Swelling of K＋, Na＋ and Ca2＋-montmorillonites and hydration of interlayer cations： a molecular dynamics simulation

This paper performs molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the role of the monovalent cations K, Na and the divalent cation Ca on the stability and swelling of montmorillonite. The recently developed CLAYFF force field is used to predict the basal spacing as a function of the water content in the interlayer. The simulations reproduced the swelling pattern of these montmorillonites, suggesting a mechanism of their hydration different （K＋ 〈 Na＋ 〈 Ca2＋） from that of K＋-, Na＋-, and Ca2＋-montmorillonites. In particular, these results indicate that the valence of the cations has the larger impact on the behaviour of clay water systems. It also finds that the differences in size and hydration energy of K＋, Na＋ and Ca2＋ ions have strong implications for the structure of interlayer. This leads to the differences in the layer spacings of the simulated K＋-, Na＋-, and Ca2＋-montmorillonites. Furthermore, these simulations show that the K cations interact strongly with the clay sheets for the dehydrated clay sheets, but for the hydrated clays the Ca cations interact clearly strongly with the clay sheets.

A molecular dynamics study of the swelling patterns of Na/Cs-montmorillonites and the hydration of interlayer cations

We report on a molecular dynamics study of the swelling patterns of an Na-rich/Cs-poor montomorillonite and a Csmontomorillonite.The recently developed CLAYFF force field is used to predict the basal spacing as a function of the water content in the interlayer.The simulations reproduce the swelling patterns of the Na and Cs-montomorillonite,suggesting a mechanism of its hydration different from that of the montomorillonite.In addition,we find that the differences in size and hydration energy of Na and Cs ions have strong implications for the structure and the internal energy of interlayer water.In particular,our results indicate that the hydrate difference in the presence of coexistent Na and Cs has a larger influence on the behavior of a clay-water system.For Na-rich/Cs-poor montomorillonite,the hydration energy values of Na ions and water molecules each have a dramatic increase compared with those in Na-montomorillonite on the interlayer spacing,and the hydration energy values of Cs ions and water molecules decrease somewhat compared with those in Cs-montomorillonite.

Energy-efficient methods for production methane from natural gas hydrates

Gas hydrates now are expected to be one of the most important future unconventional energy resources. In this paper, researches on gas hydrate exploitation in laboratory and field were reviewed and discussed from the aspects of energy efficiency. Different exploiting methods and different types of hydrate reservoir were selected to study their effects on energy efficiencies. Both laboratory studies and field tests have shown that the improved technologies can help to increase efficiency for gas hydrate exploitation. And it also showed the trend that gas hydrate exploitation started to change from permafrost to marine. Energy efficiency ratio （EER） and energy return on energy invested （EROI） were introduced as an indicator of efficiency for natural gas hydrate exploitation. An energy-efficient hydrate production process, called ＂Hydrate Chain Energy System （HCES）＂, including treatment of flue gas, replacement of CH4 with CO2, separation of CO2 from CH4, and storage and transportation of CH4 in hydrate form, was proposed for future natural gas hydrate exploitation. In the meanwhile, some problems, such as mechanism of C02 replacement, mechanism of CO2 separation, CH4 storage and transportation are also needed to be solved for increasing the energy efficiency of gas hydrate exploitation.

The Relationship Between Relative Hydration Free Energies of ^(99m)TcON_2S_2 Complexes and Their Brain Uptakes

A thermodynamic integration dual-transform method was firstly applied to calculating the relative hydration free energies of 99m TcO-N 2S 2 complexes. The relationship between the brain uptakes(B.U.) of 99m TcO-N 2S 2 complexes with different substituted functional groups and their relative hydration free energies was investigated. The simulation results show that the experiment brain uptake(B.U.) data are strongly influenced by the relative hydration free energies of 99m TcO-N 2S 2 complexes, thus the simulations can provide the useful information for the medicine design of 99m Tc brain imaging agents.

Corrosion Behavior of a Titanium Alloy in Hot Nitric Acid Condensate

The corrosion behavior of a titanium-5% tantalum alloy （Ti-STa） in hot nitric acid condensate was investigated to understand aging behavior ofreprocessing equipments. On the basis of long-term immersion tests, it was determined that the corrosion of Ti-STa in nitric acid condensate is accelerated with an increase in the concentration. The corrosion rate was nearly constant during the immersion test and the coupons suffered from uniform corrosion. In addition, it is important to note that the nitric acid concentration in the condensate increased on addition of metal salts to the heated nitric acid solution. The larger valence of metal ions was contributed to the increase in the concentration of nitric acid condensate. Consequently, the metal salt in the heated nitric acid solution accelerates the corrosion of Ti-STa in the condensate. Therefore, the nitric acid condensate condition should be carefully considered for the corrosion environment of titanium and its alloys.

COSMO-RS: An ionic liquid prescreening tool for gas hydrate mitigation

Recently ionic liquids(ILs) are introduced as novel dual function gas hydrate inhibitors. However, no desired gas hydrate inhibition has been reported due to poor IL selection and/or tuning method. Trial & error as well as selection based on existing literature are the methods currently employed for selecting and/or tuning ILs. These methods are probabilistic, time consuming, expensive and may not result in selecting high performance ILs for gas hydrate mitigation. In this work, COSMO-RS is considered as a prescreening tool of ILs for gas hydrate mitigation by predicting the hydrogen bonding energies(E_(HB)) of studied IL inhibitors and comparing the predicted E_(HB) to the depression temperature(?) and induction time. Results show that, predicted EHBand chain length of ILs strongly relate and significantly affect the gas hydrate inhibition depression temperature but correlate moderately(R = 0.70) with average induction time in literature. It is deduced from the results that, ? increases with increasing IL EHBand/or decreases with increasing chain length. However, the cation–anion pairing of ILs also affects IL gas hydrate inhibition performance. Furthermore, a visual and better understanding of IL/water behavior for gas hydrate inhibition in terms of hydrogen bond donor and acceptor interaction analysis is also presented by determining the sigma profile and sigma potential of studied IL cations and anions used for gas hydrate mitigation for easy IL selection.