Revealing the Absence of Carbon in Aprotic Li–CO2 Batteries: A Mechanism Study Toward CO2 Reduction Under a Pure CO2 Environment

While attention is focused on Li–CO2 batteries due to their high energy density and ability to utilize carbon, their detailed cathodic reaction mechanism remains unclear. Thus far, the recognized reaction...

Synthesis of Hollow PVP/Ag Nanoparticle Composite Fibers via Electrospinning under A Dense CO2 Environment

Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) is used in a wide variety of applications because of its unique chemical and physical features, including its biocompatibility and low toxicity. In this study, hollow PVP/silver nanoparticle (PVP/Ag NP) composite fibers were synthesized. Stable, spherical Ag NPs, with an average size of 14.4 nm, were produced through a facile sonochemical reduction method. A small amount of starch as a potent reducing and stabilizing agent was used during the reduction of Ag ions to Ag NPs. The fabricated Ag NPs were then added to a 10 wt% PVP-dichloromethane (DCM) solution, which was utilized as an electrospinning feed solution under a dense carbon dioxide (CO2) environment at 313 K and 5 MPa and an applied voltage of 15 kV. The dense CO2 enabled rapid extraction of DCM from the PVP-Ag NPs-DCM solution, which was then dissolved into PVP/Ag NPs, resulting in a hollow structure. Scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared (FT-iR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), were used to characterize the electrospinning products.

Low-Calcium Cave Dripwaters in a High CO2 Environment: Formation and Development of Corrosion Cups in Postojna Cave, Slovenia

Speleothems have proven to be one of the most reliable terrestrial archives for palaeoclimate research. However, due to the complexity of karst systems, long-term monitoring and high-resolution analyses of the cave atmosphere and water geochemistry have become essential to better constrain the factors that control calcite growth and how geochemical palaeoclimate proxies are encoded into speleothems. While calcite precipitation incorporates the palaeoclimate signals into the speleothem fabric, certain conditions in caves can favour dissolution, which may form hiatuses or even destroy these signals. In extreme cases, in-cave dissolution by dripwater can form cup-shaped features (i.e., corrosion cups), which were the main focus of this study. The study site in Postojna Cave, Slovenia was investigated through cave climate monitoring and drip and cup water sampling, which took place during 2017–2021. We found that the cups are fed by low-calcium drips as the consequence of the thin rock overburden above the cave. Due to the specific configuration of the airflow pathways, the study site accumulates high levels of CO2 (>10,000 ppm), which shifts low-calcium dripwater into undersaturation. This causes dissolution on the rock surfaces and speleothems on the cave floor. The results of this study have broader significance in addressing the suitability of cave environments and speleothems used in paleoclimate research.