scholarly journals Continuous-Flow Photocatalytic Microfluidic-Reactor for the Treatment of Aqueous Contaminants, Simplicity, and Complexity: A Mini-Review

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1325
Author(s):  
Zhongwei Gao ◽  
Changqing Pan ◽  
Chang-Ho Choi ◽  
Chih-Hung Chang

Water pollution is a growing global issue; there are many approaches to treating wastewater, including chemical coagulation, physical adsorption, and chemical oxidation. The photocatalysis process has provided a solution for removing pollutants from wastewater, where the pair of the photoelectron and hole works through an asymmetric way to degrade the contaminants under UV irradiation. This method offers an alternative route for treating the pollutant with a lower energy cost, high efficiency, and fewer byproducts. A continuous-flow microfluidic reactor has a channel size from tens to thousands of micrometers, providing uniform irradiation and short diffusion length. It can enhance the conversion efficiency of photocatalysis due to the simple spatial symmetry inside the microreactor channel and among the individual channels. In addition, the bandgap of TiO2, ZnO, or other photocatalyst nanoparticles with symmetric crystal structure can be modified through doping or embedding. In this mini-review, a review of the reported continuous-flow photocatalytic microfluidic reactor is discussed from the perspective of both microreactor design and material engineering.

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 188
Author(s):  
Žiga Korošak ◽  
Nejc Suhadolnik ◽  
Anton Pleteršek

The aim of this work is to tackle the problem of modulation wave shaping in the field of near field communication (NFC) radio frequency identification (RFID). For this purpose, a high-efficiency transmitter circuit was developed to comply with the strict requirements of the newest EMVCo and NFC Forum specifications for pulse shapes. The proposed circuit uses an outphasing modulator that is based on a digital-to-time converter (DTC). The DTC based outphasing modulator supports amplitude shift keying (ASK) modulation, operates at four times the 13.56 MHz carrier frequency and is made fully differential in order to remove the parasitic phase modulation components. The accompanying transmitter logic includes lookup tables with programmable modulation pulse wave shapes. The modulator solution uses a 64-cell tapped current controlled fully differential delay locked loop (DLL), which produces a 360° delay at 54.24 MHz, and a glitch-free multiplexor to select the individual taps. The outphased output from the modulator is mixed to create an RF pulse width modulated (PWM) output, which drives the antenna. Additionally, this implementation is fully compatible with D-class amplifiers enabling high efficiency. A test circuit of the proposed differential multi-standard reader’s transmitter was simulated in 40 nm CMOS technology. Stricter pulse shape requirements were easily satisfied, while achieving an output linearity of 0.2 bits and maximum power consumption under 7.5 mW.


Langmuir ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (17) ◽  
pp. 14372-14379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie E. McCalla ◽  
Anubhav Tripathi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanming Sun ◽  
Yunhao Cai ◽  
Qian Li ◽  
Guanyu Lu ◽  
Hwa Sook Ryu ◽  
...  

Abstract The development of high-performance organic solar cells (OSCs) with thick active layers is of crucial importance for the roll-to-roll printing of large-area solar panels. Unfortunately, increasing the active layer thickness usually results in a significant reduction in efficiency. Herein, we fabricated efficient thick-film OSCs with an active layer consisting of one polymer donor and two non-fullerene acceptors. The two acceptors were found to possess enlarged exciton diffusion length in the mixed phase, which is beneficial to exciton generation and dissociation. Additionally, layer by layer approach was employed to optimize the vertical phase separation. Benefiting from the synergetic effects of enlarged exciton diffusion length and graded vertical phase separation, a record high efficiency of 17.31% (certified value of 16.9%) was obtained for the 300 nm-thick OSC, with an unprecedented short-circuit current density of 28.36 mA cm−2, and a high fill factor of 73.0%. Moreover, the device with an active layer thickness of 500 nm also shows a record efficiency of 15.21%. This work provides new insights into the fabrication of high-efficiency OSCs with thick active layers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandros I. Stefanakis

Hydrocarbon contamination of water resources is a global issue. These compounds are generated and discharged into the environment in industrial areas from chemical and petrochemical plants, oil refineries, power plants, and so forth. Fuel hydrocarbons, namely, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes) and MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether), are commonly found in groundwater, posing environmental and health risks to humans and ecosystems. Nature-based technologies represent an alternative solution, providing high efficiency, an environmentally friendly character, simple operation, and cost efficiency, which are characteristics particularly desired by the international petroleum industry. This article discusses the use of the green technology of constructed wetlands to remediate water polluted with hydrocarbons. Although the number of related international experiences and studies is limited, the article presents the latest developments of wetland technology for the removal of MTBE and benzene-BTEX. The discussion includes the overall efficiency of the different wetland types that have been tested and used, the main transformation and removal processes that regulate the fate of BTEX and MTBE in constructed wetlands, and the potential for future investigations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (12) ◽  
pp. 1564
Author(s):  
Lu Xia ◽  
Wen Yang ◽  
Qifang Geng ◽  
Nasreen Jeelani ◽  
Shuqing An

Biological invasion is a global issue. Since the double helix structure of DNA molecule was discovered in 1953, more scientific studies have focused on the structure and function of biological macromolecules in invasive organisms using molecular biology techniques, which has contributed to our understanding of their competitive advantages and invasion mechanisms. As a coastal invasive species, there has been considerable interest in Spartina alterniflora. Here we summarise previous studies investigating S. alterniflora using molecular biological techniques from the individual, population and application perspectives. We hope this article will be helpful in future studies on and in the management and utilisation of S. alterniflora in wetlands.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-189
Author(s):  
V. Grachev

AbstractThe aim of research was creation of a furnace for aluminum alloys smelting “in a liquid bath” in order to reduce metal loss. In the paper, the author demonstrates the results of research on smelting of aluminum alloys in a shaft-reverberatory furnace designed by the author. It has been shown that smelting aluminum alloy in a liquid bath was able to significantly reduce aluminum loss and that shaft-reverberatory design provided high efficiency and productivity along with lower energy costs. Ensuring continuous operation of the liquid bath and superheating chamber, which tapped alloy with the required texture, was achieved by means of the optimal design of partition between them. The optimum section of the connecting channels between the liquid bath of smelting and the superheating chamber has been theoretically substantiated and experimentally confirmed. The author proposed a workable shaft-reverberatory furnace for aluminum alloys smelting, providing solid charge melting in a liquid bath.


2012 ◽  
Vol 482-484 ◽  
pp. 559-564
Author(s):  
Guo Hua Xu ◽  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Ming Dong ◽  
Lu Wei Xu

A switch-mode power amplifier based on a cascaded multicell multilevel circuit topology is introduced in the paper. Due to the Carrier-Based phase-shifted modulation of the individual switching cells, the output voltage ripple of the total system is considerably small. Compared with traditional class- AB amplifiers that are very poor at efficiency, the proposed amplifier has the efficiency of 90% at the smaller distortion level. A multilevel class-D amplifier’s mathematic model is analyzed. The paper lays emphasis on the design of the sliding mode control and deducts the parameters, and then develops a 2kW cascade multilevel class-D power amplifier adopting sliding mode control. The research results show that this kind of amplifier increases the system bandwidth, which provides the system with fast following performance and stability, high efficiency, and low THD value of output signals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 4070-4077 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amparo Fernández-Pérez ◽  
Verónica Rodríguez-Casado ◽  
Teresa Valdés-Solís ◽  
Gregorio Marbán

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document