Performance Enhancement of Vanadium Redox Flow Battery by Treated Carbon Felt Electrodes of Polyacrylonitrile using Atmospheric Pressure Plasma.

A high-performance carbon felt electrode for all-vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) systems is prepared via low-temperature atmospheric pressure plasma treatment in air to improve the hydrophilicity and surface area of bare carbon felt of polyacrylonitrile and increase the contact potential between vanadium ions, so as to reduce the overpotential generated by the electrochemical reaction gap. Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of the modified carbon felt is, significantly, five times higher than that of the pristine felt. The modified carbon felt exhibits higher energy efficiency (EE) and voltage efficiency (VE) in a single cell VRFB test at the constant current density of 160 mAcm, and also maintains good performance at low temperatures.

The effect of adding Bi on the performance of a newly developed iron-copper redox flow battery.

In this paper, we propose a new, abundant, cost-effective, non-toxic, and environmentally benign iron-copper redox flow battery (Fe/Cu RFB), which employs Fe/Fe and Cu/Cu as the positive and negative electrolytes, respectively. The effect of graphite felt (GF) electrode modification and addition of Bi into the electrolytes on the performance of the Fe/Cu RFB were investigated. It was found that the cell containing Bi in the electrolytes revealed higher coulombic efficiency (89.

Separation of furans and carboxylic acids from sugars in dilute acid rice straw hydrolyzates by nanofiltration.

This work studied the concentration of hydrolyzates obtained from dilute acid hydrolysis of rice straw using nanofiltration (NF). In order to minimize the Donnan exclusion effect of the membrane, the hydrolyzate solution was controlled at low pH value. Negative retentions of both furans and carboxylic acids were observed.

Clearance measurement of metal scraps for nuclear facility at INER in Taiwan.

The nuclear facilities at Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) had been successively decommissioned and decontaminated over the recent years. Since dismantling was a complex task, to achieve the main goal was minimization of radioactive waste production and required the set-up of procedures, criteria of free release, strict follow-up and traceability at all steps. This study gave an overview of the efforts on non-destructive assay (NDA) of relatively large volumes of waste and the sampling of contaminated waste with radiochemical analysis was utilized to determine the radionuclide vectors.