the superoleophobic and superhydrophilic coating can be applied to a ceramic-based hollow fibre membrane and efficiently used for the separation of oil from oily wastewater.     

Preparation and antifouling performance of thin inorganic ultrafiltration membrane via assisted sol-gel method with different composition of dual additives

A novel TiO₂ thin film was prepared on the ceramic hollow fiber by the sol-gel method using poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as additives. SEM images verified the formation of TiO₂ layer with various thickness using different composition of titania sols. The effect of the PVP and PVA contents on the TiO₂ sol properties, the separation and the antifouling performance of the ultrafiltration membranes were investigated thoroughly. When the contents of PVP and PVA were 1.0 wt% and 0.8 wt%, respectively, the resultant membrane showed a thickness of 0.55 μm with a pure water flux of 255 L m^?2 h^?1. In addition, the adherent foulant bovine serum albumin was applied to evaluate the antifouling performance. During the three fouling-recovery cycles, the flux recovery ratio and the flux decay ratio maintained about 99% and 30%. The BSA flux and rejection were still 169 L m^?2 h^?1 and 96.9% after the cycles, indicating a superior antifouling property.     

High-resolution FIB-TEM-STEM structural characterization of grain boundaries in the high dielectric constant perovskite CaCu3Ti4O12

In this work, the grain boundaries composition of the polycrystalline CaCu₃Ti₄O₁₂ (CCTO) was investigated. A Focused Ion Beam (FIB)/lift-out technique was used to prepare site-specific thin samples of the grain boundaries interface of CCTO ceramics. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDXS) and Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) systems were used to characterize the composition and nanostructure of the grain and grain boundaries region. It is known that during conventional sintering, discontinuous grain growth occurs and a Cu-rich phase appears at grain boundaries. This Cu-rich phase may affect the final dielectric properties of CCTO but its structure and chemical composition remained unknown. For the first time, this high-resolution FIB-TEM-STEM study of CCTO interfacial region highlights the composition of the phases segregated at grain boundaries namely CuO, Cu₂O and the metastable phase Cu₃TiO_4.     

靶面激光光斑尺寸原位测量的研究

提供了一种简便易行的靶面激光光斑尺寸原位测量的方法。从高斯光束的横向光强分布特性出发,建立了激光烧蚀斑半径与辐照激光能量、光斑尺寸、烧蚀阈值间的关系式,模拟分析发现辐照激光光斑尺寸对烧蚀斑半径随辐照能量变化曲线有较大影响。对于脉宽为2 ms,波长为1064 nm的激光,实验测量了不同能量激光辐照下相纸烧蚀斑半径,并用推导出的关系式拟合测量数据,获得了靶面处光斑尺寸和样品烧蚀阈值。同时,也测量了不同位置处的光斑尺寸和样品烧蚀阈值,对高斯光束束腰位置和样品烧蚀阈值的光斑尺寸效应进行了验证。研究结果表明该技术结果可靠,简单高效。该技术可以为高能激光与固体物质相互作用的基础研究和激光加工等应用领域中实现简单方便地测量靶面光斑尺寸提供帮助。     

Fatigue life improvement of 12Cr1МoV steel by irradiation with Zr+ ion beam

Cyclic tension and bend tests were performed on heat-resistant 12Cr1MoV steel specimens in as-supplied condition as well as after Zr⁺ ion beam surface irradiation. Distinct differences in strain induced relief, as well in cracking pattern of modified surface layer were observed by optical microscopy and interference profilometry. Changes in subsurface layer are characterized by means of nano- and microindentation and fractography of fracture surfaces (with the help of scanning electron microscopy). It is shown that the main influence on mechanical properties is mostly induced by thermal treatment during irradiation rather than formation of a 2 μm thick layer doped with Zr. The differences in deformation behavior may be explained by physical mesomechanics concepts.     

Geopolymer concrete-filled pultruded composite beams – Concrete mix design and application

The limited research on the geopolymer concrete mix design for targeting a specific strength is identified an obstacle for their effective design and wide use. In this paper, a mix design procedure has been proposed for fly-ash based geopolymer concrete and its use as infill hybrid composite beam is investigated. Then, the structural performance of geopolymer concrete filled hybrid composite beam is investigated to determine their possible application in civil infrastructure. Firstly, a detailed procedure of mix design for fly-ash based geopolymer concrete is presented. Secondly, three hybrid beams filled with geopolymer concrete were prepared and tested in a four-point bending setup to evaluate their flexural modulus and modulus of rupture. Numerical and analytical evaluation of the behaviour of hybrid beam were performed and results showed a good agreement with the experimental investigation. Thirdly, the suitability of the beam for a composite railway sleeper is evaluated and compared with existing timber and composite sleepers. Finally, the beams’ performance in a ballast railway track is analysed using Strand7 finite element simulation software and the results showed that the new concept of using geopolymer concrete as infill to pultruded composite section satisfied the stiffness and strength requirements for a railway sleeper.     

A Novel Beam Search to Improve Neural Machine Translation for English-Chinese

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is an end-to-end learning approach for automated translation, overcoming the weaknesses of conventional phrase-based translation systems. Although NMT based systems have gained their popularity in commercial translation applications, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Being the most popular search algorithm in NMT, beam search is vital to the translation result. However, traditional beam search can produce duplicate or missing translation due to its target sequence selection strategy. Aiming to alleviate this problem, this paper proposed neural machine translation improvements based on a novel beam search evaluation function. And we use reinforcement learning to train a translation evaluation system to select better candidate words for generating translations. In the experiments, we conducted extensive experiments to evaluate our methods. CASIA corpus and the 1,000,000 pairs of bilingual corpora of NiuTrans are used in our experiments. The experiment results prove that the proposed methods can effectively improve the English to Chinese translation quality.     

Effect of focused ion beam sample preparation on the phase composition of zirconia

The investigation of phase transformations in metastable ceramic systems such as zirconia often requires local phase analysis within the areas of interest. Electron backscatter diffraction is a suitable method in combination with focused ion beam sample preparation. The interaction between ion beam and sample has to be carefully considered. In case of metastable Y-PSZ and Mg-PSZ, phase transformations were observed after FIB preparation with 30?kV, 30?nA and 5° incidence angle. Damage was the dominating effect for angles of 72°. The expected local temperature increase due to the ion bombardment with 30?kV and 30?nA is 700?K for ZrO₂. Thus, the observed phase transformations can be explained on the basis of the temperature increase in the corresponding Y-PSZ phase diagram. In case of Mg-PSZ, the transition temperature is 1083?°C. The local temperature increase was obviously lower. The excitation energy for the observed phase transformation was smaller than expected from the phase diagrams of the thermodynamic equilibrium. Using 5?kV, 4.8?nA and 5° incidence angle, no phase transformations and no damage were observed. Thus, these conditions are well suited for the FIB preparation of metastable zirconia.