Analytical study of Joule heating effects on electrokinetic transportation in capillary electrophoresis

Electric fields are often used to transport fluids (by electroosmosis) and separate charged samples (by electrophoresis) in microfluidic devices. However, there exists inevitable Joule heating when electric currents are passing through electrolyte solutions. Joule heating not only increases the fluid temperature, but also produces temperature gradients in cross-stream and axial directions. These temperature effects make fluid properties non-uniform, and hence alter the applied electric potential field and the flow field. The mass species transport is also influenced. In this paper we develop an analytical model to study Joule heating effects on the transport of heat, electricity, momentum and mass species in capillary-based electrophoresis. Close-form formulae are derived for the temperature, applied electrical potential, velocity, and pressure fields at steady state, and the transient concentration field as well. Also available are the compact formulae for the electric current and the volume flow rate through the capillary. It is shown that, due to the thermal end effect, sharp temperature drops appear close to capillary ends, where sharp rises of electric field are required to meet the current continuity. In order to satisfy the mass continuity, pressure gradients have to be induced along the capillary. The resultant curved fluid velocity profile and the increase of molecular diffusion both contribute to the dispersion of samples. However, Joule heating effects enhance the sample transport velocity, reducing the analysis time in capillary electrophoretic separations.     

铁掺杂PMP泡沫制备工艺研究

 以聚-4-甲基-1-戊烯为泡沫骨架，二茂铁为掺杂材料，通过热诱导倒相技术制备出铁掺杂聚合物泡沫。掺杂泡沫的实际密度均高于理论密度，且沿轴向从上至下逐渐增大。在理论密度不变的情况下，掺杂泡沫实际密度随掺杂元素原子百分含量的升高而呈降低趋势。与PMP泡沫相比，掺杂泡沫的孔洞直径分布变宽且网络骨架尺寸有变大的趋势。     

Some Topological Properties of Solution Sets in a Second Order Differential Inclusion with m-point Boundary Conditions

We consider a class of m-point (m > 3) second order boundary value problem (P_F\cal{P}_{F}) in a separable Banach space E of the form W ^{2, 1}_E([0, 1])W ^{2, 1}_E([0, 1])-solutions of (P_F\cal{P}_{F}) is compact and is a retract in C¹_E([0, 1])C^1_E([0, 1]). A new existence result of W ^{2, 1}_E([0, 1])W ^{2, 1}_E([0, 1])-solutions and a related relaxation problem are also provided, here F is no longer bounded.     

Experimental Study of Liquid Hydrocarbons Pyrolysis to Acetylene in H2/Ar Plasma

Liquid hydrocarbons including n-hexane, cyclohexane and toluene are pyrolyzed in H₂/Ar plasma to investigate the effects of feedstock properties and key operating conditions (e.g., the feedstock specific input power and residence time) on the reaction performance. The experiments verify that the non-aromatic hydrocarbons show better chemical reactivity than partially aromatic substances. Meanwhile, the straight-chain alkanes and cycloalkanes have better yields of ethylene during the pyrolysis. The results also demonstrate that the pyrolysis reactions are almost completed within the first 0.8?ms in Ar/H₂ plasma independent of the feed substances (i.e., liquid hydrocarbons), where the increased feedstock specific input power enhances the reactant conversions and correspondingly raises the yields of acetylene. At a feedstock specific input power of 4.7?×?10⁴?kJ/kg, the n-hexane conversion is over 90?% and the yield of acetylene reaches 70?%. In addition, when using n-hexane as the feedstock, very little coke is formed during the course of reaction. Comprehensive comparisons of the current experiments with the data reported in the literature are made to point out the key influencing factors, i.e., the effective mass ratio of C/H (R _C/H) in the gaseous phase and the quench temperature. Both two factors would need to be enhanced in order to get a better performance. Finally, the improvements on the specific energy requirement of this process are discussed.     

Scheduling dynamic hybrid flowshop with serial batching machines

This paper considers a multi-stage dynamic hybrid flowshop in which some stage contains several identical batching machines and the other stages contain several identical discrete machines. Each discrete machine can process no more than one operation at a time, and each batching machine can process several jobs continuously in a batch. This problem has a strong practical background in the process industry. Since the problem is NP-hard, improved Lagrangian relaxation (LR) is developed where batch decomposition strategy is applied and mixed backward and forward dynamic programming is designed to solve batch-level subproblems with the case that each operation may have multiple predecessors and successors. Results of numerical experiments with up to 60 jobs show that the proposed algorithm can obtain better solutions in a reasonable computation time than traditional LR.     

Synthesis of Jasminaldehyde by Solid-Liquid Phase Transfer Catalysis Without Solvent,Under Microwave Irradiation

α-n-amylcinnamaldehyde (jasminaldehyde) was obtained with 82 % yield by solid-liquid phase transfer catalysis without solvent within 3 days at room temperature. By use of domestic microwave irradiation, the same yield was obtained within 1 minute at a power of 600 W.     

Aptamer-based fluorometric determination of norovirus using a paper-based microfluidic device

Microchimica Acta - The authors describe a rapid and highly sensitive point-of-care device for rapid determination of noroviruses, a leading cause of acute gastroenteritis. The assay is based on...     

Fabrication of photoluminescent liquid crystal device using an in situ self-assembled molecular layer of a pyrene derivative

An in situ self-assembled molecular layer of 1-pyrenesulfonic acid sodium salt as an alignment agent was formed on indium tin oxide substrates for vertically aligning liquid crystals (LCs). The thus-aligned LCs exhibited uniform vertical alignment under crossed polarisers. The electro-optical characteristic of the LC cell fabricated using this method exhibited better performance than those of conventional LC cells with a polyimide alignment layer. Because the proposed alignment method is a simple one and involves low concentrations of the alignment agent (0.05 wt%), it is highly cost-effective. Further, the pyrene derivative, when mixed with LCs, exhibited photoluminescence (PL) under ultraviolet light. Given that the proposed method resulted in highly vertically aligned LCs and the alignment agent exhibited PL, the method should find wide use in the fabrication of colour-filter-free LC displays.