Highly effective sorbents obtained by treating agrowaste products in cold plasma

Sorbents are widely used in purification of various liquids and gases, offering a universal means for wastewater and air cleaning. The most promising sorbents are those obtained from agrowaste products such as rice or buckwheat husk. Processing of husk in cold plasma modifies the composition, structure and surface properties of the raw material and raises its porosity, thus substantially improving the sorption properties of the final product.Husk as a raw material for producing sorbents has the following advantageous properties: (1) appropriate chemical composition; (2) low cost; (3) high dispersity, due to which there is no need in any special treatment of the material prior to its exposing to plasma; (4) scaly structure and developed porous surface ensuring a high surface-to-volume ratio. The best properties are displayed by the sorbents obtained in cold plasma under reduced pressures of 53.2 Pa. The raw material traverses the region occupied by the plasma and, as it does so, it gets heated up to a temperature of 250 - 350 ℃. The whole process involves two stages: combustion of the raw material and modification of its properties under the action of the plasma. The combustion proceeds due to the oxygen contained in the starting material. During the combustion, the hydrogen contained in the starting material and some part of the carbon also burn out. The resultant scaly sorbent is accumulated in a cooler. The scales are black; they range in sizes from 1mm to 5 mm. The sorbents obtained are remarkable for their useful properties and outperform most of the traditional sorbents used in modern industry. The starting materials are inexpensive, and their resources are almost unlimited. The sorbents have rather a low production cost (1.8-2.5 $/kg). The sorbents can be used for cleaning hydrosphere from water pollutants on a large scale. The degree of cleaning water surface from oil products with sorbents was a subject of investigation. The highest degree of purification the sewages up to 96.6% was observed in those cases where sorbents obtained from rice and buckwheat husk were used. Another advantageous feature of the sorbents stems from the practical good that can be benefited from their utilization. The sorbents saturated with pollutants can be used as fuel or in producing asphalt concrete. The sorbents may prove useful in pharmaceutical and food industries. Most advantageous conditions for producing such sorbents are available in rice-growing countries such as China, India, Japan and Korea.

Application of cold plasma technology in fiber-reinforced composite materials

A study is presented concerning a cold plasma technique for improving the bondability of high-strength high-modulus multi-filament polyethylene fibers to polymer matrices and the fibers impregnation with the objective to fabricate composite materials (CMs). Strong bonding between the matrixes and reinforcing fibers during the production of composites appears in the case if interaction is chemical. The value of the activation energy of the chemical interaction for very high performance polyethylene fiber was estimated. It was 1.14 eV. This allows using the cold plasma technique for producing CMs. In order to understand the effect of cold plasma treatment treated and untreated fibers were used to fabricate CMs. The strong bond between the matrix and plasma-activated fibers affects both the properties and failure mode of composite. The properties and failure modes were compared to those of CMs reinforced with untreated fibers. After plasma treatment the properties of CMs are increased. CMs are broken as a unit whole under tension. The ideas of the activating the fibers by cold plasma treatment above the activation energy of the chemical interaction may be extended over other types of the fibers and matrices to produce new types of fiber-reinforced composite materials with high physicomechanical indices.