STUDY ON THE SEPARATION AND EXTRACTION MECHANISM OF RARE EARTH ELEMENTS BY MEANS OF REVERSED-PHASE PAPER CHROMATOGRAPHY

Reversed-phase paper chromatography technique is used for study on the extraction mechanism and sep- aration of rare earth elements.As the stationary phase,chromatographic paper strips are impregnated with a solution of monomyristyl phosphoric acid (MPA) in chloroform.Mineral acids are used as developers. The effect of concentration of acids and/or salts upon R_f has been investigated.According to the re- sults of R_f values for a given rare earth element in various acids,the order of extraction ability is HCl>HNO_3>H_2SO_4.A tetrad effect is clearly observed.for the R_f value of rare earth elements.The effects of other parameters on the R_f value,such as the quantities of extractant retained by the paper and the temperature are also examined.Based on the determination of the molar ratio of MPA to rare earth elements and the number of H^+ ions released in extraction reaction,a reasonable mechanism is proposed.The mutual separation of heavy rare earth elements will be better than that of the light rare earth group because of the larger separation coefficient of the former.A mixture of Ho-Er-Tm-Lu is successfully separated by the present method.

Ash Detection of Coal Slime Flotation Tailings Based on Chromatographic Filter Paper Sampling and Multi-Scale Residual Network

The detection of ash content in coal slime flotation tailings using deep learning can be hindered by various factors such as foam,impurities,and changing lighting conditions that disrupt the collection of tailings images.To address this challenge,we present a method for ash content detection in coal slime flotation tailings.This method utilizes chromatographic filter paper sampling and a multi-scale residual network,which we refer to as MRCN.Initially,tailings are sampled using chromatographic filter paper to obtain static tailings images,effectively isolating interference factors at the flotation site.Subsequently,the MRCN,consisting of a multi-scale residual network,is employed to extract image features and compute ash content.Within the MRCN structure,tailings images undergo convolution operations through two parallel branches that utilize convolution kernels of different sizes,enabling the extraction of image features at various scales and capturing a more comprehensive representation of the ash content information.Furthermore,a channel attention mechanism is integrated to enhance the performance of the model.The combination of the multi-scale residual structure and the channel attention mechanism within MRCN results in robust capabilities for image feature extraction and ash content detection.Comparative experiments demonstrate that this proposed approach,based on chromatographic filter paper sampling and the multi-scale residual network,exhibits significantly superior performance in the detection of ash content in coal slime flotation tailings.

Study on Raman and SERS spectra of filter paper and silica gel plate

Raman spectra and surface-enhanced Raman scattering （SERS） spectra of filter paper and silica gel plate are ob- tained at 785-nm excitation wavelength. The results show that filter paper has thirteen Raman lines in 800 - 1 500 cm 1 and silica gel plate has eight lines in the region of 400 - 1 200 cm-I. The frequencies and Raman active modes are assigned. By comparing their Raman spectra and SERS spectra, we find that the silver colloid could repress the Raman intensities of filter paper and silica gel plate, and reduce their effects on the combination of thin-layer chromatographic （TLC） and SERS. Ac- cording to SERS spectra, the bands at 997 cm 1,1 094 cm I ,1 118 cm-1 ,1 336 cm-1 and 1 378 cm-1 for filter paper and the peak of v l [ SO4] symmetric stretching vibration （--1 017 cm-1 ） for silica gel plate also have high intensities, and those lines should be paid enough attention in TLC-SERS.

Silver nanoislands on cellulose fibers for chromatographic separation and ultrasensitive detection of small molecules

High-throughput small-molecule assays play essential roles in biomedical diagnosis,drug discovery,environmental analysis,and physiological function research.Nanoplasmonics holds a great potential for the label-free detection of small molecules at extremely low concentrations.Here,we report the development of nanoplasmonic paper(NP-paper)for the rapid separation and ultrasensitive detection of mixed small molecules.NP-paper employs nanogap-rich silver nanoislands on cellulose fibers,which were simply fabricated at the wafer level by using low-temperature solid-state dewetting of a thin silver film.The nanoplasmonic detection allows for the scalable quantification and identification of small molecules over broad concentration ranges.Moreover,the combination of chromatographic separation and nanoplasmonic detection allows both the highly sensitive fluorescence detection of mixed small molecules at the attogram level and the label-free detection at the sub-nanogram level based on surface-enhanced Raman scattering.This novel material provides a new diagnostic platform for the high-throughput,low-cost,and label-free screening of mixed small molecules as an alternative to conventional paper chromatography.