Toward MBenes Battery Electrode Materials: Layered Molybdenum Borides for Li-Ion Batteries.

Lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries (LIBs and SIBs) are crucial in our shift toward sustainable technologies. In this work, the potential of layered boride materials (MoAlB and Mo2 AlB2 ) as novel, high-performance electrode materials for LIBs and SIBs, is explored. It is discovered that Mo2 AlB2 shows a higher specific capacity than MoAlB when used as an electrode material for LIBs, with a specific capacity of 593 mAh g-1 achieved after 500 cycles at 200 mA g-1 . It is also found that surface redox reactions are responsible for Li storage in Mo2 AlB2 , instead of intercalation or conversion. Moreover, the sodium hydroxide treatment of MoAlB leads to a porous morphology and higher specific capacities exceeding that of pristine MoAlB. When tested in SIBs, Mo2 AlB2 exhibits a specific capacity of 150 mAh g-1 at 20 mA g-1 . These findings suggest that layered borides have potential as electrode materials for both LIBs and SIBs, and highlight the importance of surface redox reactions in Li storage mechanisms.

MXene/Activated-Carbon Hybrid Capacitive Deionization for Permselective Ion Removal at Low and High Salinity.

Two-dimensional, layered transition metal carbides (MXenes) are an intriguing class of intercalation-type electrodes for electrochemical applications. The ability for preferred counterion uptake qualifies MXenes as an attractive material for electrochemical desalination. Our work explores Ti3C2Tx-MXene paired with activated carbon in such a way that both electrodes operate in an optimized potential range. This is accomplished by electrode mass balancing and control over the cell voltage. Thereby, we enable effective remediation of saline media with low (brackish) and high (seawater-like) ionic strength by using 20 and 600 mM aqueous NaCl solutions. It is shown that MXene/activated-carbon asymmetric cell design capitalizes on the permselective behavior of MXene in sodium removal, which in turn forces carbon to mirror the same behavior in the removal of chloride ions. This has minimized the notorious co-ion desorption of carbon in highly saline media (600 mM NaCl) and boosted the charge efficiency from 4% in a symmetric activated-carbon/activated-carbon cell to 85% in a membrane-less asymmetric MXene/activated-carbon cell. Stable electrochemical performance for up to 100 cycles is demonstrated, yielding average desalination capacities of 8 and 12 mg/g, respectively, for membrane-less MXene/activated-carbon cells in NaCl solutions of 600 mM (seawater-level) and 20 mM (brackish-water-level). In the case of the 20 mM NaCl solutions, surprising charge efficiency values of over 100% have been obtained, which is attributed to the role of MXene interlayer surface charges.

Comparative experimental study on fouling mechanisms in nano-porous membrane: cheese whey ultrafiltration as a case study.

Determination of fouling mechanisms and accurate quantitative prediction of nano-porous membrane behavior are of great interest in membrane processes. This work has focused on a comprehensive comparison of two classical and new fouling models. Different operational conditions were tested to analyze the level of agreement of these models with experimental observation. Whey solutions of 8, 0.8 and 0.5 g/L were ultrafiltered in transmembrane pressures (TMPs) of 300 and 500 KPa through a synthesized polyethersulfone/copolymer blend membrane. Fouling mechanisms and the effect of different combinations of TMPs and protein concentrations were determined and analyzed by fitting the experimental data to different models. Based on the results obtained from classical models, it was found that the predictions of the cake layer formation model were quite acceptable, followed by the intermediate blocking model. The new combined pore blockage-cake filtration model, however, was found to be very successful in predicting the flux decline over time for every operational condition tested, with all relative errors of prediction less than 5%. The latter also showed a good performance in the transition from the pore blockage mechanism to cake layer formation.

Simultaneous UV-Vis spectrophotometric quantification of ternary basic dye mixtures by partial least squares and artificial neural networks.

One of the main difficulties in quantification of dyes in industrial wastewaters is the fact that dyes are usually in complex mixtures rather than being pure. Here we report the development of two rapid and powerful methods, partial least squares (PLS-1) and artificial neural network (ANN), for spectral resolution of a highly overlapping ternary dye system in the presence of interferences. To this end, Crystal Violet (CV), Malachite Green (MG) and Methylene Blue (MB) were selected as three model dyes whose UV-Vis absorption spectra highly overlap each other. After calibration, both prediction models were validated through testing with an independent spectra-concentration dataset, in which high correlation coefficients (R2) of 0.998, 0.999 and 0.999 were obtained by PLS-1 and 0.997, 0.999 and 0.999 were obtained by ANN for CV, MG and MB, respectively. Having shown a relative error of prediction of less than 3% for all the dyes tested, both PLS-1 and ANN models were found to be highly accurate in simultaneous determination of dyes in pure aqueous samples. Using net-analyte signal concept, the quantitative determination of dyes spiked in seawater samples was carried out successfully by PLS-1 with satisfactory recoveries (90-101%).