The electrochemical performance of AB3-type hydrogen storage alloy as anode material for the nickel metal hydride accumulators

For the purpose of lowering the cost of metal hydride electrode, the La of LaY₂Ni₉ electrode was replaced by Ce. The electrochemical performances of the CeY₂Ni₉ negative electrode, at a room and different temperatures, were compared with the parent alloy LaY₂Ni₉. At room temperature during a long cycling, the evolution of the electrochemical capacity—the diffusivity indicator (\( \frac{D_{\mathrm{H}}}{a^2} \))—the exchange current density, and the equilibrium potential were determined. At different temperatures, the electrochemical characterization of this alloy allowed the estimation of the enthalpy, the entropy, and the activation energy of the hydride formation. The evolution of the high-rate dischargeability was also evaluated at different temperatures. Compared with the parent LaY₂Ni₉ alloy, CeY₂Ni₉ exhibits an easy activation and good reaction reversibility. This alloy also conserves a good lifetime during a long-term cycling. A lower activation energy determined for this alloy corresponds to an easy absorption of hydrogen into this new alloy.     

Elucidation of Antioxidant Compounds in Moroccan Chamaerops humilis L. Fruits by GC–MS and HPLC–MS Techniques

The aim of this study was to characterize the phytochemical content as well as the antioxidant ability of the Moroccan species Chamaerops humilis L. Besides crude ethanolic extract, two extracts obtained by sonication using two solvents with increased polarity, namely ethyl acetate (EtOAc) and methanol-water (MeOH-H₂O) 80:20 (v/v), were investigated by both spectroscopy and chromatography methods. Between the two extracts, the MeOH-H₂O one showed the highest total polyphenolic content equal to 32.7 ± 0.1 mg GAE/g DM with respect to the EtOAc extract (3.6 ± 0.5 mg GAE/g DM). Concerning the antioxidant activity of the two extracts, the EtOAc one yielded the highest value (1.9 ± 0.1 mg/mL) with respect to MeOH-H2O (0.4 ± 0.1 mg/mL). The C. humilis n-hexane fraction, analyzed by GC–MS, exhibited 69 compounds belonging to different chemical classes, with n-Hexadecanoic acid as a major compound (21.75%), whereas the polyphenolic profile, elucidated by HPLC–PDA/MS, led to the identification of a total of sixteen and thirteen different compounds in both EtOAc (major component: ferulic acid: 104.7 ± 2.52 µg/g) and MeOH-H₂O extracts (major component: chlorogenic acid: 45.4 ± 1.59 µg/g), respectively. The attained results clearly highlight the potential of C. humilis as an important source of bioactive components, making it a valuable candidate to be advantageously added to the daily diet. Furthermore, this study provides the scientific basis for the exploitation of the Doum in the food, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries.     

Separation of 99mTc from 99Mo by Using TOPO — Kerosene Supported Liquid Membrane

Transport of ^99mTcO₄ ^– ions across TOPO-kerosene based supported liquid membrane was investigated at different concentrations of phosphoric acid as a feed solution and different concentrations of TOPO in the membrane, where 0.9% NaCl aqueous solution was used as a stripping solution. The flux of TcO₄ ^– ions across this liquid membrane varied with the concentration of both H₃PO₄ and TOPO. The best permeability coefficient was obtained at concentrations, [H₃PO₄] = 3 mole·l^–1 and [TOPO] = 0.5 mole·l^–1 (P = 2.08·10^–9 m²·s^–1). The results were utilized for the separation of ^99mTc from ⁹⁹Mo, where a selective and effective separation was obtained since no ⁹⁹Mo transport across this liquid membrane was noticed while a high rate of ^99mTc transport took place.     

Electrophoresis Poly(Dimethylsiloxane)/Glass Chips with Integrated Active Cooling for Quantification of Amino Acids

Abstract

The objective of this work was to develop and characterize a poly(dimethylsiloxane) device with an integrated active cooling function able to carry out capillary electrophoresis separations. Polymer-based microdevices are indispensable to recent advances in biomedical analysis. In particular, they have been applied to many microfluidic platforms owing to their low cost, ease of fabrication, and versatility in preparing complex microstructures. However, when applied to capillary electrophoresis separations, polymer microfluidic structures present an inherent disadvantage compared to glass and Si structures; they have a lower thermal conductivity than glass and Si. Although miniaturized devices allow operation at high electric fields, they face separation efficiency limitations due to Joule heating. There is, therefore, a strong need of developing capillary electrophoresis microfluidic structures with active cooling in order to operate at a higher electric field and potentially increase separation efficiency in these microdevices. A poly(dimethylsiloxane)/glass hybrid microfluidic capillary electrophoresis system is presented, where Joule heating was minimized by using an integrated active cooling function. Two poly(dimethylsiloxane) slabs with embedded microfluidic structures were irreversibly sealed on both sides of a thin glass slide. The top poly(dimethylsiloxane) slab was used to carry out capillary electrophoresis separations, whereas the bottom poly(dimethylsiloxane) slab was employed to cool down the buffer solution used during the capillary electrophoresis separation. As demonstrated on current versus voltage plots and on capillary electrophoresis electropherograms, capillary electrophoresis separation was able to be operated at a higher electric field when using the cooling function. The cooling rate was adjustable by varying the flow rate and the initial temperature of the liquid flowing in the cooling microfluidic structure.     

Characterization of a delaminated clay and pillared clays by adsorption of probe molecules

Characterization of the textural and structural properties of a sodium form of a delaminated calcic montmorillonite, and of aluminium pillared materials prepared with and without amine pre-adsorption, was made using the adsorption of different probe molecules (nitrogen, toluene, methyl ethyl ketone and 1,1,1-trichloroethane). Due to the delaminated character of the prepared solids, the characterization by X-ray diffraction of the pillared materials was not possible. In this context, the adsorption of probe molecules revealed to be informative since, although the prepared materials were mainly mesoporous solids in consequence of their delaminated nature, when the amine pre-adsorption was used before the pillaring, microporosity was also formed.     

Stokes–Darcy boundary integral solutions using preconditioners

In a system where a free fluid flow is coupled to flow in a porous medium, different PDEs are solved simultaneously in two subdomains. We consider steady Stokes equations in the free region, coupled across a fixed interface to Darcy equations in the porous substrate. Recently, the numerical solution of this system was obtained using the boundary integral formulation combined with a regularization-correction procedure. The correction process also results in the improvement of the condition number of the linear system. In this paper, an appropriate preconditioner based on the singular part of corrections is introduced to improve the convergence of a Krylov subspace method applied to solve the integral formulation.     

Gearbox Failure Diagnosis Using a Multisensor Data-Fusion Machine-Learning-Based Approach

Failure detection and diagnosis are of crucial importance for the reliable and safe operation of industrial equipment and systems, while gearbox failures are one of the main factors leading to long-term downtime. Condition-based maintenance addresses this issue using several expert systems for early failure diagnosis to avoid unplanned shutdowns. In this context, this paper provides a comparative study of two machine-learning-based approaches for gearbox failure diagnosis. The first uses linear predictive coefficients for signal processing and long short-term memory for learning, while the second is based on mel-frequency cepstral coefficients for signal processing, a convolutional neural network for feature extraction, and long short-term memory for classification. This comparative study proposes an improved predictive method using the early fusion technique of multisource sensing data. Using an experimental dataset, the proposals were tested, and their effectiveness was evaluated considering predictions based on statistical metrics.     

Robustness of Entangled Squeezed States Versus Entangled Coherent States Against Channel Decoherence Effect

We compare theoretically the effects of channel decoherence on entangled coherent states (ECSs) and entangled squeezed states (ESSs) as non-orthogonal states. The comparison is achieved in the case when the interaction with the noisy environment is symmetric and when it is asymmetric. In the first case, we notice a robustness of ECSs compared with ESSs against the photons losses. This robustness increases with a good way after using a higher amplitudes. However, in the asymmetric decoherence case, the ESSs resist more the photon losses compared with the ECSs.     

On the Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau equation with linear potential in the presence of a minimal length

We point out an erroneous handling in the literature regarding solutions of the $(1+1)$-dimensional Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau equation with linear potentials in the context of quantum mechanics with minimal length. Furthermore, using Brau's approach, we present a perturbative treatment of the effect of the minimal length on bound-state solutions when a Lorentz-scalar linear potential is applied.     

Hemisynthesis,crystal structure and inhibitory effect of sesquiterpenic thiosemicarbazones and thiazolidin‐4‐ones on the corrosion behaviour of stainless steel in 1 M H2SO4 solution

Treatment of thiosemicarbazones prepared from sesquiterpenes with ethyl 2‐bromoacetate in the presence of sodium acetate afforded the corresponding thiazolidin‐4‐ones. The structures of all the newly synthesized compounds were established by considering spectral and single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction data. The title compound, ethyl 2‐((Z)‐2‐{(Z)‐[(1aR,5aR,9aS)‐1,1‐dichloro‐1a,5,5,7‐tetramethyl‐1a,2,3,4,5,5a,8,9‐octahydro‐1H‐benzo[a]cyclopropa[b][7]annulen‐8‐ylidene]hydrazono}‐4‐oxothiazolidin‐3‐yl)acetate, C₂₃H₃₁Cl₂N₃O₃S, 5 , crystallizes in the orthorhombic noncentrosymmetric space group P2₁2₁2₁ with Z = 4. Within the molecule in the crystal structure, the cyclohexene ring has an envelope conformation and the cycloheptane ring, to which it is fused, has a boat conformation. In the crystal, molecules are linked by C—H…Cl hydrogen bonds forming chains propagating along the b‐axis direction. The absolute configuration of the molecule in the crystal could be fully confirmed from anomalous dispersion effects [Flack parameter = ?0.04 (2)]. Thiosemicarbazones 1 and 2 are efficient inhibitors for steel corrosion in 1 M H₂SO₄ solution, with a maximum efficiency of 92.28% at 10^?3 M. Furthermore, thiosemicarbazone compounds were found to be more efficient than thiazolidin‐4‐one derivatives. In addition, cyclic voltammetry was used to characterize the tested molecules, as well to estimate the experimental value of the energy band gap.