Reducing organic substances from anaerobic decomposition of hydrophytes

Oxidation-reduction properties of surface sediments are tightly associated with the geochemistry of substances, and reducing organic substances (ROS) from hydrophytes residues may play an important role in these processes. In this study, composition, dynamics, and properties of ROS from anaerobic decomposition of Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms, Potamogenton crispus Linn, Vallisneria natans (Lour.) Hara, Lemna trisulca Linn and Microcystis flos-aquae (Wittr) Kirch were investigated using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). The type of hydrophytes determined both the reducibility and composition of ROS. At the peak time of ROS production, the anaerobic decomposition of M. flos-aquae produced 6 types of ROS, among which 3 belonged to strongly reducing organic substance (SROS), whereas there were only 3-4 types of ROS from the other hydrophytes, 2 of them exhibiting strong reducibility. The order of potential of hydrophytes to produce ROS was estimated to be: M. flos-aquae > E. crassipes > L. trisulca > P. crispus approximate to V. natans, based on the summation of SROS and weakly reducing organic substances (WROS). The dynamic pattern of SROS production was greatly different from WROS. The total SROS appeared periodic fluctuation with reducibility gradually weakening with incubation time, whereas the total WROS increased with incubation time. Reducibility of ROS from hydrophytes was readily affected by acid, base and ligands, suggesting that their properties were related to these aspects. In addition to the reducibility, we believe that more attention should be paid to the other behaviors of ROS in surface sediments.

Sorptive interaction between goethite and strongly reducing organic substances from anaerobic decomposition of green manures

Strongly reducing organic substances (SROS) and iron oxides exist widely in soils and sediments and have been implicated in many soil and sediment processes. In the present work, the sorptive interaction between goethite and SROS derived from anaerobic decomposition of green manures was investigated by differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). Both green manures, Astragaltus sinicus (Astragalus) and Vicia varia (Vicia) were chosen to be anaerobically decomposed by the mixed microorganisms isolated from paddy soils for 30 d to prepare different SROS. Goethite used in experiments was synthesized in laboratory. The anaerobic incubation solutions from green manures at different incubation time were arranged to react with goethite, in which SROS concentration and Fe(II) species were analyzed. The anaerobic decomposition of Astragalus generally produced SROS more in amount but weaker in reducibility than that of Vicia in the same incubation time. The available SROS from Astragalus that could interact with goethite was 0.69 +/- 0.04, 0.84 +/- 0.04 and 1.09 +/- 0.03 cmol kg(-1) as incubated for 10, 15 and 30 d, respectively, for Vicia, it was 0.12 +/- 0.03, 0.46 +/- 0.02 and 0.70 +/- 0.02 cmol kg(-1). One of the fates of SROS as they interacted with goethite was oxidation. The amounts of oxidizable SROS from Astragalus decreased over increasing incubation time from 0.51 +/- 0.05 cmol kg(-1) at day 10 to 0.39 +/- 0.04 cmol kg(-1) at day 30, but for Vicia, it increased with the highest reaching to 0.58 +/- 0.04 cmol kg(-1) at day 30. Another fate of these substances was sorption by goethite. The SROS from Astragalus were sorbed more readily than those from Vicia, and closely depended upon the incubation time, whereas for those from Vicia, the corresponding values were remarkably less and apparently unchangeable with incubation time. The extent of goethite dissolution induced by the anaerobic solution from Vicia was greater than that from Astragalus, showing its higher reactivity. (c) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Coulomb blockade double-dot Aharonov-Bohm interferometer: Harmonic decomposition of the interference pattern

For the solid-state double-dot interferometer, the phase shifted interference pattern induced by the interplay of inter-dot Coulomb correlation and multiple reflections is analyzed by harmonic decomposition. Unexpected result is uncovered, and is discussed in connection with the which-path detection and electron loss. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Purification of single-walled carbon nanotubes synthesized by the catalytic decomposition of hydrocarbons

A procedure for purifying single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) synthesized by the catalytic decomposition of hydrocarbons has been developed. Based on the results from SEM observations, EDS analysis and Raman measurements, it was found that amorphous carbon, catalyst particles, vapor-grown carbon nanofibers and multi-walled carbon nanotubes were removed from the ropes of SWNTs without damaging the SWNT bundles, and a 40% yield of the SWNTs with a purity of about 95% was achieved after purification. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Molecular Dynamics Simulation on Characteristics of Decomposition of Methane Hydrate in the Presence of Hydrogen Peroxide Solution

In this work, the characteristics of the decomposition of methane hydrate Structure I (SI) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide solution is investigated using the molecular dynamics simulation. The mechanism of the transformation process from the solid hydrate to the liquid is analyzed with the effect of hydrogen peroxide (HP) solution. In addition, the effect of ethylene glycol (EG) with the same molar concentration with HP on the methane hydrate dissociation is also studied. The results illustrate that both HP and EG promote well the hydrate dissociation. The work provides the important reference value for the experimental investigation into the promotion effect of HP on the hydrate dissociation.

Effect of microwave on formation/decomposition of natural gas hydrate

Natural gas hydrate (NGH) reservoirs have been considered as a substantial future clean energy resource and how to recover gas from these reservoirs feasibly and economically is very important. Microwave heating will be taken as a promising method for gas production from gas hydrates for its advantages of fast heat transfer and flexible application. In this work, we investigate the formation/decomposition behavior of natural gas hydrate with different power of microwave (2450MHZ), preliminarily analyze the impact of microwave on phase equilibrium of gas hydrate,and make calculation based on van der Waals-Platteeuw model. It is found that microwave of a certain amount of power can reduce the induction time and sub-cooling degree of NGH formation, e.g., 20W microwave power can lead to a decrease of about 3A degrees C in sub-cooling degree and the shortening of induction time from 4.5 hours to 1.3 hours. Microwave can make rapid NGH decomposition, and water from NGH decomposition accelerates the decomposition of NGH with the decomposition of NGH. Under the same pressure, microwave can increase NGH phase equilibrium temperature. Different dielectric properties of each composition of NGH may cause a distinct difference in temperature in the process of NGH decomposition. Therefore, NGH decomposition by microwave can be affected by many factors.

Use of electrical resistance to detect the formation and decomposition of methane hydrate

The changes of electrical resistance (R) were studied experimentally in the process of CH4 hydrate formation and decomposition, using temperature and pressure as the auxiliary detecting methods simultaneously. The experiment results show that R increases with hydrate formation and decreases with hydrate decompositon. R is more sensitive to hydrate formation and decompositon than temperature or pressure, which indicates that the detection of R will be an effective means for detecting natural gas hydrate (NGH) quantitatively.

Deterministic Column-Based Matrix Decomposition

In this paper, we propose a deterministic column-based matrix decomposition method. Conventional column-based matrix decomposition (CX) computes the columns by randomly sampling columns of the data matrix. Instead, the newly proposed method (termed as CX_D) selects columns in a deterministic manner, which well approximates singular value decomposition. The experimental results well demonstrate the power and the advantages of the proposed method upon three real-world data sets.