Treatment of gray wastewater and heavy metal removal from aqueous medium using hydrogels based on novel crosslinkers

Water contamination by heavy metals is a serious environmental problem. Several adsorbents with high adsorption capacity have been reported by researchers. In this paper we report the application of a new crosslinker allyl sorbitol (AS), and two other crosslinkers viz. allyl mannitol (AM) and allyl pentaerythritol (AP), toward the synthesis of polymer hydrogels. These hydrogels have been utilized for the removal of heavy metal ions from water. Chemically crosslinked polyacrylic acid hydrogels have been prepared using these crosslinkers viz. AS or AM or AP. The synthesized crosslinked hydrogels have been utilized for the removal of heavy metal ions from water. The maximum copper (Cu) metal ion removal of 81.8, 81.6, 86.8% and adsorption capacity of 409, 408, 434 mg/g were found with AS, AM and AP crosslinker based hydrogels respectively. While the maximum nickel (Ni) metal ion removal of 96.8, 96.6, 99.0% and adsorption capacity of 484, 483, 495 mg/g were found with AS, AM and AP crosslinkers based hydrogels respectively. The maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction of 72, 74, 78% and total dissolved solids reduction of 86%, 83%, 95% were found with AS, AM, AP based polymer gel respectively. Approximately, 439.2, 451.4, and 475.8 (mg COD removed/g polymer gel) of pollutants reduction capacity was achieved during their treatment.     

A new approach of microwave treatment to augment the mechanical properties of polymeric materials

The present study portrays a novel post-processing treatment by using microwave radiations for enhancing mechanical properties of five commonly used engineering polymers, polyamide (PA), polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), polypropylene (PP), polycarbonate (PC), and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS). The analysis revealed that the crystal structures of the polymers improved after the treatment due to more favorable rearrangement of crystalline segments within the polymers. Furthermore, tensile properties and tribological performance of microwave-treated polymers were found to be significantly better when compared to those of untreated counterparts. The tensile strength, elongation, and wear performance of PA increased by 51%, 286%, and 45%, respectively, only after a treatment of 20 s. A similar response was also exhibited by other polymers as well. It was noted that optimum time for microwave treatment can vary depending on different crystalline nature of the polymers. The degree of randomness in the molecular chains of semicrystalline polymers is less; thus, it requires less treatment time. However, for amorphous polymers, as randomness increases, more time is needed. As such, post-processing microwave treatment of polymers has proven beneficial as a cost-effective, time-saving, and environment-friendly technique for enhancing material properties significantly.     

OFDM-Based TVWS-IEEE Standards: A Survey of PHY and Cognitive Radio Features

Cognitive radio (CR) has been recognized as future prospect for efficient and dynamic allocation of bandwidth among users of which dynamic spectrum access is an important aspect focusing on identification and opportunistic utilization of vacant spectrum in television broadcasting licensed bands, known as television white spaces (TVWS). TVWS has been selected by numerous IEEE standards spanning diverse operating zones for implementing CR technology. Specifically, we focus our attention to IEEE 802.22, IEEE 802.11af and IEEE 802.15.4m standards operating in TVWS pertaining to regional, local and personal area networks respectively. The PHY layer in each of these standards is depending on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) for spectrum-wise efficient communication as well as dynamic frequency allocation. Pertinent OFDM design challenges corresponding to IEEE standards in TVWS are revealed. PHY layer structure and cognitive techniques employed in cognition-aware IEEE standards in TVWS are reviewed in detail. Lastly, open research issues and implementation challenges for TVWS IEEE standards are highlighted.

     

Selective substitution of Ni by Ti in LaNiO3 perovskites: A parameter governing the oxy-carbon dioxide reforming of methane

A series of LaNi_1?xTi_xO₃ perovskite catalysts varying titanium (x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 and 1.0) are synthesized and investigated using BET, XRD, TPR, TEM, FT-IR and XPS. The catalysts were evaluated for oxy-carbon dioxide reforming of methane at 800 °C under atmospheric pressure maintaining CO₂/CH₄/O₂ ratio 0.8/1.0/0.2. LaNi_0.5Ti_0.5O₃ is showing typical stability with gradual H₂ consumption in TPR. The stability of these catalysts is supported by O 1s binding energies wherein it is clearly evident that incorporation of Ti stabilized LaNiO₃ generating suitable catalysts in the range of x = 0.4–0.6 with high performance.     

Growth of GaN on porous SiC and GaN substrates

We have studied the growth of GaN on porous SiC and GaN substrates, employing both plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy (PAMBE) and metal-organic chemical-vapor deposition (MOCVD). For growth on porous SiC, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations indicate that the epitaxial-GaN growth initiates primarily from surface areas between pores, and the exposed surface pores tend to extend into GaN as open tubes and trap Ga droplets. The dislocation density in the GaN layers is similar to, or slightly less than, that observed in layers grown on nonporous substrates. For the case of GaN growth on porous GaN, the overgrown layer replicates the underlying dislocation structure (although considerable dislocation reduction can occur as this overgrowth proceeds, independent of the presence of the porous layer). The GaN layers grown on a porous SiC substrate were found to be mechanically more relaxed than those grown on nonporous substrates; electron-diffraction patterns indicate that the former are free of misfit strain or are even in tension after cooling to room temperature.     

An Efficient Distributed Arithmetic-Based Realization of the Decision Feedback Equalizer

A distributed arithmetic (DA)-based decision feedback equalizer architecture for IEEE 802.11b PHY scenarios is presented. As the transmission data rate increases, the hardware complexity of the decision feedback equalizer increases due to requirement for large number of taps in feed forward and feedback filters. DA, an efficient technique that uses memories for the computation of inner product of two vectors, has been used since DA-based realization of filters can lead to great computational savings. For higher-order filters, the memory-size requirement in DA would be high, and so ROM decomposition has been employed. The speed is further increased by employing digit-serial input operation. Two architectures have been presented, namely the direct-memory architecture and reduced-memory architecture where the later is derived using the former. A third architecture has also been presented where the offset-binary coding scheme is employed along with the ROM decomposition and digit-serial variants of DA. Synthesis results on Altera Cyclone III EP3C55F484C6 FPGA show that the proposed DA-based implementations are free of hardware multipliers and use less number of hardware resources compared to the multiply-and-accumulate-based implementation.     

Processing and Properties of Eu3+:LiTaO3 TransparentGlass–Ceramic Nanocomposites

We report here the processing and properties of transparent glass and glass–ceramic nanocomposites in the Li₂O–Ta₂O₅–SiO₂–Al₂O₃ system in the presence of Eu₂O₃ as luminescent probe. The formation of the LiTaO₃ crystal phase, the crystallite size, and the morphology with the progression of heat treatment have been examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Fourier transformed infrared reflectance spectroscopy measurements. The crystallite sizes obtained from XRD and TEM are found to increase with heat-treatment time and vary in the range of 2–20 nm. The measured photoluminescence spectra exhibit emission transitions of ⁵D_0,1→⁷F _j ( j =0, 1, 2, 3, and 4) of Eu³⁺ ions. From the nature of the emission transitions, the site symmetry in the vicinity of Eu³⁺ ions has been found to be near C_3v in the glass–ceramic nanocomposites. An inverse correlation has been observed between the asymmetric ratio ( I _ED/ I _MD) of Eu³⁺ ions and the dielectric constant (ɛ_r), with an increase in the heat-treatment time of glass, which is caused by the dipole–dipole interaction.     

Pyrogallol Red and Dibromopyrogallol Red as interesting chromogenic reagents

Preliminary studies on the different chelates of PGR and BPGR with a number of metal ions have been made. Different conditions under which these chelates are formed have been evaluated.