Propitious Dendritic Cu2O-Pt Nanostructured Anodes for Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cells.

This study introduces a novel competent dendritic copper oxide-platinum nanocatalyst (nano-Cu2O-Pt) immobilized onto a glassy carbon (GC) substrate for formic acid (FA) electro-oxidation (FAO); the prime reaction in the anodic compartment of direct formic acid fuel cells (DFAFCs). Interestingly, the proposed catalyst exhibited an outstanding improvement for FAO compared to the traditional platinum nanoparticles (nano-Pt) modified GC (nano-Pt/GC) catalyst. This was evaluated from steering the reaction mechanism toward the desired direct route producing carbon dioxide (CO2); consistently with mitigating the other undesired indirect pathway producing carbon monoxide (CO); the potential poison deteriorating the catalytic activity of typical Pt-based catalysts. Moreover, the developed catalyst showed a reasonable long-term catalytic stability along with a significant lowering in onset potential of direct FAO that ultimately reduces the polarization and amplifies the fuel cell's voltage. The observed catalytic enhancement was believed to originate bifunctionally; while nano-Pt represented the base for the FA adsorption, nanostructured copper oxide (nano-Cu2O) behaved as a catalytic mediator facilitating the charge transfer during FAO and providing the oxygen atmosphere inspiring the poison's (CO) oxidation at relatively lower potential. Surprisingly, moreover, nano-Cu2O induced a surface retrieval of nano-Pt active sites by capturing the poisoning CO via "a spillover mechanism" to renovate the Pt surface for the direct FAO. Finally, the catalytic tolerance of the developed catalyst toward halides' poisoning was discussed.

Nano-alumina powders/ceramics derived from aluminum foil waste at low temperature for various industrial applications.

In this work, nanoscale single crystalline γ- and α-alumina powders have been successfully prepared from aluminum foil waste precursor via co-precipitation method using NH4OH as a precipitant. The obtained gel after co-precipitation treatment, was calcined at different temperatures (500,700, 900, 1050, 1100, 1300 and 1500 °C) and the products were characterized by XRD, FTIR and HRTEM. The results revealed that nano-γ-Al2O3 was fully transformed to nanometer-sized α-Al2O3 (36-200 nm) after annealing at temperatures as low as 1100 °C.The thermally preheated powder at 500 °C was further pressed under 95 MPa by the uniaxial press and the obtained bodies were found to have98.82% of the theoretical density, 1.18% porosity and 708 MPa compressive strength, when sintered at temperatures as low as 1600 °C without using any sintering aid. These excellent results proved that this work will contribute to finding a commercial source for preparing sub 100 nm α-alumina through the secondary resources management and even more so to synthesizing strong α-Al2O3 bodies which are promising in terms of their structure and compression. The α-Al2O3 bodies synthesized by the present work could be used as a feedstock for fabrication of various kinds of functional and structural materials that are extensively used in high tech.

Adsorption of crude oil from aqueous solution by hydrogel of chitosan based polyacrylamide prepared by radiation induced graft polymerization.

The adsorption of crude oil (initial concentration 0.5-30 g/L) from aqueous solution using hydrogel of chitosan based polyacrylamide (PAM) prepared by radiation induced graft polymerization has been investigated. The prepared hydrogel was characterized by FTIR and SEM micrographs. The experiments were carried out as a function of different initial concentrations of oil residue, acrylamide concentration, contact time and pH to determine the optimum condition for the adsorption of residue oil from aqueous solution and sea water. The results obtained showed that the hydrogel prepared at concentration of 40% acrylamide (AAm) and at a radiation dose of 5 kGy has high removal efficiency of crude oil 2.3g/g at pH 3. Equilibrium studies have been carried out to determine the capacity of the hydrogel for adsorption of crude oil, Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption models were applied to describe the experimental isotherms and isotherms constants. Equilibrium data were found to fit very well with both Freundlich and Langmuir models. Also the adsorption of oil onto the hydrogel behaves as a pseudo-second-order kinetic models rather than the pseudo-first-order kinetic model.