Remnants of an Powerful Ancient “Dynasty”:Material Cycle and Biomineralization in Modern Seafloor Hydrothermal System

The origin of ancient banded iron formation （BIF） has remained unclear for a long time. How the precipitation process occurred and what the environmental condition was have been widely discussed among scientists, because the period when the major BIFs deposited （-2.8 to 1.8Ga） is the same time when biosphere and atmosphere significantly changed. Based on the discovery of modern seafloor hydrothermal vents, it is possible that reductive environment controlled by vent system is related to the environment where BIF was deposited. According to matter source.

Evaluation of Environmental Impacts of Traction Motor Production and Disposal

By the application of life cycle assessment(LCA) methodology, this paper estimates the environmental impacts of production and disposal of traction motors used in electric vehicles in China. The results show that the total energy use, the criteria emissions and the greenhouse gases(GHG) emissions of a traction motor production and disposal are about 2,899,MJ, 4.5,kg and 259.5,kg per motor, respectively. Among the regulated emissions, the SOxemission ranks first by total mass, followed by CO, PM10, NOx, PM2.5, and volatile organic compound(VOC). The motor material production stage accounts for most of the energy consumption and emissions, followed by the assembly stage and the end-of-life disposal stage. In this study, the environmental performance analysis is extended to the comparison between the use of secondary material and primary material for the material production stage. It is found that using 100% secondary material results in a 52.9% reduction in energy consumption, a 49.8% reduction in regulated emissions, and a 49.3% reduction in GHG emissions compared with the use of 100% primary material.

Improved High-rate Performance and Cycling Stability of 1D LiFePO_4 Nanorods by a Facile Annealing Process

To alleviate the main limitations of lithium ion diffusion rate and poor electronic conductivity for LiFePO4 cathode material, it is desirable to synthesize nano-size LiFePO4 material due to its enhanced electronic and lithium ion transport rates and thus an improved high-rate performance. However, our previous synthesized LiFePO4 nanorods only exhibited low high-rate and slightly unstable cycle performance. Possible reasons are the poor crystallization and Fe2＋ oxidation of LiFePO4 nanorods prepared by hydrothermal method. In this paper, LiFePO4 nanorods were simply dealt with at 700 ℃ for 4 h under the protection of Ar and H2 mixture gas. The electrochemical properties of LiFePO4/Li cells were investigated by galvanostatic test and cyclic voltammetry（CV）. The experimental results indicated that the annealed LiFePO4 nanorods delivered an excellent cycling stability and obviously improved capacity of 150 mA·h·g-1 at 1C, and even 122 mA·h·g-1 at 5C.

Effective removal of phosphorus from high phosphorus steel slag using carbonized rice husk

High phosphorus steel slag and carbonized rice husk are two common wastes characterized by high generation and low secondary use values.Through the reduction of high phosphorus steel slag by biomass,both wastes were fully utilized,thus reducing the negative impact on the environment.In this study,variables such as temperature,time,and amount of reactants were changed to determine the optimal conditions for the reaction of steel slag with carbonized rice husk at high temperatures.The actual amount of reducing agent consumed during the reduction was significantly greater than that predicted by theoretical calculations.Adding three carbon equivalent of carbonized rice husk and maintaining at 1500℃ for 30 min could remove 79.25% of P_(2)O_(5) in the slag.By modeling the material cycle in which high phosphorus steel slag was treated with biomass,the product could be used for crop growth.Meanwhile,the reduced iron and residual steel slag can be used tomake steel again,thereby leading to a sharp reduction in fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions in this process.