Carbonic anhydrase (CA)-based biological CO2 capture is emerging as a prominent carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. We developed a tagged CA−Ferritin chimera, resulting in a high-purity, high-activity, micrometer-sized CA aggregate, SazF, with a yield of 576.6 mg/L (protein/medium). SazF has an optimum temperature of 50 °C and demonstrates thermal stability between 40 and 60 °C. It operates efficiently in Tris−HCl buffer (pH = 8−9), making it compatible with ship exhaust conditions. For enhanced stability and reusability, SazF was encapsulated in SiO2 and integrated into an epoxy resin to produce a corrosion-active coating. This coating, applied to foam metal fillers, showed less than 3% protein leakage after ten days and retained over 70% activity after a month at 60 °C. This simple preparation method and the cost-effective production of these biomaterials that can continuously and efficiently absorb CO2 in high-temperature environments are suitable for most CO2 capture devic... [more]

To enhance the fault diagnosis capability for ultrasonic liquid flow meters and refine the fault diagnosis accuracy of support vector machines, we employ Levy flight to augment the global search proficiency. By utilizing circle chaotic mapping to establish the starting locations of sparrows and refining the sparrow position with the highest fitness value, we propose an enhanced sparrow search algorithm termed CLSSA. Subsequently, we optimize the parameters of support vector machines using this algorithm. A support vector machine classifier based on CLSSA has been constructed. Given the intricate data collected from ultrasonic liquid flow meters for diagnostic purposes, the approach of employing KPCA to decrease data dimensionality is implemented, and a KPCA-CLSSA-SVM algorithm is proposed to achieve fault diagnosis in ultrasonic flow meters. By using UCI datasets, the findings indicate that KPCA-CLSSA-SVM achieves fault diagnosis accuracies of 94.12%, 100.00%, 97.30%, and 100% in the f... [more]

Natural fractures and wormholes strongly influence the performance of acid fracturing in naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs. This work uses an integrated model to study the effects of treatment parameters in acid fracturing in different reservoir conditions. Hydraulic fracture propagation, wormhole propagation, complex fluid leak-off mediums, and heat transfer are considered in the modeling. The model is validated in several steps by analytical solutions. The simulation results indicated that natural fractures and wormholes critically impact acid fracturing and can change the predicted outcomes dramatically. The high permeability reservoirs with conductive natural fractures or low permeability reservoirs with natural fracture networks showed the highest stimulation potential in applying acid fracturing technology. The optimal acid injection rate depends on natural fracture geometry and reservoir permeability. This study also observed that obtaining a high production index is diff... [more]

Traditional coiled tubing radial drilling with the same diameter cannot support deep and ultra-deep wells for high-pressure hydraulic jet drilling due to small diameter and sizeable hydraulic loss over long distances. The novel downhole movable pipe radial hydraulic drilling technique extracts a small diameter high-pressure injection pipe from the (tubing pipe) oil pipe and then drills it horizontally into the formation to form a radial hole. Dynamic sealing is the core of this technology, which achieves high-pressure fluid sealing while ensuring the injection pipe smoothly slides out of the oil pipe. A sealing tool is designed between the tubing and the injection pipe to prevent the leakage of high-pressure fluid. In this paper, the finite element model of the sealing tool was established, and the deformation and stress of the sealing tool under different interference and fluid pressure were simulated and analyzed. The relationship between stress distribution and contact pressure unde... [more]

Modern production processes for biopharmaceuticals often work with very high cell densities. Moreover, there is a trend towards moving from fed-batch to continuous perfusion processes; a development that is influencing the requirements for bioreactor design and process control. In this study, the transfer of fed-batch and perfusion experiments between different cylindrical stirred lab-scale bioreactors and Thermo Scientific’sTM (Waltham, MA, USA) cubical HyPerformaTM DynaDriveTM Single-Use Bioreactor was investigated. Different scaling parameters were used, which were selected based on the requirements of the respective processes. Peak cell densities of up to 49 × 106 cells mL−1 and antibody titers of up to 5.2 g L−1 were achieved in 15- to 16-day fed-batch experiments. In 50-day perfusion cultivations, a viable cell volume of >100 mm3 mL−1 was maintained and more than 1 g L−1 d−1 of antibodies were harvested. The perfusion processes were automated with both cell bleed control and gluc... [more]

Environmental pollution and energy scarcity are the two significant issues that could substantially impede the sustainable growth of our civilization. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are an emerging technique for converting the chemical energy of organic wastes directly into electric energy, allowing for both energy recovery and environmental rehabilitation. Solid organic waste decomposition is generally more challenging compared to organic wastewater due to several factors, including the nature of the waste, the decomposition process, and the associated environmental and logistical considerations. With rapid population expansion and acceleration of urbanization, waste generation continues to rise globally, causing complicated environmental, socioeconomic, and energy problems and a growing demand for public health globally. Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) are promising solid waste management options. However, BES may not be the most effective solution on its own for certain types of waste... [more]

Plastid terminal oxidases (PTOXs) are essential for maintaining photosynthetic efficiency and cellular redox homeostasis. Astaxanthin, a carotenoid pigment with antioxidant properties, is synthesized and accumulates in response to oxidative stress induced by high-light intensity or nutrient limitation. It suggests that PTOX may impact astaxanthin biosynthesis under environmental stress conditions due to its involvement in ROS regulation. The ptox1 gene is thought to have a conserved role in safeguarding the photosynthetic apparatus from over-reduction and participating in energy dissipation. On the other hand, the ptox2 gene seems to be involved in the evolution of astaxanthin synthesis and adaptive responses to diverse environmental stressors. Efficient gene silencing strains were developed in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii CC849 for ptox1 and ptox2. The study found that the ptox2 gene correlates highly with resistance to intense light stress. Furthermore, the ptox2 gene showed increased a... [more]

Microplastics have been widely detected in wastewater treatment plants, but there is still a significant dearth of research data on the removal efficiency of microplastics in such plants. The present study focused on three wastewater treatment plants situated in Zhengzhou, China. On-site sampling and Raman spectrum detection techniques were employed to identify microplastics in both wastewater and sludge samples, while the removal efficiency of microplastics was quantified for each plant. Results showed that the abundance of microplastics in influent exhibited ranging from 147.5 ± 2.6 to 288.8 ± 11.8 n/L, while the range in sludge samples was from 12,024.7 ± 1737.0 n/kgdw to 20,818.4 ± 5662.0 n/kgdw. The removal efficiencies of microplastics in the three WWTPs ranged from 76.2% to 91.2%. The primary components of microplastics were generally identified as fibers ranging in size from 10 to 100 μm. The samples collectively exhibited a total of seven distinct colors, with the predominant... [more]

Vacuum arc remelting is the main production method of titanium alloy ingots at present. In order to obtain good quality ingots, it is of great significance to study the formation of the solidification structure of ingots via vacuum arc remelting. In order to select and optimize the nucleation parameters for the solidification microstructure simulation of an ingot, a 3D CAFE model for microstructure evolution during vacuum arc remelting was established, taking into account heat transfer, flow, and solute diffusion. The Gaussian distribution continuous nucleation model and extended KGT model were used to describe the grain nucleation and dendrite tip growth rates, respectively. The multi-point mass source and moving boundary method were used to simulate the ingot growth. The results show that there are three typical crystal regions in the solidification structure of vacuum arc remelting titanium alloy ingots, namely the surface fine crystal region, columnar crystal region, and central eq... [more]

Cement concrete pavements are crucial to urban infrastructure, significantly influencing road safety and environmental sustainability with their anti-skid and noise reduction properties. However, while texturing techniques like transverse grooving have been widely adopted to enhance skid resistance, they may inadvertently increase road noise. This study addressed the critical need to optimize pavement textures to balance improved skid resistance with noise reduction. Tests were conducted to assess the influence of surface texture on skid resistance and noise, exploring the relationship between texture attributes and their performance in these areas. The investigation examined the effects of texture representation methods, mean profile depth, and the high-speed sideway force coefficient (SFC) on noise intensity and pavement skid resistance. The findings revealed that transverse grooves significantly improved the SFC, enhancing skid resistance. In contrast, longitudinal burlap drag, thro... [more]

Industrial control systems are often used to assist and manage an industrial operation. These systems’ weaknesses in the various hierarchical structures of the system components and communication backbones make them vulnerable to cyberattacks that jeopardize their security. In this paper, the security of these systems is studied by employing a reinforcement learning extended attack graph to efficiently reveal the subsystems’ flaws. Specifically, an attack graph that mimics the environment is constructed for the system using the state−action−reward−state−action technique, in which the agent is regarded as the attacker. Attackers may cause the greatest amount of system damage with the fewest possible actions if they have the highest cumulative reward. The worst-case assault scheme with a total reward of 42.9 was successfully shown in the results, and the most badly affected subsystems were recognized.

With the development of machine vision technology, deep learning and image recognition technology has become a research focus for agricultural product non-destructive inspection. During the ripening process, banana appearance and nutrients clearly change, causing damage and unjustified economic loss. A high-efficiency banana ripeness recognition model was proposed based on a convolutional neural network and transfer learning. Banana photos at different ripening stages were collected as a dataset, and data augmentation was applied. Then, weights and parameters of four models trained on the original ImageNet dataset were loaded and fine-tuned to fit our banana dataset. To investigate the learning rate’s effect on model performance, fixed and updating learning rate strategies are analyzed. In addition, four CNN models, ResNet 34, ResNet 101, VGG 16, and VGG 19, are trained based on transfer learning. Results show that a slower learning rate causes the model to converge slowly, and the tra... [more]

This paper introduces a novel and cost-effective method for detecting adulterated diesel, specifically targeting contamination with kerosene, by leveraging machine learning and the refractive index values of mixed diesel samples. It proposes a laser-based sensor, employing COMSOL simulations for synthetic data generation to facilitate machine learning training. This innovative approach not only streamlines the detection process by eliminating the need for expensive equipment and specialized personnel but also enables on-site testing without extensive sample preparation. The sensor’s design, utilizing light refraction and reflection principles, allows for the accurate measurement of diesel adulteration levels. Validation results showcase the machine learning models’ high precision in predicting adulteration percentages, as evidenced by an R-squared value of 0.999 and a mean absolute error of 0.074. This research signifies a leap in sensor technology, offering a practical solution for ra... [more]

In order to remove high-concentration emulsified oil from wastewater, a chitosan-based magnetic flocculant, denoted as FS@CTS-P(AM-DMC), was employed in this present study. The effects of factors including the magnetic flocculant dose, pH values, and coexisting ions were investigated. A comparative dosing mode with the assistance of polyacrylamide (PAM) was also included. The evolution of floc size was studied using microscopic observation to investigate the properties of flocs under different pH values and dosing modes. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) and extended Deryaguin−Landau−Verwey−Overbeek models were utilized to illustrate the distribution and velocity magnitude of the particle flow fields and to delve into the mechanism of magnetic flocculation. The results showed that FS@CTS-P(AM-DMC) achieved values of 96.4 and 74.5% for both turbidity and COD removal for 3000 mg/L of simulated emulsified oil. In the presence of PAM, the turbidity and COD removal reached 95.7 and 71.6%. In... [more]

Water quality deterioration and eutrophication have become a global concern, while reservoir pollution caused by multiple factors has led to frequent algal blooms, posing a serious threat to rural drinking water security and urban water supply. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current water quality of Waihu Reservoir and use the single index method, the weighted comprehensive scoring method, and the nutrient level index method (TLI) to evaluate eutrophication. On this basis, the pollution sources of the reservoir are comprehensively analyzed and discussed, and effective control strategies are proposed. The evaluation results indicate that the reservoir is of moderate eutrophication type. Therefore, reducing the input of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in water is the main goal of alleviating exogenous pollution. The combination of engineering intervention and ecological restoration strategies to remove nutrients from the aquatic environment is an effective strategy... [more]

Surimi-based products typically demand cold storage and a cold chain distribution system, which not only affects their physical properties and flavor but also escalates production costs. In this study, we introduced a novel high-temperature and high-pressure retort processing method to enable room temperature storage and distribution of a surimi-based product, a fish paste cake. Our optimization efforts focused on refining the processing conditions for the fish paste cake. This included incorporating transglutaminase, sugar additives, natural herbal or seaweed extracts, and optimizing retort processing conditions to enhance textural properties, minimize browning and off flavor, and extend the shelf-life of the product. Our results demonstrated that the addition of 0.3% ACTIVA TG-K, 1.0% trehalose, and 0.5% sea tangle extract during the production process significantly enhanced the gel strength, minimized browning, and improved the overall flavor of the fish paste cake prototype. Import... [more]

Anaerobic co-digestion (AnCoD) presents several advantages over conventional mono-digestion. Various factors can impact the efficiency of the co-digestion process, including the mixing ratio of the feedstocks. This study primarily investigates the effects of different mixing ratios on methane production during the co-digestion of source-separated municipal organic waste (SSO) with thickened waste activated sludge (TWAS). While the C/N or COD/N ratio has generally been used for optimizing the mixing ratios of co-digested feedstocks, a new approach is introduced in this study to evaluate the effects of the lipid, protein, and carbohydrate (L:P:C) ratios on the efficiency of AnCoD with respect to methane production, kinetics, and synergism at mixing ratios of TWAS:SSO of 10:90, 30:70, 50:50, 70:30, and 10:90. AnCoD improved methane production and kinetics relative to TWAS at all mixing ratios, the highest of which was at the 10:90 ratio, corresponding to a methane yield, maximum methane p... [more]

Adequate power load data are the basis for establishing an efficient and accurate forecasting model, which plays a crucial role in ensuring the reliable operation and effective management of a power system. However, the large-scale integration of renewable energy into the power grid has led to instabilities in power systems, and the load characteristics tend to be complex and diversified. Aiming at this problem, this paper proposes a short-term power load transfer forecasting method. To fully exploit the complex features present in the data, an online feature-extraction-based deep learning model is developed. This approach aims to extract the frequency-division features of the original power load on different time scales while reducing the feature redundancy. To solve the prediction challenges caused by insufficient historical power load data, the source domain model parameters are transferred to the target domain model utilizing Kendall’s correlation coefficient and the Bayesian optim... [more]

The reservoir in the Anyue gas field, located in the Sichuan basin of China, belongs to the second member of the Dengying formation and has distinctive geological features. It is characterized by strong heterogeneity, low porosity, low permeability, and locally developed natural fractures. The reservoir space consists primarily of corrosion holes, natural fractures, and similar voids. Moreover, the lower reservoir exhibits high water saturation and a homogeneous bottom-water interface. Since it is a carbonate-based hydrocarbon reservoir with low porosity and permeability, deep acid fracturing has proven to be an efficient method for enhancing individual well production. However, the reconstruction of the second member of the Dengying formation reservoir poses significant challenges. The reservoir contains high-angle natural fractures, small vertical stress differences, and is located in close proximity to the gas−water interface. As a result, it becomes difficult to control the height... [more]

In view of the high salinity characteristics of reinjection oilfield wastewater in the Gasi Block of Qinghai Oilfield, with the polymer produced by Shandong Baomo as the research target, we systematically investigated the variations in the impact of six ions, Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, Fe2+, and Fe3+, in the produced water from polymer flooding on the viscosity and stability of the polymer solution. Additionally, we provided the primary research methods for complexation in reinjected wastewater. Experimental results indicate that the main factors leading to a decrease in polymer viscosity are high-valence cations, with the descending order of their influence being Fe2+ > Fe3+ > Mg2+ > Ca2+ > Na+ > K+. High-valent cations also effect the viscosity stability of polymer solutions, and their order from greatest to least impact is: Fe2+ > Ca2+(Mg2+) > Fe3+ > Na+(K+). This article is focused on investigating the influencing factors and extent of the impact of oilfield wastewater on the viscosity o... [more]

Protective coatings are typically applied to enhance their resistance to corrosion. There is considerable research on the corrosion resistance of coated casings. However, few research studies have focused on the erosion resistance on coated casings. In this work, the erosion resistance of resin- and metallic-coated casings in liquid−solid two-phase fluids were investigated using a self-made erosion facility. The results show that the resin coating tends to peel off the material base in the form of brittle spalling or coating bulge in the high-speed sand-carrying liquid. Both resin and metallic coatings were broken through within 20 min in a liquid−solid two-phase flow environment. Compared to resin coatings, metallic coatings exhibit weaker erosion resistance in similar liquid−solid flow. Through the analysis of experimental results and fitted curves, empirical constants for materials and sand content influencing factors were determined using non-dimensional processing. The erosion pre... [more]

Shale reservoirs typically exhibit high density, necessitating the use of horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing techniques for efficient extraction. Proppants are commonly employed in hydraulic fracturing to prevent crack closure. However, limited research has been conducted on the impact of shale mineral composition and proppant filling patterns on shale stress sensitivity. In this study, shale cylindrical core samples from two different lithologies in Jimusaer, Xinjiang in China were selected. The mineral composition and microscopic structures were tested, and a self-designed stress sensitivity testing system was employed to conduct stress sensitivity tests on natural cores and fractured cores with different proppant filling patterns. The experimental results indicate that the stress sensitivity of natural shale porous cores is weaker, with a stress sensitivity coefficient below 0.03, significantly lower than that of fractured cores. The shale mineral composition has a significan... [more]

This article describes the results of a comprehensive comparative study of the production of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs) for use as biodiesel in perfect mixing reactors (PMRs) and plug flow reactors (PFRs). The products obtained on a laboratory scale at all stages of the separation and purification of the FAEE phase were analyzed using the FTIR, XRF and GC-MS methods. We compared distillation methods for the separation of stoichiometrically excessive ethanol from the reaction mixture. Neutralization methods with H2SO4 solution and carbonation with CO2 were applied for FAEE phase purification from the catalyst. Emulsions formed during the water flushing stage were analyzed via the optical microscopy method. The optimal conditions of stirring speed and temperature were selected to maintain a high level of FAEE−water phase contact area with minimum phase separation time. The efficiency of the carbonation method for catalyst neutralization in the FAEE phase has been proven, allowing us... [more]

In the era of rapid technological advancement and evolving industrial landscapes, embracing the concept of the factory of the future (FoF) is crucial for companies seeking to optimize efficiency, enhance productivity, and stay sustainable. This case study explores the concept of the FoF and its role in driving the energy transition and digital transformation within the automotive sector. By embracing advancements in technology and innovation, these factories aim to establish a smart, sustainable, inclusive, and resilient growth framework. The shift towards hybrid and electric vehicles necessitates significant adjustments in vehicle components and production processes. To achieve this, the adoption of lighter materials becomes imperative, and new technologies such as additive manufacturing (AM) and artificial intelligence (AI) are being adopted, facilitating enhanced efficiency and innovation within the factory environment. An important aspect of this paradigm involves the development a... [more]

Nitrogen fixation, the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen into biologically useful compounds, is crucial for sustaining biological processes and industrial productivity. Recent advances have explored plasma-assisted processes as an innovative approach to facilitate nitrogen fixation. This review offers a comprehensive summary of the development, current state of the art, and potential future applications of plasma-based nitrogen fixation. The analysis encompasses fundamental principles, mechanisms, advantages, challenges, and prospects associated with plasma-induced nitrogen fixation.