Acidulation and Regeneration of Bamboo Derived Sorbents for Gas Phase Adsorption of Elemental Mercury

This paper presents results that illustrate the recycling of a bamboo derived sorbent used for the capture of elemental mercury (Hg0). The bamboo derived sorbent used is essentially a HCl functionalized activated carbon prepared from carbonization and CO2 activation of raw bamboo, that could potentially provide an alternative way to existing methods in removing mercury from flue gases from coal-fired plants. In this study, the bamboo derived sorbents were tested in a batch test using a mercury permeation tube as the source and nitrogen as a carrier gas. The recycling or regeneration of an activated carbon is an important issue to address from a coal-fired power plant point of view, and an attempt has been made to test the behavior of bamboo derived sorbents with various treatments including carbonized, carbonized-activated, carbonized-activated-acidulated, and then a follow-up recycled run after sample treatments in gas phase. From the study, it was found that bamboo derived activated carbon can be successfully acidulated using various normalities of HCl where weak solutions can be very effective in functionalizing the surface of the sorbent and capturing mercury. In order to recycle and reuse bamboo derived sorbents, stronger normalities of HCl would be desired.

A Contact Model for Establishment of Hip Joint Implant Wear Metrics

Wear is an important issue in hip implants. Excessive wear can lead to toxicity and other implant associated medical issues such as patient discomfort and decreased mobility. Since implant wear is the result of contact between surfaces of femoral head and acetabulum implant, it is important to establish a model that can address implant surface roughness interaction. A statistical contact model is developed for the interaction of femoral head and acetabulum implant in which surface roughness effects are included. The model accounts for the elastic-plastic interaction of the implant surface roughness. For this purpose femoral head and acetabulum implants are considered as macroscopically spherical surfaces containing micron-scale roughness. Approximate equations are obtained that relate the contact force to the mean surface separation explicitly. Closed form equations are obtained for hysteretic energy loss in implant using the approximate equations.

Nonshifted Adiabatic Invariant on Time Scale

Three aspects which include differential equation of motion, Noether symmetry and conserved quantity, perturbation to Noether symmetry and adiabatic invariant are investigated for the nonshifted Birkhoffian system, nonshifted Hamiltonian system and nonshifted Lagrangian system, respectively. Then, some relationships among the three mechanic systems and some special cases of the main results are presented. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the application of the methods and results.