The Premise and Promise of Electrolyte Manipulation and Separator Technology in Potassium-ion Batteries

Droplets enclosed by elastic interfaces can be extensively found in nature and engineering applications. For instance, oil-water droplets in petroleum engineering can be surrounded by Asphaltene thin film; biological cells are usually surrounded by elastic biological membranes consisting of lipid bilayers with spectrin proteins; droplets enclosed by polymer membranes or lipid bilayers are also widely found in materials science and engineering. This type of droplets is also an excellent structure for encapsulation, transport and release of active agents due to the presence of elastic interface, thus they are widely used in applications such as cosmetics and drug delivery. To study the deformation behavior of single droplet enclosed by complex interfaces under shear flow is fundamental for understanding rheological characteristics of droplet suspensions and for developing droplet-based substance transport technologies. The presence of various molecules confers the drop interfaces various special mechanical properties, such as resistances to shear deformation, area dilatation and bending deformation. Those special mechanical properties significantly influence the transport characteristics of momentum and energy between droplets and surrounding fluids, thus conventional theories based on surface tension are no longer valid for understanding the dynamics of droplets enclosed by elastic interfaces. Generally, the deformation of droplets enclosed by elastic interfaces under shear flow is mainly governed by the coupling of fluid inertia, interface elasticity and fluid viscosity. Current literatures mostly focus on the deformation of drops with elastic interfaces with inertia neglected, which is based on the assumption of Stokes flow. However, the effects of fluid inertia are of great importance in many cutting edge technologies and in vivo bioprocesses, such as inertial microfluidic technologies for separation and manipulation of droplets, blood flow with moderate Reynolds number in arterial vessel. As such, in this study, a three-dimensional direct numerical simulation model able to simultaneously consider fluid inertia and interface elasticity is developed for two-phase flow by combining the front tracking method and the finite element method. Using this model, we study the effects of particle Reynolds number on the deformation behavior of elastic interface enclosed drops in linear shear flow. It is found that oscillations in transient deformation are presented at high Reynolds numbers, and the amplitude and period of such oscillations increase with the Reynolds number. Both the maximum deformation and steady-state deformation increase with the Reynolds number. Besides, the three-dimensional shapes of drops are alternated with the Reynolds number increased. The physical mechanisms underlying the effects of fluid inertia on the deformation of elastic interface enclosed droplets are also discussed by analyzing the distribution of streamline and pressure inside and outside the droplets at different Reynolds number. In summary, the fluid inertia has significant influences on the deformation behavior of elastic interface enclosed drops, especially at moderate to high Reynolds numbers. These results provide new insights into the deformation and motion of droplets enclosed by elastic interfaces under shear flow. Besides, the numerical method developed in the present study can be further used to study the flow characteristics of complex droplet suspensions such as blood and crude oil emulsions and to develop microfluidic technologies for manipulation and separation of complex droplets such as blood cells.

Cell manipulation and separation technologies have potential biological and medical applications, including advanced clinical protocols such as tissue engineering. An aggregation model was developed for a human carcinoma (HeLa) cell suspension exposed to a uniform AC electric field, in order to explore the field-induced structure formation and kinetics of cell aggregates. The momentum equations of cells under the action of the dipole-dipole interaction were solved theoretically and the total time required to form linear string-like cluster was derived. The results were compared with those of a numerical simulation. Experiments using HeLa cells were also performed for comparison. The total time required to form linear string-like clusters was derived from a simple theoretical model of the cell cluster kinetics. The growth rates of the average string length of cell aggregates showed good agreement with those of the numerical simulation. In the experiment, cells were found to form massive clusters on the bottom of a chamber. The results imply that the string-like cluster grows rapidly by longitudinal attraction when the electric field is first applied and that this process slows at later times and is replaced by lateral coagulation of short strings. The findings presented here are expected to enable design of methods for the organization of three-dimensional (3D) cellular structures without the use of micro-fabricated substrates, such as 3D biopolymer scaffolds, to manipulate cells into spatial arrangement.

2 - Cell manipulation tools

The optically-induced dielectrophoretic (ODEP) technology has many advantages such as low light energy (~ 102 W/cm2), virtual electrodes, large manipulating area and rapid screening of cells. In this paper, 20 μm polystyrene beads are manipulated by a light circle and concentrated by a variable radius circle. The 10 μm and 40 μm polystyrene beads are successfully separated by a 40 μm light line width with vibrating beveled microfluidic light channels.

Membrane separation is a central area of research in chemical engineering because of its important status as the key technology in chemical separation and water treatment processes. Recently, polymeric graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has emerged as a candidate material for membrane applications because of its appealing physiochemical properties and ease of fabrication. Herein we review the progress of g-C3N4-based membranes, including the peculiarity of two-dimensional (2D) g-C3N4, the tailoring of functionality, and integration into membrane stacks for practical applications in gas separation, water purification, pervaporation, photocatalytic water filtration, oil-in-water separation, and polymer electrolyte membranes. Moreover, possible development directions of g-C3N4-based membranes are discussed along with the current challenges and future perspectives.

The globe demands a more efficient approach to provide materials and products for the economic and living needs of a modern society. Separation processes have an important role in order to achieve the recoveries and purities required in terms of quality specifications. There are a variety of porous materials taking the role of separation agents which work effectively in many technological industrial applications based on adsorption and membrane processes. The separation agents derived from renewable materials represent a desirable alternative to face the sustainability challenges in industrial settings. In this sense, the biomass residues which are abundant in agroindustrial regions represent an opportunity to tackle the needs for sustainable separation processes. Innovation plays a key role in order to combine renewable materials and emerging separation concepts to find compelling solutions for the needs of water and gas treatment purifications. These solutions are achieved more effectively through the joint research and innovation effort between materials and process aspects. This commentary remarks the fruitful opportunity existing for separation technology to take advantage of biomass residues to be converted into tailor-made separation agents. It focuses on novel separation applications where the biocarbon electroactive properties play a significant role. These technological approaches for biocarbon are beyond its most common use as an activated carbon adsorbent. Recent research contributions providing original solutions on this aspect are discussed here mainly for gas separation of CO2 and volatile organic compounds, freshwater recovery, and electrolyte separation among others. Innovative separation solutions including tailor-made biocarbons are expected to grow at a fast pace in the coming years.

Rome Laboratory, one of the United States Air Force's four Super Laboratories, has been designated by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to be its National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center for the Northeast (NLECTC-NE). A Department of Defense leader in research and development (R&D) in speech and audio processing for over 25 years, Rome Laboratory's main thrust in these R&D areas has focused on developing technology to improve the collection, handling, identification and intelligibility of communication signals. Rome Laboratory speech and audio technology is unique and particularly appropriate for application to law enforcement requirements because it addresses the military need for time critical decisions and actions, operating within noisy environments, and use by uncooperative speakers in tactical, real-time applications. Speech enhancement and speaker recognition are the primary technologies discussed in this paper. Automatic language and dialect identification, automatic gisting, spoken language translation, co-channel speaker separation and audio manipulation technologies are briefly discussed.© (1997) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

BackgroundThe E6 and E7 proteins in human papillomavirus 16 (HPV 16) are the main oncogenes in the occurrence of lung cancer. In recent studies, we found that E6 and E7 downregulated the expression of LKB1 in lung cancer cells. However, it is still unclear how E6 and E7 regulate LKB1 in lung cancer cells.MethodsDouble directional genetic manipulation and nuclear plasma separation technology were performed to explore the molecular mechanism of E6 and E7 inhibiting the antitumor activity of LKB1 in well‐established lung cancer cell lines.ResultsE6 but not E7 significantly downregulated the expression of tumor suppressor KIF7 at protein level, and the inhibition of KIF7 further reduced the expression of LKB1 both in the nuclei and in the cytoplasm, whereas reduced the expression of p‐LKB1 in the cytoplasm only. This suggested that HPV 16 E6 but not E7 downregulates the antitumor activity of LKB1 by downregulating the expression of p‐LKB1 in the cytoplasm only.ConclusionsHere, we demonstrated for the first time that E6 but not E7 inhibits the antitumor activity of LKB1 in lung cancer cells by downregulating the expression of KIF7. Our findings provide new evidence to support the important role of KIF7 in the pathogenesis of lung cancer and suggests new therapeutic targets.

1. Introduction Hydrogen isotopes are important elements for nuclear and fusion reactors. The technique of hydrogen isotope separation has been investigated in several approaches [1-3]. However, the most methods are ineffective processes and shows low separation factor. That is, a large scale plant is generally necessary to deal with enormous water for the isotope enrichment. In Japan, a novel separation technology of tritium in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is urgently required. Although water electrolysis has been mainly used for heavy water production since the 1930s, it is no longer used except in the final separation stage. The reason is that water electrolysis consumes an enormous amount of the electric energy for a large-scale production. However, the electrolysis process is still attractive due to the highest separation factor and less polluted exhausts. In the conventional electrolysis process, no attempts have been made to recover energy from the gases evolved from the water electrolysis cell. The gases evolved from the electrolysis are recombined in a burner or catalytic exchange tower, and the left water vapor is condensed and fed to a lower stage. Supposed that the evolved hydrogen and oxygen gases are fed into a fuel cell as seen in Fig. 1, a large amount of energy will be recovered as electricity. For exploring this new concept [4], we have comprehensively investigated the electrochemical kinetics of hydrogen electrode reactions and separation factors in fuel cell and water electrolysis [5]. 2. Experimental The kinetic study was conducted by the rotating electrode with the rotation rate of 900, 1600, 2500 and 3600 rpm. The working electrode was a 0.785 cm-2 polycrystalline Pt disk and the counter electrode was coiled Pt wire. The reference electrode was Hg/Hg2SO4 saturated with K2SO4. The polarization curves were recorded by linear sweep voltammetry at the scan rate of ±0.01 V s-1. The electrolytes of 0.05 M D2SO4and 0.05 M KOD were maintained at 298 K. 3. Results and discussion Figure 2 shows Tafel plots of mass transfer corrected currents for the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) and deuterium oxidation reaction (DOR) at low anodic overpotential (η ≤ 0.08 V). The Tafel region of HOR began to be observed at η ≈ 0.04 V. The slope value of HOR was 0.091 V dec-1, which was larger than that of DOR (0.055 V dec-1). Concerning on the exchange current density, the ratio of i 0(H2) / i 0(D2)was 0.46. The present kinetic comparison of deuterium with protium data supported the isotope effect by which the deuterium was more easily dissociated on platinum electrode, pointing out a new separation by fuel cells. We will calculate the total energy consumption in fuel cell and water electrolysis and discuss the possibility of new separation system for heavy water production. ACKNOWLEGMENT The authors appreciate the financial aid given by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Project NO. 26870234). One of the authors, H. Matsushima, wishes to express his sincere gratitude to Inamori Foundation in Japan. REFERENCES [1] C. Banglin et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 130, 6411 (2008). [2] I. Cristescu et al., Fusion Eng. Des., 82, 2126 (2007). [3] I. A. Alekseev et al., Fusion Sci. Technol., 41, 1097 (2002). [4] H. Matsushima, T. Nohira, T. Kitabata, Y. Ito, Energy, 30, 2413 (2005). [5] S. Shibuya, H. Matsushima, M. Ueda, in preparation. Figure 1