Peroxymonosulfate activation by Fe-N-S co-doped tremella-like carbocatalyst for degradation of bisphenol A: Synergistic effect of pyridine N, Fe-Nx, thiophene S

Bisphenol A(BPA)has received increasing attention due to its long-term industrial application and persistence in environmental pollution.Iron-based carbon catalyst activation of peroxymonosulfate(PMS)shows a good prospect for effective elimination of recalcitrant contaminants in water.Herein,considering the problem about the leaching of iron ions and the optimization of heteroatoms doping,the iron,nitrogen and sulfur co-doped tremellalike carbon catalyst(Fe-NS@C)was rationally designed using very little iron,S-C_(3)N_(4) and low-cost chitosan(CS)via the impregnation-calcination method.The as-prepared Fe-NS@C exhibited excellent performance for complete removal of BPA(20 mg/L)by activating PMS with the high kinetic constant(1.492 min^(−1))in 15 min.Besides,the Fe-NS@C/PMS system not only possessed wide pH adaptation and high resistance to environmental interference,but also maintained an excellent degradation efficiency on different pollutants.Impressively,increased S-C_(3)N_(4) doping amount modulated the contents of different N species in Fe-NS@C,and the catalytic activity of Fe-NS@C-1-x was visibly enhanced with increasing SC_(3)N_(4) contents,verifying pyridine N and Fe-Nx as main active sites in the system.Meanwhile,thiophene sulfur(C-S-C)as active sites played an auxiliary role.Furthermore,quenching experiment,EPR analysis and electrochemical test proved that surface-bound radicals(·OH and SO_(4)^(·−))and non-radical pathways worked in the BPA degradation(the former played a dominant role).Finally,possible BPA degradation route were proposed.This work provided a promising way to synthesize the novel Fe,N and S co-doping carbon catalyst for degrading organic pollutants with low metal leaching and high catalytic ability.

Automatic quantification of morphology on magnetic resonance images of the proximal tibia

The morphological quantification of the proximal tibia of the knee joint is important in knee replacement.Accurate knowledge of these parameters provides the basis for design of the tibial prosthesis and its fixation.Ideally,a prosthesis that is suitable for the morphological characteristics of Chinese knees is needed.In this paper,a deep learning automatic network framework is designed to achieve automatic segmentation and automatic quantitative analysis of magnetic resonance images of the tibia.An enhanced feature fusion network structure is designed,including high and low-level feature fusion path modules to create accurate segmentation of the tibia.A new method of extracting feature points and lines from outline contours of the proximal tibia is designed to automatically calculate six clinical morphological linear parameters of the tibia in real-time.The final result is an automatic visualisation of the tibial contour and automated extraction of tibial morphometric parameters.Validation of the results from our system against a gold standard obtained by manual processing by expert clinicians showed the Dice coefficient to be 0.97,the accuracy to be 0.98,and the correlation coefficients for all six morphological parameters of the automatic quantification of the tibia are above 0.96.The gender-specific study found that the values of the proximal tibial linear parameters of internal and external tibial diameter,anterior and posterior diameter,lateral plateau length,lateral plateau width,medial plateau length,and medial plateau width in male patients are significantly greater than in female patients(all P values<0.01).The results enrich the use of deep learning in medicine,providing orthopaedic specialists with a valuable and intelligent quantitative tool that can assess the progression and changes in osteoarthritis of the knee joint.

Tetracycline removal via adsorption and metal-free catalysis with 3D macroscopic N-doped porous carbon nanosheets:Non-radical mechanism and degradation pathway

Recently,metal-based carbon materials have been verified to be an effective persulfate activator,but secondary pollution caused by metal leaching is inevitable.Hence,a green metalfree 3D macroscopic N-doped porous carbon nanosheets(NPCN)was synthesized successfully.The obtained NPCN showed high adsorption capacity of tetracycline(TC)and excellent persulfate(PS)activation ability,especially when calcined at 700℃(NPCN-700).The maximum adsorption capacity of NPCN-700 was 121.51 mg/g by H-bonds interactions.Moreover,the adsorption process followed pseudo-second-order kinetics model and Langmuir adsorption isotherm.The large specific surface area(365.27 mg/g)and hierarchical porous structure of NPCN-700 reduced the mass transfer resistance and increased the adsorption capacity.About 96.39%of TC was removed after adding PS.The effective adsorption of the catalyst greatly shortened the time for the target organic molecules to migrate to the catalyst.Moreover,the NPCN-700 demonstrated high reusability with the TC removal rate of 80.23%after 4 cycles.Quenching experiment and electron paramagnetic resonance(EPR)test confirmed the non-radical mechanism dominated by ^(1)O_(2).More importantly,the C=O groups,defects and Graphitic N acted as active sites to generate ^(1)O_(2).Correspondingly,electrochemical measurement revealed the direct electron transfer pathway of TC degradation.Finally,multiple degradation intermediates were recognized by the LC-MS measurement and three possible degradation pathways were proposed.Overall,the prepared NPCN had excellent application prospects for removal of antibiotics due to its remarkable adsorption and catalytic degradation capabilities.

A Constrained Level Set Method for Simulating the Formation of Liquid Bridges

In this paper,we investigate the dynamic process of liquid bridge formation between two parallel hydrophobic plates with hydrophilic patches,previously studied in[1].We propose a dynamic Hele-Shaw model to take advantage of the small aspect ratio between the gap width and the plate size.A constrained level set method is applied to solve the model equations numerically,where a global constraint is imposed in the evolution[2]stage together with local constraints in the reinitialization[3]stage of level set function in order to limit numerical mass loss.In contrast to the finite element method used in[2],we use a finite difference method with a 5th order HJWENO scheme for spatial discretization.To illustrate the effectiveness of the constrained method,we have compared the results obtained by the standard level set method with those from the constrained version.Our results show that the constrained level set method produces physically reasonable results while that of the standard method is less reliable.Our numerical results also show that the dynamic nature of the flow plays an important role in the process of liquid bridge formation and criteria based on static energy minimization approach has limited applicability.

Numerical Simulation for a Droplet Fission Process of Electrowetting on Dielectric Device

Electrowetting has been proposed as a technique for manipulating dropletssurrounded by air or oil. In this paper, we discuss the modeling and simulation of thedroplet fission process between two parallel plates inside an electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) device. Since the gap between the plates is small, we use the two-phaseHele-Shaw flow as a model. While there are several high order methods around, suchas the immersed interface methods [1, 2], we decide to use two first-order methods forsimplicity. A ghost-fluid (GF) method is employed to solve the governing equationsand a local level set method is used to track the drop interface. For comparison purposes, the same set of two-phase Hele-Shaw equations are also solved directly usingthe immersed boundary (IB) method. Numerical results are consistent with experimental observations reported in the literature.

An Extrapolation Cascadic MultigridMethod for Elliptic Problems on Reentrant Domains

This paper proposes an extrapolation cascadic multigrid(EXCMG)method to solve elliptic problems in domains with reentrant corners.On a class ofλ-graded meshes,we derive some new extrapolation formulas to construct a high-order approximation to the finite element solution on the next finer mesh using the numerical solutions on two-level of grids(current and previous grids).Then,this high-order approximation is used as the initial guess to reduce computational cost of the conjugate gradient method.Recursive application of this idea results in the EXCMG method proposed in this paper.Finally,numerical results for a crack problem and an L-shaped problem are presented to verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed EXCMG method.