Synthesis of nanocomposites from cationic polyacrylamide and modified carbon black: Application as flocculants for oily sludge suspension

Carbon black was modified using various liquid‐phase oxidation methods (modified carbon black = m‐CB, m = (1, 2, 3): 1, sulfuric acid/potassium permanganate method; 2, nitric acid method; 3, hydrogen peroxide method). With acetone–ethylene glycol as initiator, dimethyldiallylammonium chloride (DMDAAC) and acrylamide (AM) as monomer, cationic polyacrylamide (CPAM) was prepared by UV excitation of the monomer. The m‐CB/CPAM nanocomposites were synthesized using a hydrothermal method. The factors that affected the molecular weight of CPAM were investigated, including the total monomer concentration, the dosage of the complex initiator, the mass ratio of m_AM:m_DMDAAC and the UV irradiation time. The chemical structures and morphologies of the samples were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, elemental composition, X‐ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. 1‐CB/CPAM was utilized to flocculate oil sludge suspension, and the effects of 1‐CB quality, 1‐CB/CPAM dosage, temperature and pH value on the flocculation performance of 1‐CB/CPAM were investigated. The flocculation mechanism of 1‐CB/CPAM was also analyzed. The results show that 1‐CB/CPAM has an outstanding flocculation effect, and it flocculates oil sludge particles by adsorption bridging and charge neutralization in acidic and alkaline conditions.     

A Thioxanthone Sensitizer with a Chiral Phosphoric Acid Binding Site: Properties and Applications in Visible Light-Mediated Cycloadditions

A chiral phosphoric acid with a 2,2’-binaphthol core was prepared that displays two thioxanthone moieties at the 3,3’-position as light-harvesting antennas. Despite its relatively low triplet energy, the phosphoric acid was found to be an efficient catalyst for the enantioselective intermolecular [2+2] photocycloaddition of β-carboxyl-substituted cyclic enones (e.r. up to 93:7). Binding of the carboxylic acid to the sensitizer is suggested by NMR studies and by DFT calculations to occur by means of two hydrogen bonds. The binding event not only enables an enantioface differentiation but also modulates the triplet energy of the substrates.     

Advantageous Interfacial Effects of AgPd/g-C3N4 for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution: Electronic Structure and H2O Dissociation

Bimetallic AgPd nanoparticles have been synthesized before, but the interfacial electronic effects of AgPd on the photocatalytic performance have been investigated less. In this work, the results of hydrogen evolution suggest that the bimetallic AgPd/g-C₃N₄ sample has superior activity to Ag/g-C₃N₄ and Pd/g-C₃N₄ photocatalysts. The UV/Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, CO adsorption diffuse reflectance FTIR spectroscopy, and FTIR results demonstrate that in the AgPd/g-C₃N₄, the surface electronic structures of Pd and Ag are changed, which is beneficial for faster photogenerated electron transfer and greater H₂O molecule adsorption. In situ ESR spectra suggest that, under visible light irradiation, there is more H₂O dissociation to radical species on the AgPd/g-C₃N₄ photocatalyst. Furthermore, DFT calculations confirm the interfacial electronic effects of AgPd/g-C₃N₄, that is, Pd^δ−⋅⋅⋅Ag^δ+, and the activation energy of H₂O molecule dissociation on AgPd/g-C₃N₄ is the lowest, which is the main contributor to the enhanced photocatalytic H₂ evolution.     

Crosslinking‐induced morphology change of latex nanoparticles: A study of RAFT‐mediated polymerization in aqueous dispersed media using amphiphilic double‐brush copolymers as reactive surfactants

Amphiphilic double‐brush copolymers (DBCs) with each graft site quantitatively carrying both a hydrophilic poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) graft and a hydrophobic polystyrene (PSt) graft are synthesized by sequential reversible addition‐fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization and ring‐opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP). These DBCs are used as both surfactants and polyfunctional RAFT agents in the radical polymerization of St in aqueous dispersed media. Miniemulsions with narrowly dispersed St‐based nanodroplets are readily obtained after ultrasonication of the reaction mixtures. Without the presence of crosslinker, chain‐extension polymerization of St from the DBCs yields well‐defined polymeric latexes with narrow size distributions. However, with the presence of divinylbenzene (DVB) as the crosslinker, vesicular polymeric nanoparticles are formed as the major product. Such crosslinking‐induced change in morphology of the resulting latex nanomaterials may be ascribed to the increase of interfacial curvature in the heterophase systems during crosslinking polymerization. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2014 , 52, 3250–3259     

Bilinear formalism,lump solution,lumpoff and instanton/rogue wave solution of a (3+1)-dimensional B-type Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation

Nonlinear Dynamics - We consider the simplified (3+1)-dimensional B-type Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation. We use the binary Bell polynomial theory to construct a bilinear form of the...     

Saliency detection based on superpixels clustering and stereo disparity

Reliable saliency detection can be used to quickly and effectively locate objects in images. In this paper, a novel algorithm for saliency detection based on superpixels clustering and stereo disparity (SDC) is proposed. Firstly, we use an improved superpixels clustering method to decompose the given image. Then, the disparity of each superpixel is computed by a modified stereo correspondence algorithm. Finally, a new measure which combines stereo disparity with color contrast and spatial coherence is defined to evaluate the saliency of each superpixel. From the experiments we can see that regions with high disparity can get higher saliency value, and the saliency maps have the same resolution with the source images, objects in the map have clear boundaries. Due to the use of superpixel and stereo disparity information, the proposed method is computationally efficient and outperforms some state-of-the-art colorbased saliency detection methods.