Polyamine-substituted epoxy-grafted silica for aqueous metal recovery

Glycidoxypropyltriethoxysilane (GPS) was used as a reactive silane to graft metal- complexing ligands onto silica gel in aqueous media under mild conditions. The synthesis entailed the reaction of GPS with silica gel, followed by grafting polyamine onto the epoxy functional group. GPS was added to silica gel in ethanol with 5 vol. % water and the mixture was air-dried for 24 h. Subsequently, excess amounts of polyamines: triethylenetetramine, tetraethylenepentamine, and pentaethylenehexamine were individually added to the silanised silica, followed by solvent evaporation and ovendrying at 60°C. The ligand-grafted silica gel particles showed a rapid heavy metal uptake in batch or flow-through experiments with capacities reaching 0.1 mmol g⁻¹ for copper, zinc, cadmium, or lead ions. Columns packed with the modified particles could be readily regenerated by acid-washing with only a small decrease in activity. The particles could be used for the colourimetric detection of heavy metal pollution or for pre-concentration for analytical purposes. Competition between Cu²⁺, Zn²⁺, Pb²⁺, and Cd²⁺ ions for the three synthesised silica showed that Cu²⁺ ions were adsorbed more strongly than the other metal ions. The general method developed can be applied to graft other molecules with terminal amino groups for other purposes.     

Metal-doped apatitic calcium phosphates: preparation,characterization, and reactivity in the removal of hydrogen sulfide from gas phase

With the expansion of human activities, there are more and more living areas adjacent to industrial and/or agricultural activities such as chemical processes, petroleum processes, paint finishing, food processing, livestock farming, composting plants etc. Bad odor is part of several nuisances caused by industrial and/or agricultural activities. Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) is a typical odorous molecule which causes foul odor at very low concentration. This molecule is formed in different industrial installations, in particular in coal combustion, and petrochemical refinery. The separation and/or transformation of H₂S from gas phase to odorless products are important processes for sustainable development. In this paper, we communicate the preparation of new sorbents for the sorption of H₂S from a synthetic gas effluent. These sorbents consist in an inorganic phase (hydroxyapatite) as host particles, and well-dispersed particles of a metal oxide as guest particles which are the active phase for the removal of H₂S. At room conditions, iron, lead, and zinc doped calcium phosphates were found to be effective for the removal of H₂S. The performance of the sorbents depends on preparation method and the nature of active phases. This opens new prospects for the treatment of H₂S from gas phase.     

Mixed aldehyde condensations on copper glycinate

Glycine coordinated to cupric ions reacts in basic solution with a stoichiometric quantity of aldehydes to give β-hydroxyaminoacids. When the reaction contains a mixture of aldehydes, one of them being acetaldehyde, threonine is produced in the solution together with a variable amount of the bulkier substituted serine. An intermediate complex may be isolated which affords a larger proportion of substituted serines with predominance of the threo isomers. Acetaldehyde and benzaldehyde give a 66% yield of threo β-phenylserine.     

Voltammetric determination of trace mercury at a sonogel-carbon electrode modified with poly-3-methylthiophene

The sonogel-carbon electrode is a new class of sol-gel electrode that exhibit favourable mechanics and electrics properties to be used as electrochemical sensor. In this paper, a modified sonogel-carbon electrode is proposed to determine mercury at trace levels. The modified electrode is obtained by electropolymerization of 3-methylthiophene on the surface of a bare sonogel-carbon electrode. This electrode shows high selectivity and sensitivity and linear response towards Hg(II), with a detection limit of 1.4 × 10⁻³ mg l⁻¹. The electrode is reusable by a simple chemical cleaning procedure. No deterioration was observed in the electrode response during at least 1 week of successive measurements.     

A comparative study of cupric complexes of dicarboxylic acids and acid-amides ligands

A bis(succinamato)copper(II) complex has been synthetized as well as several cyclic acid-amide ligand complexes. These compounds were characterized by elemental and thermogravimetric analyses, infrared and EPR spectroscopies. Analogous dicarboxylic acids give complexes of 1/1 stoichiometry which are thermally more stable than the acid-amide complexes. All the reported compounds show triplet state EPR spectra similar to cupric acetate. There is no evidence for a participation of the amide functions in cupric ion complexation.     

Particle composition at high transverse momenta in p-p-collisions in the central region at the CERN ISR

Preliminary measurements have been made at centre of mass energies √s = 31 and 44 GeV of the π, K and p production ratios at 90° for p_T between 2.0 and 3.5 GeV/c. The (K+p)/π ratio is given down to p_T = 1.4 GeV/c. No strong energy dependence is observed for these transverse momenta.     

Binary and ternary alkali polyphosphates (MPO3, M = Li,Na, K) for thermal energy storage

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - Up-to-date, solar salt (a mixture of 60 mass% NaNO3 and 40 mass% KNO3) is practically the only media for thermal energy storage (TES) in concentrated...     

F-Divergences and Cost Function Locality in Generative Modelling with Quantum Circuits

Generative modelling is an important unsupervised task in machine learning. In this work, we study a hybrid quantum-classical approach to this task, based on the use of a quantum circuit born machine. In particular, we consider training a quantum circuit born machine using f-divergences. We first discuss the adversarial framework for generative modelling, which enables the estimation of any f-divergence in the near term. Based on this capability, we introduce two heuristics which demonstrably improve the training of the born machine. The first is based on f-divergence switching during training. The second introduces locality to the divergence, a strategy which has proved important in similar applications in terms of mitigating barren plateaus. Finally, we discuss the long-term implications of quantum devices for computing f-divergences, including algorithms which provide quadratic speedups to their estimation. In particular, we generalise existing algorithms for estimating the Kullback–Leibler divergence and the total variation distance to obtain a fault-tolerant quantum algorithm for estimating another f-divergence, namely, the Pearson divergence.