Phase Segregated Pt-SnO2 /C Nanohybrids for Highly Efficient Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysis.

Strengthening the interfacial interaction in heterogeneous catalysts can lead to a dramatic improvement in their performance and allow the use of smaller amounts of active noble metal, thus decreasing the cost without compromising their activity. In this work, a facile phase-segregation method is demonstrated for synthesizing platinum-tin oxide hybrids supported on carbon black (PtSnO2 /C) in situ by air annealing PtSn alloy nanoparticles on carbon black. Compared with a control sample formed by preloading SnO2 on carbon support followed by deposition of Pt nanoparticles, the phase-segregation-derived PtSnO2 /C exhibits a more strongly coupled PtSnO2 interface with lattice overlap of Pt (111) and SnO2 (200), along with enhanced electron transfer from SnO2 to Pt. Furthermore, the PtSnO2 active sites show a strong ability to degrade reactive oxygen species. As a result, the PtSnO2 /C nanohybrids exhibit both excellent activity and stability as a catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction, with an overall performance which is superior to both the control sample and commercial Pt/C catalyst. This phase-segregation method can be expected to be applicable in the preparation of other strongly coupled nanohybrids and offers a new route to high-performance heterogeneous catalysts for low-cost energy conversion devices.

Evaluation of the rotary drum reactor process as pretreatment technology of municipal solid waste for thermophilic anaerobic digestion and biogas production.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) contains a large fraction of biodegradable organic materials. When disposed in landfills, these materials can cause adverse environmental impact due to gaseous emissions and leachate generation. This study was performed with an aim of effectively separating the biodegradable materials from a Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) facility and treating them in well-controlled anaerobic digesters for biogas production. The rotary drum reactor (RDR) process (a sub-process of the MBT facilities studied in the present work) was evaluated as an MSW pretreatment technology for separating and preparing the biodegradable materials in MSW to be used as feedstock for anaerobic digestion. The RDR processes used in six commercial MSW treatment plants located in the USA were surveyed and sampled. The samples of the biodegradable materials produced by the RDR process were analyzed for chemical and physical characteristics as well as anaerobically digested in the laboratory using batch reactors under thermophilic conditions. The moisture content, TS, VS and C/N of the samples varied between 64.7 and 44.4%, 55.6 to 35.3%, 27.0 to 41.3% and 24.5 to 42.7, respectively. The biogas yield was measured to be between 533.0 and 675.6 mL g-1VS after 20 days of digestion. Approximately 90% of the biogas was produced during the first 13 days. The average methane content of the biogas was between 58.0 and 59.9%. The results indicated that the biodegradable materials separated from MSW using the RDR processes could be used as an excellent feedstock for anaerobic digestion. The digester residues may be further processed for compost production or further energy recovery by using thermal conversion processes such as combustion or gasification.

Start-up and operation strategies on the liquefied food waste anaerobic digestion and a full-scale case application.

Batch anaerobic digestion was employed to investigate the efficient start-up strategies for the liquefied food waste, and sequencing batch digestion was also performed to determine maximum influent organic loading rate (OLR) for efficient and stable operation. The results indicated that the start-up could be well improved using appropriate wastewater organic load and food-to-microorganism ratios (F/M). When digestion was initialized at low chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration of 20.0 gCOD L(-1), the start-up would go well using lower F/M ratio of 0.5-0.7. The OLR 7.0 gCOD L(-1) day(-1) was recommended for operating the ASBR digestion, in which the COD conversion of 96.7 ± 0.53% and biomethane yield of 3.5 ± 0.2 L gCOD(-1) were achieved, respectively. The instability would occur when OLR was higher than 7.0 gCOD L(-1) day(-1), and this instability was not recoverable. Lipid was suggested to be removed before anaerobic digestion. The anaerobic digestion process in engineering project ran well, and good performance was achieved when the start-up and operational strategies from laboratory study were applied. For case application, stable digestion performance was achieved in a digester (850 m(3) volume) with biogas production of 1.0-3.8 m(3) m(-3) day(-1).

Thermosensitive Hydrogel Interface Switching from Hydrophilic Lubrication to Infection Defense.

An intervention-induced infection, such as a catheter-associated infection, is one of the most common nosocomial-acquired infections, which causes huge healthcare threats and costs to clinical treatment. This work developed a thermosensitive hydrogel coating on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which smartly switched from hydrophilic lubrication to antimicrobial and antifouling properties. Upon the optimization of the molar ratio of N-isopropylacrylamide versus N,N'-methylenebis(2-propenamide) (NNMBA), the thermosensitive hydrogel coating exhibited hydrophilic lubrication and 2.5-fold and 4.4-fold contact angle hysteresis than those of silicone and PDMS at room temperature, respectively, which provided significant protection to prevent tissue injury during the intervention in vivo. Once reaching body temperature, the hydrogel coating collapsed into a rough morphology with a hydrophobic inlayer and an exposed antibacterial peptide outlayer, which was endowed with an excellent antibacterial adhesion ability, reducing 96.6% of bacterial adherence relative to bare PDMS. The in vivo implantation demonstrated that the coating significantly prevents the infection, which exhibited over 3 × 103 and 103 folds of the bacterial number of the surface and surrounding tissue lower than that of the bare implants, respectively. The hydrogel coating had a good biocompatibility with a rare cytotoxicity. This adapted hydrogel interface switching from hydrophilic lubrication to preventing infections offered a surface coating strategy for medical device implantation.

Evaluation of A Novel Split-Feeding Anaerobic/Oxic Baffled Reactor (A/OBR) For Foodwaste Anaerobic Digestate: Performance, Modeling and Bacterial Community.

To enhance the treatment efficiency from an anaerobic digester, a novel six-compartment anaerobic/oxic baffled reactor (A/OBR) was employed. Two kinds of split-feeding A/OBRs R2 and R3, with influent fed in the 1st, 3rd and 5th compartment of the reactor simultaneously at the respective ratios of 6:3:1 and 6:2:2, were compared with the regular-feeding reactor R1 when all influent was fed in the 1st compartment (control). Three aspects, the COD removal, the hydraulic characteristics and the bacterial community, were systematically investigated, compared and evaluated. The results indicated that R2 and R3 had similar tolerance to loading shock, but the R2 had the highest COD removal of 91.6% with a final effluent of 345 mg/L. The mixing patterns in both split-feeding reactors were intermediate between plug-flow and completely-mixed, with dead spaces between 8.17% and 8.35% compared with a 31.9% dead space in R1. Polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) analysis revealed that the split-feeding strategy provided a higher bacterial diversity and more stable bacterial community than that in the regular-feeding strategy. Further analysis indicated that Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Proteobacteria were the dominant bacteria, among which Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes might be responsible for organic matter degradation and Proteobacteria for nitrification and denitrification.

Improving Biomethane Production and Mass Bioconversion of Corn Stover Anaerobic Digestion by Adding NaOH Pretreatment and Trace Elements.

This research applied sodium hydroxide (NaOH) pretreatment and trace elements to improve biomethane production when using corn stover for anaerobic digestion. Full-factor experimental tests identified the best combination of trace elements with the NaOH pretreatment, indicating that the best combination was with 1.0, 0.4, and 0.4 mg·L(-1)·d(-1) of elements Fe, Co, and Ni, respectively. The cumulative biomethane production adding NaOH pretreatment and trace elements was 11,367 mL; total solid bioconversion rate was 55.7%, which was 41.8%-62.2% higher than with NaOH-pretreatment alone and 22.2%-56.3% higher than with untreated corn stover. The best combination was obtained 5-9 days shorter than T90 and maintained good system operation stability. Only a fraction of the trace elements in the best combination was present in the resulting solution; more than 85% of the total amounts added were transferred into the solid fraction. Adding 0.897 g of Fe, 0.389 g of Co, and 0.349 g of Ni satisfied anaerobic digestion needs and enhanced biological activity at the beginning of the operation. The results showed that NaOH pretreatment and adding trace elements improve corn stover biodegradability and enhance biomethane production.

Effect of lipase addition on hydrolysis and biomethane production of Chinese food waste.

The lipase obtained from Aspergillums niger was applied to promote the hydrolysis of food waste for achieving high biomethane production. Two strategies of lipase additions were investigated. One (Group A) was to pre-treat food waste to pre-decompose lipid to fatty acids before anaerobic digestion, and another one (Group B) was to add lipase to anaerobic digester directly to degrade lipid inside digester. The lipase was used at the concentrations of 0.1%, 0.5%, and 1.0% (w/v). The results showed that Group A achieved higher biomethane production, TS and VS reductions than those of Group B. At 0.5% lipase concentration, Group A obtained experimental biomethane yield of 500.1 mL/g VS(added), 4.97-26.50% higher than that of Group B. The maximum Bd of 73.8% was also achieved in Group A. Therefore, lipase pre-treatment strategy is recommended. This might provide one of alternatives for efficient biomethane production from food waste and mitigating environmental impact associated.

Promoting anaerobic biogasification of corn stover through biological pretreatment by liquid fraction of digestate (LFD).

A new biological pretreatment method by using liquid fraction of digestate (LFD) was advanced for promoting anaerobic biogasification efficiency of corn stover. 17.6% TS content and ambient temperature was appropriate for pretreatment. The results showed that C/N ratio decreased to about 30, while total lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose (LCH) contents were reduced by 8.1-19.4% after pretreatment. 3-days pretreatment was considered to be optimal, resulting in 70.4% more biogas production, 66.3% more biomethane yield and 41.7% shorter technical digestion time compared with the untreated stover. The reductions on VS, cellulose, and hemicellulose were increased by 22.1-35.9%, 22.3-35.4%, and 19.8-27.2% for LFD-treated stovers. The promoted anaerobic biogasification efficiency was mainly attributed to the improved biodegradability due to the pre-decomposition role of the bacteria in LFD. The method proved to be an efficient and low cost approach for producing bioenergy from corn stover, meanwhile, reducing LFD discharge and minimizing its potential pollution.

Using feature objects aided strategy to evaluate the biomethane production of food waste and corn stalk anaerobic co-digestion.

Feature objects aided strategy was used to predict and evaluate the biomethane production of food waste and corn stalk anaerobic co-digestion. The kinetics of co-digestion and mono-digestion of food waste and/or corn stalk was also analyzed. The results indicated that the compositions of food waste and corn stalk were significantly different. The anaerobic digestion of three feature objects at different mixing ratios showed the different biomethane yields and kinetic constants. Food waste and corn stalk co-digestion enhanced the digestion rate and achieved 22.48% and 41.55% higher biomethane production than those of food waste and corn stalk mono-digestion, respectively.

Evaluating biomethane production from anaerobic mono- and co-digestion of food waste and floatable oil (FO) skimmed from food waste.

Batch anaerobic digestion was employed to investigate the performance of the floatable oil (FO) skimmed from food waste (FW) and the effect of different FO concentrations (5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50g/L) on biomethane production and system stability. FO and FO+FW were mono-digested and co-digested. The results showed that FO and FO+FW could be well anaerobically converted to biomethane in appropriate loads. For the mono-digestions of FO, the biomethane yield, TS and VS reduction achieved 607.7-846.9mL/g, 69.7-89% and 84.5-92.8%, respectively, when FO concentration was 5-40g/L. But the mono-digestion appeared instability when FO concentration was 50g/L. For the co-digestions of FW+FO, TS and VS reductions reached 70.7-86.1% and 87.5-91.4%, respectively, when FO concentration was 5-30g/L. However, the inhibition occurred when FO concentrations increased to 40-50g/L. The maximal FO loads of 40g/L and 30g/L were hence suggested for efficient mono-digestions and co-digestions of FO and FO+FW.

Reducing agitation energy-consumption by improving rheological properties of corn stover substrate in anaerobic digestion.

Rheological properties of corn stover substrate were investigated to explore agitation energy reduction potential for different total solid (TS) in anaerobic digestion. The effects of particle size and temperature on rheological properties and corresponding energy reduction were studied. The results indicated that corn stover slurry exhibited pseudo-plastic flow behavior at TS of 4.23-7.32%, and was well described by Power-law model. At TS of 4.23%, rheological properties were not obviously affected by particle size and temperature. However, when TS was increased to 7.32%, there was 10.37% shear stress reduction by size-reduction from 20 to 80-mesh, and 11.73% shear stress reduction by temperature-increase from 25 to 55 °C. PTS was advanced as variations of power consumption by TS-increase from 4.23% to 7.32%. There was 9.2% PTS-reduction by size-reduction from 20 to 80-mesh at 35 °C. Moreover, PTS-reduction of 10.3%/10 °C was achieved at 20-mesh compared with 9.0%/10 °C at 80-mesh.

Anaerobic co-digestion of kitchen waste and fruit/vegetable waste: lab-scale and pilot-scale studies.

The anaerobic digestion performances of kitchen waste (KW) and fruit/vegetable waste (FVW) were investigated for establishing engineering digestion system. The study was conducted from lab-scale to pilot-scale, including batch, single-phase and two-phase experiments. The lab-scale experimental results showed that the ratio of FVW to KW at 5:8 presented higher methane productivity (0.725 L CH4/g VS), and thereby was recommended. Two-phase digestion appeared to have higher treatment capacity and better buffer ability for high organic loading rate (OLR) (up to 5.0 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1)), compared with the low OLR of 3.5 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1) for single-phase system. For two-phase digestion, the pilot-scale system showed similar performances to those of lab-scale one, except slightly lower maximum OLR of 4.5 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1) was allowed. The pilot-scale system proved to be profitable with a net profit of 10.173$/ton as higher OLR (⩾ 3.0 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1)) was used.

Minimizing asynchronism to improve the performances of anaerobic co-digestion of food waste and corn stover.

To investigate the existence of the asynchronism during the anaerobic co-digestion of different substrates, two typical substrates of food waste and corn stover were anaerobically digested with altering organic loadings (OL). The results indicated that the biodegradability of food waste and corn stover was calculated to be 81.5% and 55.1%, respectively, which was main reason causing the asynchronism in the co-digestion. The asynchronism was minimized by NaOH-pretreatment for corn stover, which could improve the biodegradability by 36.6%. The co-digestion with pretreatment could increase the biomethane yield by 12.2%, 3.2% and 0.6% comparing with the co-digestion without pretreatment at C/N ratios of 20, 25 and 30 at OL of 35 g-VS/L, respectively. The results indicated that the digestibility synchronism of food waste and corn stover was improved through enhancing the accessibility and digestibility of corn stover. The biomethane production could be increased by minimizing the asynchronism of two substrates in co-digestion.

Improving the mixing performances of rice straw anaerobic digestion for higher biogas production by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation.

As a lignocellulose-based substrate for anaerobic digestion, rice straw is characterized by low density, high water absorbability, and poor fluidity. Its mixing performances in digestion are completely different from traditional substrates such as animal manures. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was employed to investigate mixing performances and determine suitable stirring parameters for efficient biogas production from rice straw. The results from CFD simulation were applied in the anaerobic digestion tests to further investigate their reliability. The results indicated that the mixing performances could be improved by triple impellers with pitched blade, and complete mixing was easily achieved at the stirring rate of 80 rpm, as compared to 20-60 rpm. However, mixing could not be significantly improved when the stirring rate was further increased from 80 to 160 rpm. The simulation results agreed well with the experimental results. The determined mixing parameters could achieve the highest biogas yield of 370 mL (g TS)(-1) (729 mL (g TS(digested))(-1)) and 431 mL (g TS)(-1) (632 mL (g TS(digested))(-1)) with the shortest technical digestion time (T 80) of 46 days. The results obtained in this work could provide useful guides for the design and operation of biogas plants using rice straw as substrates.

Performances of anaerobic co-digestion of fruit & vegetable waste (FVW) and food waste (FW): single-phase vs. two-phase.

The co-digestion of fruit & vegetable waste (FVW) and food waste (FW) was performed at various organic loading ratios (OLRs) in single-phase and two-phase system, respectively. The results showed that the ethanol-type fermentation dominated in both digestion processes when OLR was at low levels (<2.0 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1)). The propionic acid was rapidly accumulated as OLR was increased to higher levels (>2.0 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1)), which could cause unstable anaerobic digestion. Single-phase digestion was better than two-phase digestion in term of 4.1% increase in CH4 production at lower OLRs (<2.0 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1)). However, at higher level of OLR (≥2.0 g(VS) L(-1) d(-1)), two-phase digestion achieved higher CH4 production of 0.351-0.455 L(g VS)(-1) d(-1), which were 7.0-15.8% more than that of single-phase. Additionally, two-phase digestion presented more stable operation, and higher OLR treatment capacity. Furthermore, comparison of these two systems with bioenergy recovery revealed that two-phase system overall presented higher bioenergy yield than single-phase.

Biogas production from municipal solid wastes using an integrated rotary drum and anaerobic-phased solids digester system.

This research was conducted to develop an integrated rotary drum reactor (RDR)-anaerobic-phased solids (APS) digester system for the treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW) to produce biogas energy and achieve waste reduction. A commercial RDR facility was used to provide a 3-d pretreatment and sufficient separation of the organics from MSW and then the organics were digested in a laboratory APS-digester system for biogas production. The organics generated from the RDR contained 50% total solids (TS) and 36% volatile solids (VS) on wet basis. The APS-digester was started at an organic loading rate (OLR) of 3.1 gVS L(-1) d(-1) and operated at three higher OLRs of 4.6, 7.7 and 9.2 gVS L(-1) d(-1). At the OLR of 9.2 gVS L(-1) d(-1) the system biogas production rate was 3.5 L L(-1) d(-1) and the biogas and methane yields were 0.38 and 0.19 L gVS(-1), respectively. Anaerobic digestion resulted in 38% TS reduction and 53% VS reduction in the organic solids. It was found that the total VFA concentration reached a peak value of 15,000 mg L(-1) as acetic acid in the first 3d of batch digestion and later decreased to about 500 mg L(-1). The APS-digester system remained stable at each OLRs for over 100d with the pH in the hydrolysis reactors in the range of 7.3-7.8 and the pH in the biogasification reactor in 7.9-8.1. The residual solids after the digestion had a high heating value of 14.7 kJ gTS(-1).

Characteristics and biogas production potential of municipal solid wastes pretreated with a rotary drum reactor.

This study was conducted to determine the characteristics and biogas production potential of organic materials separated from municipal solid wastes using a rotary drum reactor (RDR) process. Four different types of wastes were first pretreated with a commercial RDR system at different retention times (1, 2 and 3 d) and the organic fractions were tested with batch anaerobic digesters with 2.6 g VS L(-1) initial loading. The four types of waste were: municipal solid waste (MSW), a mixture of MSW and paper waste, a mixture of MSW and biosolids, and a mixture of paper and biosolids. After 20 d of thermophilic digestion (50+/-1 degrees C), it was found that the biogas yields of the above materials were in the range of 457-557 mL g VS(-1) and the biogas contained 57.3-60.6% methane. The total solid and volatile solid reductions ranged from 50.2% to 65.0% and 51.8% to 66.8%, respectively. For each material, the change of retention time in the RDR from 1 to 3d did not show significant (alpha=0.05) influence on the biogas yields of the recovered organic materials. Further studies are needed to determine the minimum retention time requirements in the RDR system to achieve effective separation of organic from inorganic materials and produce suitable feedstock for anaerobic digesters.