Synthesis of new dihybrid nanofluid of TiO2/MWCNT in water–ethylene glycol to improve mixture thermal performance: preparation,characterization, and a novel correlation via ANN based on orthogonal distance regression algorithm

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - Nanofluid refers to the mixture of fluid and solid nanoparticles. If this mixture contains more than one NP or fluid, it is called “hybrid...     

Natural convection of CNT water-based nanofluids in a differentially heated square cavity

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - The present paper deals with the prediction of average Nusselt number in a differentially heated square cavity filled with Newtonian and non-Newtonian...     

Novel Fe3O4/hydroxyapatite/β‐cyclodextrin nanocomposite adsorbent: Synthesis and application in heavy metal removal from aqueous solution

The increased global concern on environmental protection has made researchers focus their attention on new and more efficient methods of pollutant removal. In this research, novel nanocomposite adsorbents,i.e., magnetic hydroxyapatite (Fe₃O₄@HA) and magnetic hydroxyapatite β‐cyclodextrin (Fe₃O₄@HA‐CD) were synthesized and used for heavy metal removal. The adsorbents were characterized by FTIR, XRD, TGA, VSM, and SEM. In order to investigate the effect of β‐cyclodextrin (β‐CD) removal efficiency, adsorption results of nine metal ions were compared for both adsorbents. β‐CD showed the most increasing effect for Cd²⁺ and Cu²⁺ removal, so these two ions were selected for further studies. The effect of diverse parameters including pH, contact time, initial metal ion concentration and adsorbent dosage on the adsorption process was discussed. The optimum pH was 6 and adsorption equilibrium was achieved after 1 hr. Adsorption kinetic data were well fitted by pseudo‐second‐order model proposing that metal ions were adsorbed via chemical reaction. Adsorption isotherm was best described by the Langmuir model, and maximum adsorption capacity for Cd²⁺ and Cu²⁺ was 100.00 and 66.66 (mg/g), respectively. Desorption experiment was also done, and the most efficient eluent used for desorption of metal ions was EDTA (0.001 M) with 91% and 88% of Cd²⁺ and Cu²⁺ release, respectively. Recyclability studies also showed a 19% decrease in the adsorption capacity of the adsorbent after five cycles of regeneration. Therefore, the synthesized adsorbents were recognized as potential candidates for heavy metal adsorption applications.     

Novel NiFe/Si/Au magnetic nanocatalyst: Biogenic synthesis,efficient and reusable catalyst with enhanced visible light photocatalytic degradation and antibacterial activity

The aim of this paper is to biosynthesize NiFe₂O₄/SiO₂/Au (NiFe/Si/Au) magnetic nanocatalyst using the sonochemical method. This is the first study to synthesize this compound using this method. To obtain optimum morphology and size of products, the synthesis was performed in the presence of polyvinylpyrrolidone, maltose, glucose, and fructose as capping agents and Crataegus pentagyna leaf extract and NaBH₄ as reducing agents. Vibrating-sample magnetometer, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and differential reflectance spectroscopy techniques were performed to confirm the preparation of magnetic products. The as-synthesized magnetic samples were used to enhance the photocatalytic degradation and antibacterial activity. The NiFe/Si/Au nanocatalysts exhibited an excellent photocatalytic activity by degradation of rhodamine b, methylene blue, and erythrosine as organic contaminants under ultraviolet and visible light irradiation. The degradation curves illustrate that the degradation of anionic dyes is more than that of cationic dyes. In addition, antibacterial activity of as-prepared nanocatalyst against seven bacterial species was investigated. Because of their antibacterial effects, as-synthesized products show a high antibacterial activity against various bacteria. Consequently, the NiFe/Si/Au nanocatalysts with high antibacterial activity and excellent potential photocatalyst activity can be used in environmental and medical sciences for wastewater treatment.     

Robust optimization with simulated annealing

Complex systems can be optimized to improve the performance with respect to desired functionalities. An optimized solution, however, can become suboptimal or even infeasible, when errors in implementation or input data are encountered. We report on a robust simulated annealing algorithm that does not require any knowledge of the problems structure. This is necessary in many engineering applications where solutions are often not explicitly known and have to be obtained by numerical simulations. While this nonconvex and global optimization method improves the performance as well as the robustness, it also warrants for a global optimum which is robust against data and implementation uncertainties. We demonstrate it on a polynomial optimization problem and on a high-dimensional and complex nanophotonic engineering problem and show significant improvements in efficiency as well as in actual optimality.     

Comparison of the performance of pyridine-functionalized nanoporous silica particles for the extraction of gold(III) from natural samples

We have developed a technique for the solid-phase extraction of gold using various kinds of pyridine-functionalized nanoporous silica prior to its determination in various samples using FAAS. The effects of solution pH, sample and eluent flow rate, sample volume and of potentially interfering ions are compared. The limits of detections vary from 28 to 53?pg?mL^?1. The accuracy and precision are between 99.8% and 98.3?% and 0.7 to 1.6?% (RSD), respectively. The method was successfully applied to several standard reference materials.