A Self‐Assembled Superhydrophobic Electrospun Carbon–Silica Nanofiber Sponge for Selective Removal and Recovery of Oils and Organic Solvents

An oil spill needs timely cleanup before it spreads and poses serious environmental threat to the polluted area. This always requires the cleanup techniques to be efficient and cost‐effective. In this work, a lightweight and compressible sponge made of carbon–silica nanofibers is derived from electrospinning nanotechnology that is low‐cost, versatile, and readily scalable. The fabricated sponge has high porosity (>99 %) and displays ultra‐hydrophobicity and superoleophilicity, thus making it a suitable material as an oil adsorbent. Owing to its high porosity and low density, the sponge is capable of adsorbing oil up to 140 times its own weight with its sorption rate showing solution viscosity dependence. Furthermore, sponge regeneration and oil recovery are feasible by using either cyclic distillation or mechanical squeezing.     

Gold‐Catalyzed Fluorination–Hydration: Synthesis of α‐Fluorobenzofuranones from 2‐Alkynylphenol Derivatives

The Au^I‐catalyzed fluorination–hydration of 2‐alkynylphenol derivatives in the presence of Selectfluor [1‐chloromethyl‐4‐fluoro‐1,4‐diazoniabicyclo‐[2.2.2]octane bis(tetrafluoroborate)] has been developed. This method provides straightforward access to α‐fluorobenzofuranones with the construction of C?O, C=O, and C?F bonds in a single step on the basis of an Au^I/Au^III redox catalytic cycle. Several control experiments, including the asymmetric variant of this reaction, were also conducted to gain insight into the reaction mechanism.     

Experimental studies on active control of a dynamic system via a time-delayed absorber

The traditional passive absorber is fully effective within a narrow and certain frequency band.To solve this problem,a time-delayed acceleration feedback is introduced to convert a passive absorber into an active one.Both the inherent and the intentional time delays are included.The former mainly comes from signal acquiring and processing,computing,and applying the actuation force,and its value is fixed.The latter is introduced in the controller,and its value is actively adjustable.Firstly,the mechanical model is established and the frequency response equations are obtained.The regions of stability are delineated in the plane of control parameters.Secondly,the design scheme of control parameters is performed to help select the values of the feedback gain and time delay.Thirdly,the experimental studies are conducted.Effects of both negative and positive feedback control are investigated.Experimental results show that the proper choices of control parameters may broaden the effective frequency band of vibration absorption.Moreover,the time-delayed absorber greatly suppresses the resonant response of the primary system when the passive absorber totally fails.The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions and numerical simulations.