Dynamics of laser-induced cavitation bubble during expansion over sharp-edge geometry submerged in liquid – an inside view by diffuse illumination

Laser ablation in liquids is growing in popularity for various applications including nanoparticle production, breakdown spectroscopy, and surface functionalization. When laser pulse ablates the solid target submerged in liquid, a cavitation bubble develops. In case of “finite” geometries of ablated solids, liquid dynamical phenomena can occur inside the bubble when the bubble overflows the surface edge. To observe this dynamics, we use diffuse illumination of a flashlamp in combination with a high-speed videography by exposure times down to 250 ns. The developed theoretical modelling and its comparison with the experimental observations clearly prove that this approach widens the observable area inside the bubble. We thereby use it to study the dynamics of laser-induced cavitation bubble during its expansion over a sharp-edge (“cliff-like” 90°) geometry submerged in water, ethanol, and polyethylene glycol 300. The samples are 17 mm wide stainless steel plates with thickness in the range of 0.025–2 mm. Bubbles are induced on the samples by 1064-nm laser pulses with pulse durations of 7–60 ns and pulse energies of 10–55 mJ. We observe formation of a fixed-type secondary cavity behind the edge where low-pressure area develops due to bubble-driven flow of the liquid. This occurs when the velocity of liquid overflow exceeds ~20 m s⁻¹. A re-entrant liquid injection with up to ~40 m s⁻¹ velocity may occur inside the bubble when the bubble overflows the edge of the sample. Formation and characteristics of the jet evidently depend on the relation between the breakdown-edge offset and the bubble energy, as well as the properties of the surrounding liquid. Higher viscosity of the liquid prevents the generation of the jet.     

Localization and quantification of radical production in cavitating flows with luminol chemiluminescent reactions

Hydrodynamic cavitation experiments in microfluidic systems have been performed with an aqueous solution of luminol as the working fluid. In order to identify where and how much reactive radical species are formed by the violent bubble collapse, the resulting chemiluminescent oxidation reaction of luminol was scrutinized downstream of a constriction in the microchannel. An original method was developed in order to map the intensity of chemiluminescence emitted from the micro-flow, allowing us to localize the region where radicals are produced. Time averaged void fraction measurements performed by laser induced fluorescence experiments were also used to determine the cavitation cloud position. The combination void fraction and chemiluminescence two-dimensional mapping demonstrated that the maximum chemiluminescent intensity area was found just downstream of the cavitation clouds. Furthermore, the radical yield can be obtained with our single photon counting technique. The maximum radical production rates of 1.2*10⁷ OH/s and radical production per processed liquid volume of 2.15*10¹⁰ HO/l were observed. The proposed technique allows for two-dimensional characterisation of radical production in the microfluidic flow and could be a quick, non-intrusive way to optimise hydrodynamic cavitation reactor design and operating parameters, leading to enhancements in wastewater treatments and other process intensifications.     

Photothermal Oxidation of Cinnamyl Alcohol with Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyzed by Gold Nanoparticle/Antimony-Doped Tin Oxide Nanocrystals

Gold nanoparticles with different mean sizes were formed on antimony-doped tin oxide nanocrystals by the temperature-varied deposition-precipitation method (Au/ATO NCs). Au/ATO NCs possess strong absorption in the near-infrared region due to Drude excitation in addition to the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of AuNPs around 530 nm. Au/ATO NCs show thermally activated catalytic activity for the oxidation of cinnamyl alcohol to cinnamaldehyde by hydrogen peroxide. The catalytic activity increases with a decrease in the mean Au particle size (d_Au) at 5.3 nm≤d_Au≤8.2 nm. Light irradiation (λ_ex >660 nm, ∼0.5 sun) of Au/ATO NCs increases the rate of reaction by more than twice with ∼95 % selectivity. Kinetic analyses indicated that the striking enhancement of the reaction stems from the rise in the temperature near the catalyst surface of ∼30 K due to the photothermal effect of the ATO NCs.     

Optimization of heterogeneous Catalyst-assisted fatty acid methyl esters biodiesel production from Soybean oil with different Machine learning methods

There is a growing attention to the bio and renewable energies due to fast depletion of fossil fuels as well as the global warming problem. Here, we developed a modeling and simulation method by means of artificial intelligence (AI) for prediction of the bioenergy production from vegetable bean oil. AI methods are well known for prediction of complex and nonlinear process. Three distinct Adaptive Boosted models including Huber regression, LASSO, and Support Vector Regression (SVR) as well as artificial neural network (ANN) were applied in this study to predict actual yield of Fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) production. All boosted utilizing the Adaptive boosting algorithm. The important influencing parameters on the biodiesel production such as the catalyst loading (CAO/Ag, wt%) and methanol to oil (Soybean oil) molar ratio were selected as the input variables of models while the yield of FAME production was selected as output. Model hyper-parameters were tuned to maintain generality while improving prediction accuracy. The models were evaluated using three distinct metrics Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and R². Error rates of 8.16780E-01, 4.43895E-01, 2.06692E + 00, and 3.92713 E-01 were obtained with the MAE metric for boosted Huber, SVR, LASSO and ANN models. On the other hand, the RMSE error of these models were about 1.092E-02, 1.015E-02, 2.669E-02, and 1.01174E-02, respectively. Finally, the R-square score were calculated for boosted Huber, boosted SVR, and boosted LASSO as 0.976, 0.990, 0.872, and 0.99702, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded that although the boosted SVR and ANN models were better models for prediction of process efficiency in terms of error, but all algorithms had high accuracy. The optimum yield of 83.77% and 81.60% for biodiesel production were observed at optimum operating values from boosted SVR and ANN models, respectively.     

水流损失和热补偿共同作用对增强型地热系统(EGS)产能影响的研究

基于青海共和盆地-3705m地热田实测数据,结合流固耦合传热理论并运用Comsol软件,建立了离散型裂隙岩体流体传热模型。考虑水流损失和热补偿共同作用,模拟得到了开采过程中上、下岩层(盖层和垫层)为绝热不渗透、传热不渗透、渗透传热时,储层(上、下岩层和压裂层)温度场的变化特征,分析了产出流量、水流损失、产出温度、产热速率的变化规律。研究结果表明:采热过程中产出流量始终小于注入流量;产出流量增幅速率先增大后减小,最后趋于稳定,前3a产出流量增幅超过总增幅量的3/4;忽略水流损失,将高估产热速率,采热初期甚至达到考虑水流损失时产热速率的3倍以上;考虑水流损失,产热速率呈先快速上升再趋于稳定后逐渐下降的趋势,最优开采时间为3a^11a;研究上、下岩层对产出温度的影响,仅考虑传热,采热寿命延长5.43%,同时考虑渗流传热时,采热寿命延长2.71%;采热前9a,水流损失占主导作用,即流入上、下岩层水流损失对产热速率的影响高于热补偿效应,开采10a后,热补偿效应占主导作用;同时考虑水流损失和热补偿效应得到的产热速率变化规律与实际工程更为符合,建议选择低渗透能力的上、下岩层延长增强型地热系统(EGS)运行时间。     

Polypyridine-Based Helical Amide Foldamer Channels: Rapid Transport of Water and Protons with High Ion Rejection

Synthetic strategies that enable rapid construction of covalent organic nanotubes with an angstrom-scale tubular pore remain scarcely reported. Reported here is a remarkably simple and mild one-pot polymerization protocol, employing POCl₃ as the polymerization agent. This protocol efficiently generates polypyridine amide foldamer-based covalent organic nanotubes with a 2.8 nm length at a yield of 50 %. Trapping single-file water chains in the 2.8 Å tubular cavity, rich in hydrogen-bond donors and acceptors, these tubular polypyridine ensembles rapidly and selectively transport water at a rate of 1.6×10⁹ H₂O⋅S⁻¹⋅channel⁻¹ and protons at a speed as fast as gramicidin A, with a high rejection of ions.     

Molecularly Engineered 6FDA-Based Polyimide Membranes for Sour Natural Gas Separation

Glassy polyimide membranes are attractive for industrial applications in sour natural gas purification. Unfortunately, the lack of fundamental understanding of relationships between polyimide chemical structures and their gas transport properties in the presence of H₂S constrains the design and engineering of advanced membranes for such challenging applications. Herein, 6FDA-based polyimide membranes with engineered structures were synthesized to tune their CO₂/CH₄ and H₂S/CH₄ separation performances and plasticization properties. Under ternary mixed sour gas feeds, controlling polymer chain packing and plasticization tendency of such polyimide membranes via tuning the chemical structures were found to offer better combined H₂S and CO₂ removal efficiency compared to conventional polymers. Fundamental insights into structure–property relationships of 6FDA-based polyimide membranes observed in this study offer guidance for next generation membranes for sour natural gas separation.     

Manipulating Light-Induced Dynamic Macro-Movement and Static Photonic Properties within 1D Isostructural Hydrogen-Bonded Molecular Cocrystals

Smart molecular crystals with light-driven mechanical responses have received interest owing to their potential uses in molecular machines, artificial muscles, and biomimetics. However, challenges remain in control over both the dynamic photo-mechanical behaviors and static photonic properties of molecular crystals based on the same molecule. Herein, we show the construction of isostructural co-crystals allows their light-induced cracking and jumping behaviors (photosalient effect) to be controlled. Hydrogen-bonded co-crystals from 4-(1-naphthylvinyl)pyridine ( NVP ) with co-formers (tetrafluoro-4-hydroxybenzoic acid ( THA ) and tetrafluorobenzoic acid ( TA )) crystallize as isostructural crystals, but have different static and dynamic photo-mechanical behaviors. These differences are due to alternations in the orientation of NVP and hydrogen-bonding modes of the co-formers. After light activation, the 1D NVP-TA crystal splits and shears off within 1 s. For NVP-THA , its photostability and high quantum yield give novel photonic properties, including low optical waveguide loss, highly polarized anisotropy, and efficient up-conversion fluorescence.     

Anti-Markovnikov Hydroamination of Racemic Allylic Alcohols to Access Chiral γ-Amino Alcohols

A ruthenium-catalyzed formal anti-Markovnikov hydroamination of allylic alcohols for the synthesis of chiral γ-amino alcohols is presented. Proceeding via an asymmetric hydrogen-borrowing process, the catalysis allows racemic secondary allylic alcohols to react with various amines, affording enantiomerically enriched chiral γ-amino alcohols with broad substrate scope and excellent enantioselectivities (68 examples, up to >99 % ee).