Minhao Yan

Sorption of plutonium on geological materials associated with a Chinese radioactive waste repository: influence of pH

The aim of this study is to characterize plutonium sorption particularly 239Pu distribution coefficients and the influence of pH on sorption processes in saturated geological materials used as a radioactive waste repository in China. The examined geological media is from a southwestern Chinese repository and consists of soil and slates. The backfill material consists of Na-bentonite from Inner Mongolia Gaomiaozi, and will be used at the Beishan high-level waste (HLW) repository, Gansu Province. The results show that the sorption capacity of Pu by geological medium in an acidic environment is low, but significantly increases with increasing pH.

pH-Induced fragmentation of colloids based on responsive self-assembled copper(II) metallopolymers

Colloidal particles based on self-assembled Cu2+ coordination polymers were fabricated following a one-step process. These particles were shown to be stimuli-responsive. In particular they can be readily disassembled in acidic conditions. This effect originates from a pH-induced fragmentation of the polymer chains into dinuclear Cu2+ complexes.

Facile Fabrication of Ordered Anodized Aluminum Oxide Membranes with Controlled Pore Size by Improved Hard Anodization

We have fabricated highly ordered anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes with different diameter through improved hard anodization (HA) at high temperature. This process can generate thick AAO membranes (30 μm) in a short anodizing time with high growth rate 20-60 μm h-1 which is much faster than that in traditional mild two-step anodization. We enlarged the AAO pore diameter by adjusting the voltage rise rate at the same time, which has a great influence on current density and temperature. The AAO pore diameter varies from 60-110 nm to 160-190 nm. The pore diameter (Dp) of the AAO prepared by this improved process is much larger than that prepared by HA (40-60 nm) when H2C2O4 as electrolyte. It can expand potential use of the AAO membranes such as for the template-based synthesis of nanowires or nanotubes with modulated diameters and also for practical separation technology. We also has used the AAO with different diameters prepared by this improved HA to fabricate Co nanowires and γ-Fe2O3 superparamagnetic nanorods.

Electrostatic complexation of polyelectrolyte and magnetic nanoparticles: from wild clustering to controllable magnetic wires

We present the electrostatic complexation between polyelectrolytes and charged nanoparticles. The nanoparticles in solution are γ-Fe2O3 (maghemite) spheres with 8.3 nm diameter and anionic surface charges. The complexation was monitored using three different formulation pathways such as direct mixing, dilution, and dialysis. In the first process, the hybrids were obtained by mixing stock solutions of polymers and nanoparticles. A ‘destabilization state’ with sharp and intense maximum aggregation was found at charges stoichiometry (isoelectric point). While on the two sides of the isoelectric point, ‘long-lived stable clusters state’ (arrested states) were observed. Dilution and dialysis processes were based on controlled desalting kinetics according to methods developed in molecular biology. Under an external magnetic field (B = 0.3 T), from dialysis at isoelectric point and at arrested states, cationic polyelectrolytes can ‘paste’ these magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) together to yield irregular aggregates (size of 100 μm) and regular rod-like aggregates, respectively. These straight magnetic wires were fabricated with diameters around 200 nm and lengths comprised between 1 μm and 0.5 mm. The wires can have either positive or negative charges on their surface. After analyzing their orientational behavior under an external rotating field, we also showed that the wires made from different polyelectrolytes have the same magnetic property. The recipe used a wide range of polyelectrolytes thereby enhancing the versatility and applied potentialities of the method. This simple and general approach presents significant perspective for the fabrication of hybrid functional materials.

(Ce-Al)-oxide pillared bentonite: A high affinity sorbent for plutonium

The ability of bentonite and montmorillonite pillared by Al-oxide and mixed (Ln-Al)-oxides (Ln = La, Ce) to remove 239plutonium solution species from water is comparatively investigated at pH 7 and pH 4. Small-angle scattering and neutron contrast variation with H2O/D2O mixtures is used to verify the ingress of water in the calcined products after hydrophilicity was introduced by an NH3-H2O vapor treatment. The size and shape of the (La/Ce)-Al oxo-hydroxy pillaring cations (2 nm spheres) is determined by small-angle x-ray scattering from the pillaring solutions. Not all of the oxide pillars improved Pu uptake compared with sodium montmorillonite. At neutral and acidic pH only (Ce-Al)-oxide pillared clays showed the ability to remove Pu over the concentration range studied (1.35 × 10-8-8 × 10-8 mol dm-3) with distribution coefficient (KD) values >104. XPS analysis of the (Ce-Al)-oxide pillared clays indicates the presence of Ce4+ as cerium dioxide. The progressive improvement in sorption performance in the order of pillar type Al2O3 < La2O3-Al2O3 << CeO2-Al2O3 reflects the increasing access of Pu solution species to the clay mineral layers by changes to the basal spacing and specific surface area, and also to the higher stability of the (Ce-Al)-oxide pillars.

An improved lossless group compression algorithm for seismic data in SEG-Y and MiniSEED file formats

An improved lossless group compression algorithm is proposed for decreasing the size of SEG-Y files to relieve the enormous burden associated with the transmission and storage of large amounts of seismic exploration data. Because each data point is represented by 4 bytes in SEG-Y files, the file is broken down into 4 subgroups, and the Gini coefficient is employed to analyze the distribution of the overall data and each of the 4 data subgroups within the range [0,255]. The results show that each subgroup comprises characteristic frequency distributions suited to distinct compression algorithms. Therefore, the data of each subgroup was compressed using its best suited algorithm. After comparing the compression ratios obtained for each data subgroup using different algorithms, the Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) was selected for the compression of the first two subgroups and the Deflate algorithm for the latter two subgroups. The compression ratios and decompression times obtained with the improved algorithm were compared with those obtained with commonly employed compression algorithms for SEG-Y files with different sizes. The experimental results show that the improved algorithm provides a compression ratio of 7580%, which is more effective than compression algorithms presently applied to SEG-Y files. In addition, the proposed algorithm is applied to the miniSEED format used in natural earthquake monitoring, and the results compared with those obtained using the Steim2 compression algorithm, the results again show that the proposed algorithm provides better data compression. An algorithm was proposed to compress losslessly the SEG-Y and miniSEED Files.It describes the distribution of SEG-Y and miniSEED files using Gini coefficient.Different data sub-groups should use different compression algorithms.The improved algorithm can achieve a better compression ratio of 7580%.It provides a better compression ratio than the Steim2 to miniSEED Files.