scholarly journals Cost-Effective 1T-MoS2 Grown on Graphite Cathode Materials for High-Temperature Rechargeable Aluminum Ion Batteries and Hydrogen Evolution in Water Splitting

Catalysts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1547
Author(s):  
Shivaraj Patil ◽  
Ji-Yao An ◽  
Zhi-Jie Li ◽  
Yu-Cheng Wu ◽  
Swathi M. Gowdru ◽  
...  

The high dependence on and high cost of lithium has led to a search for alternative materials. Aluminum ion batteries (AIBs) have gained interest due to their abundance, low cost, and high capacity. However, the use of the expensive 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (EMIC) electrolyte in AIBs curtails its wide application. Recently, high-temperature batteries have also gained much attention owing to their high demand by industries. Herein, we introduce cost-effective 1T molybdenum sulfide grown on SP-1 graphite powder (1T-MoS2/SP-1) as a cathode material for high-temperature AIBs using the AlCl3-urea eutectic electrolyte (1T-MoS2/SP-1–urea system). The AIB using the 1T-MoS2/SP-1–urea system exhibited a capacity as high as 200 mAh/g with high efficiency of 99% over 100 cycles at 60 °C when cycled at the rate of 100 mA/g. However, the AIB displayed a capacity of 105 mAh/g when cycled at room temperature. The enhanced performance of the 1T-MoS2/SP-1–urea system is attributed to reduced viscosity of the AlCl3-urea eutectic electrolyte at higher temperatures with high compatibility of 1T-MoS2 with SP-1. Moreover, the electrocatalytic lithiation of 1T-MoS2 and its effect on the hydrogen evolution reaction were also investigated. We believe that our work can act as a beacon for finding alternative, cost-effective, and high-temperature batteries.

Author(s):  
Kenzo K. D. Repole ◽  
Sheldon M. Jeter

The central receiver power tower (CRPT) with a particle heating receiver (PHR) is a form of concentrating solar power (CSP) system with strong potential to achieve high efficiency at low cost and to readily incorporate cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES). In such a system, particulates are released into the PHR, and are heated to high temperature by concentrated solar radiation from the associated heliostat field. After being heated, the particles will then typically flow into the hot bin of the TES. Particulates accumulated in the hot bin can flow through a heat exchanger to energize a power generation system or be held in the hot TES storage bin for later use such as meeting a late afternoon peak demand or even overnight generation. Particles leaving the heat exchanger are held in the low temperature bin of the TES. A critical component in such a PHR system is the particle lift system, which must transport the particulate from the lower temperature TES bin back to the PHR. In our baseline 60 MW-thermal (MW-th) design, the particulate must be lifted around 70 m at the rate of 128 kg/s. For the eventual commercial scale system of a 460 MW-th design the particulate must be lifted around 138 m at the rate of 978 kg/s. The obvious demands on this subsystem require the selection and specification of a highly efficient, economical, and reliable lift design. After an apparently exhaustive search of feasible alternatives, the skip hoist was selected as the most suitable general design concept. While other designs have not been dismissed, our currently preferred somewhat more specific preliminary design employs a Kimberly Skip (KS) in a two-skip counterbalanced configuration. This design appears to be feasible to fabricate and integrate with existing technology at an acceptably low cost per MW-th and to promise high overall energy use efficiency, long service life, and low maintenance cost. A cost and performance model has been developed to allow optimization of our design and the results of that study are also presented. Our developed design meets the relevant criteria to promote cost effective CSP electricity production.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8421
Author(s):  
Yuan Gao ◽  
Jiandong Huang ◽  
Meng Li ◽  
Zhongran Dai ◽  
Rongli Jiang ◽  
...  

Uranium mining waste causes serious radiation-related health and environmental problems. This has encouraged efforts toward U(VI) removal with low cost and high efficiency. Typical uranium adsorbents, such as polymers, geopolymers, zeolites, and MOFs, and their associated high costs limit their practical applications. In this regard, this work found that the natural combusted coal gangue (CCG) could be a potential precursor of cheap sorbents to eliminate U(VI). The removal efficiency was modulated by chemical activation under acid and alkaline conditions, obtaining HCG (CCG activated with HCl) and KCG (CCG activated with KOH), respectively. The detailed structural analysis uncovered that those natural mineral substances, including quartz and kaolinite, were the main components in CCG and HCG. One of the key findings was that kalsilite formed in KCG under a mild synthetic condition can conspicuous enhance the affinity towards U(VI). The best equilibrium adsorption capacity with KCG was observed to be 140 mg/g under pH 6 within 120 min, following a pseudo-second-order kinetic model. To understand the improved adsorption performance, an adsorption mechanism was proposed by evaluating the pH of uranyl solutions, adsorbent dosage, as well as contact time. Combining with the structural analysis, this revealed that the uranyl adsorption process was mainly governed by chemisorption. This study gave rise to a utilization approach for CCG to obtain cost-effective adsorbents and paved a novel way towards eliminating uranium by a waste control by waste strategy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng Wang ◽  
Zepeng Lv ◽  
Xuewei Lv ◽  
Qian Li ◽  
Jie Dang

Abstract Density functional theory (DFT) calculation indicators (ΔG, densities of state, D-band and bader charge) are commonly used to predict and analyze the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity of catalysts, and most studies discuss only one or few of these indicators’ impact on catalysis, but still no report has comprehensively evaluated the influence of all these indicators on catalytic performance. Herein, foreseen by comprehensive consideration first, we report transition metal doped Ni3N nanosheets combined on Ni foam for utra-efficient alkaline hydrogen evolution. For dual transition metals doped Ni3N, Co,V-Ni3N exhibits remarkable HER performance with a significantly low overpotential of only 10 mV in alkaline electrolyte and 41 mV in alkaline seawater electrolyte at 10 mA cm− 2; while for single transition metal doped Ni3N, V-Ni3N exhibits the best performance with an overpotential of 15 mV and a Tafel slope of 37 mV dec− 1. Our work highlights the importance of comprehensive evaluation of DFT calculation indexes, and opens up a new method for the rational design of efficient and low-cost catalysts.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1676
Author(s):  
Md. Shahiduzzaman ◽  
Daiki Kuwahara ◽  
Masahiro Nakano ◽  
Makoto Karakawa ◽  
Kohshin Takahashi ◽  
...  

The most frequently used n-type electron transport layer (ETL) in high-efficiency perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is based on titanium oxide (TiO2) films, involving a high-temperature sintering (>450 °C) process. In this work, a dense, uniform, and pinhole-free compact titanium dioxide (TiOx) film was prepared via a facile chemical bath deposition process at a low temperature (80 °C), and was applied as a high-quality ETL for efficient planar PSCs. We tested and compared as-deposited substrates sintered at low temperatures (< 150 °C) and high temperatures (> 450 °C), as well as their corresponding photovoltaic properties. PSCs with a high-temperature treated TiO2 compact layer (CL) exhibited power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) as high as 15.50%, which was close to those of PSCs with low-temperature treated TiOx (14.51%). This indicates that low-temperature treated TiOx can be a potential ETL candidate for planar PSCs. In summary, this work reports on the fabrication of low-temperature processed PSCs, and can be of interest for the design and fabrication of future low-cost and flexible solar modules.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 3752-3756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Wu ◽  
Xingxing Li ◽  
Ruiqi Zhang ◽  
Jinlong Yang

Proposal of a B3S nanosheet as a low-cost and high-efficiency catalyst for hydrogen evolution.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (18) ◽  
pp. 6824-6830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heng Deng ◽  
Chi Zhang ◽  
Yunchao Xie ◽  
Travis Tumlin ◽  
Lily Giri ◽  
...  

The direct laser writing method has emerged as a novel technique for fabricating MoS2/carbon hybrid HER catalysts with low cost, high efficiency, and flexible designability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 1161-1167
Author(s):  
Zhixing Cheng ◽  
Ali Saad ◽  
Samira Adimi ◽  
Haichuan Guo ◽  
Siqi Liu ◽  
...  

A new means of producing MOF derived TMN materials, which in conjunction with suitable dyes, offer high-efficiency and low-cost avenues for making photocatalysts for hydrogen production.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lijun Ma ◽  
Jing Xu ◽  
Juan Zhang ◽  
Zhenlu Liu ◽  
Xinyu Liu

The development of high-efficiency and low-cost photocatalysts for hydrogen production reaction is very important to solve energy problems. This paper studied the photocatalytic H2 evolution activity of CeO2/CoS2 heterojunction catalyst...


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiding Lin ◽  
Danhao Ma ◽  
Rui-Tao Wen ◽  
Kwang Hong Lee ◽  
Govindo Syaranamual ◽  
...  

Abstract Photonic-integrated circuits (PICs) have become one of the most promising solutions to the burgeoning global data communication and are being envisioned to have revolutionary impact in many other emerging fields. This outlook requires future PICs to be significantly more broadband and cost-effective. The current germanium (Ge)-based active photonic devices in PICs are thus facing a new bandwidth-cost trade-off. Here, we demonstrate ultra-broadband, high-efficiency Ge photodetectors up to 1,630 nm operation wavelength and Ge0.99Si0.01 electro-absorption (EA) modulator arrays with an operating range of ~100 nm from 1,525 to 1,620 nm, using a CMOS-compatible recess-type silicon nitride (SiNx) stressor. The broadband operation could facilitate a wide (>100 nm) window for low-cost Ge modulator-detector co-integration, requiring only a single step of Ge epitaxy and two different SiNx depositions. The broad modulation and co-integration coverage can be entirely shifted to shorter (~1,300 nm) and longer (>1,700 nm) wavelengths with small amounts of Si or tin (Sn) alloying. This proof-of-concept work provides a pathway for PICs towards future low-cost and high-data-capacity communication networks, immediately accessible by designers through foundries.


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