The exudation layer seriously affects the properties and the surface finish of the tin bronze alloy. The effective control of the exudation thickness is important measure for improving the properties of the alloy. In order to study the influence of process parameters on the thickness of exudate layer, the tin bronze alloy was prepared by continuous unidirectional solidification technology at different process parameters. The microstructure of the continuous unidirectional solidification tin bronze alloy was analyzed. The effect of process parameters on microstructure and chemical compositions was studied by orthogonal experiment. The results show that there exists an exudation layer on the surface of the continuous unidirectional solidification tin bronze alloy, and the exudation is mainly composed of a tin-rich precipitated phase. It indicates that the continuous casting speed is the main factor affecting the thickness of exudation layer, followed by mold temperature, melt temperature, cooling water temperature and cooling distance.

The extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) produced from Rhizobium radiobacter F2, designated as EPSF2, was investigated as a biosorbent for the removal of Pb(II) and Zn(II) from aqueous solution. The optimum biosorption pH values were 5.0 for Pb(II) and 6.0 for Zn(II). Kinetics study revealed that the biosorption followed pseudo-first-order model well, and the equilibrium data fit the Langmuir model better. The adsorbed metal ions could be effectively desorbed by HCl. Desrobed EPSF2 regained 80% of the initial biosorption capacity after five cycles of biosorption-desorption-elution. These results demonstrated that EPSF2 could be a promising alternative for Pb(II) and Zn(II) removal from aqueous solution.

This paper presents a novel low-complexity soft demapping algorithm for two-dimensional non-uniform spaced constellations (2D-NUCs) and massive order one-dimensional NUCs (1D-NUCs). NUCs have been implemented in a wide range of new broadcasting systems to approach the Shannon limit further, such as DVB-NGH, ATSC 3.0 and NGB-W. However, the soft demapping complexity is extreme due to the substantial distance calculations. In the proposed scheme, the demapping process is classified into four cases based on different quadrants. To deal with the complexity problem, four groups of reduced subsets in terms of the quadrant for each bit are separately calculated and stored in advance. Analysis and simulation prove that the proposed demapper only introduces a small penalty under 0.02dB with respect to Max-Log-MAP demapper, whereas a significant complexity reduction ranging from 68.75% to 88.54% is obtained.

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the self- healing properties of a commercially-available geosynthetic clay liner (GCL) using flexible-wall permeameter. The GCLs are produced by the same factory, but the contents of bentonite are different. Also the hydraulic conductivities (HC) of GCLs with no defect are different. In this study, specimens were completely saturated under the backpressure of 20 kPa before the test. Permeability tests were performed on GCL specimens with penetrating flaw and also on specimens permeated with distilled water and CaCl2 solutions. The test results were presented and discussed. Experimental results showed that the GCL with penetrating flaw did not exhibit complete self-healing in the case of flaw. After 120 days, the hydraulic conductivity increased by approximately an order of magnitude. In addition, CaCl2 solutions had a significant influence on the hydraulic conductivity. The research findings might be of interest to researchers and engineers who design liners for landfills and other liquid containment facilities

A ceria loaded carbon nanotubes (CeO2/CNTs) nanocomposites photocatalyst was prepared by chemical precipitation, and the preparation conditions were optimized using an orthogonal experiment method. HR-TEM, XRD, UV-Vis/DRS, TGA and XPS were used to characterize the photocatalyst. Nitrogen adsorption-desorption was employed to determine the BET specific surface area. The results indicated that the photocatalyst has no obvious impurities. CeO2 was dispersed on the carbon nanotubes with a good loading effect and high loading efficiency without agglomeration. The catalyst exhibits a strong ability to absorb light in the ultraviolet region and some ability to absorb light in the visible light region. The CeO2/CNTs nanocomposites photocatalyst was used to degrade azo dye Acid Orange 7 (40 mg/L). The optical decolorization rate was 66.58% after xenon lamp irradiation for 4 h, which is better than that of commercial CeO2 (43.13%). The results suggested that CeO2 loading on CNTs not only enhanced the optical decolorization rate but also accelerated the separation of CeO2/CNTs and water.

In order to solve the problem of traditional carrier phase-shift modulation with multiple ratios or PI controllers and cumbersome tuning parameters, this paper uses improved carrier phase-shift modulation. The total turn-on number of sub-modules each bridge arm is determined by comparing the sinusoidal modulated wave with the triangular carrier, and then the control signal is generated according to the capacitance voltage sorting result and the bridge armcurrent polarity. However, this modulation method uses a sorting method that causes the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) have an excessively high switching frequency. Therefore, a sorting trigger condition that can effectively reduce the switching frequency is used. The method determines whether to reorder based on the error between the voltage average and the actual value. For the circulation problem, the double-frequency negative sequence component is extracted by rotating coordinate transformation, and it is suppressed by PI control. A 21-level MMC model was built in MATLAB/simulink to analyze the sub-module capacitor voltage fluctuation, output current, voltage distortion rate and bridge arm circulation. It is verified that the modulation method can combine the sorting algorithm and circulation suppression method at the same time, and has better voltage equalization and circulation suppression effects.