Exclusive Papers on Environmentally Friendly Catalysis in China

With the development of modern industries, environmental pollution has become a serious and urgent issue [...

A closed-loop process for recycling LiNixCoyMn(1âxây)O2 from mixed cathode materials of lithium-ion batteries

With the rapid development of consumer electronics and electric vehicles (EV), a large number of spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been generated worldwide. Thus, effective recycling technologies to recapture a significant amount of valuable metals contained in spent LIBs are highly desirable to prevent the environmental pollution and resource depletion. In this work, a novel recycling technology to regenerate a LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 cathode material from spent LIBs with different cathode chemistries has been developed. By dismantling, crushing, leaching and impurity removing, the LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 (selected as an example of LiNixCoyMn(1âxây)O2) powder can be directly prepared from the purified leaching solution via co-precipitation followed by solid-state synthesis. For comparison purposes, a fresh-synthesized sample with the same composition has also been prepared using the commercial raw materials via the same method. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electrochemical measurements have been carried out to characterize these samples. The electrochemical test result suggests that the re-synthesized sample delivers cycle performance and low rate capability which are comparable to those of the fresh-synthesized sample. This novel recycling technique can be of great value to the regeneration of a pure and marketable LiNixCoyMn(1âxây)O2 cathode material with low secondary pollution. Keywords: Spent lithium-ion battery, Cathode material recycling, Acid leaching, Purification, Co-precipitatio

Low-Loading Sub‑3 nm PtCo Nanoparticles Supported on Co–N–C with Dual Effect for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

Developing low-loading Pt-based catalysts possessing glorious catalytic performance can accelerate oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and hence significantly advance the commercialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. In this report, we propose a hybrid catalyst that consists of low-loading sub-3 nm PtCo intermetallic nanoparticles carried on Co–N–C (PtCo/Co–N–C) via the microwave-assisted polyol procedure and subsequent heat treatment. Atomically dispersed Co atoms embedded in the Co–N–C carriers diffuse into the lattice of Pt, thus forming ultrasmall PtCo intermetallic nanoparticles. Owing to the dual effect of the enhanced metal–support interaction and alloy effect, as-fabricated PtCo/Co–N–C catalysts deliver an extraordinary performance, achieving a half-wave potential of 0.921 V, a mass activity of 0.700 A mgPt–[email protected] V, and brilliant durability in the acidic medium. The fuel cell employing PtCo/Co–N–C as the cathode catalyst with an ultralow Pt loading of 0.05 mg cm–2 exhibits an impressive peak power density of 0.700 W cm–2, higher than that of commercial Pt/C under the same condition. Furthermore, the enhanced intrinsic ORR activity and stability are imputed to the downshifted d-band center and the strengthened metal–support interaction, as revealed by density functional theory calculations. This report affords a facile tactic to fabricate Pt-based alloy composite catalysts, which is also applicable to other alloy catalysts

Sandwich-Structured MXene/Carbon Hybrid Support Decorated with Pt Nanoparticles for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Carbon supports for cathodic catalysts in proton-exchange membrane fuel cells suffer from rapid corrosion and instability; therefore, alternative supports with a stable structure and a high electric conductivity are highly required. In this paper, a three-dimensional support hybridized by MXene and Ketjen Black is developed, in which Ketjen Black is sandwiched between MXene nanosheets (MCM). After decorating with Pt nanoparticles by a facile wet-chemical approach, a three-dimensional (3D) Pt/MCM catalyst is obtained. The intercalated Ketjen Black prevents the stacking of MXene nanosheets, thus increasing the specific surface area of the catalyst and exposing the active sites. The strong interaction between functionalized MXene nanosheets and Pt nanoparticles further enhances its intrinsic electrocatalytic activity. Pt/MCM demonstrated encouraging ORR activity with the half-wave potential and specific activity of 0.892 V and 0.377 mA·cm–2, respectively, surpassing the state-of-the-art Pt/C catalysts. Especially, Pt/MCM achieves ultrahigh durability with a 1 mV decrease in half-wave potential and a 1.73% decrease in mass activity after an accelerated durability test. Given the performance and structure–activity relationships of Pt/MCM, it holds great potential for various energy and catalysis-related applications

The Seventh Visual Object Tracking VOT2019 Challenge Results

The Visual Object Tracking challenge VOT2019 is the seventh annual tracker benchmarking activity organized by the VOT initiative. Results of 81 trackers are presented; many are state-of-the-art trackers published at major computer vision conferences or in journals in the recent years. The evaluation included the standard VOT and other popular methodologies for short-term tracking analysis as well as the standard VOT methodology for long-term tracking analysis. The VOT2019 challenge was composed of five challenges focusing on different tracking domains: (i) VOT-ST2019 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB, (ii) VOT-RT2019 challenge focused on "real-time" short-term tracking in RGB, (iii) VOT-LT2019 focused on long-term tracking namely coping with target disappearance and reappearance. Two new challenges have been introduced: (iv) VOT-RGBT2019 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB and thermal imagery and (v) VOT-RGBD2019 challenge focused on long-term tracking in RGB and depth imagery. The VOT-ST2019, VOT-RT2019 and VOT-LT2019 datasets were refreshed while new datasets were introduced for VOT-RGBT2019 and VOT-RGBD2019. The VOT toolkit has been updated to support both standard short-term, long-term tracking and tracking with multi-channel imagery. Performance of the tested trackers typically by far exceeds standard baselines. The source code for most of the trackers is publicly available from the VOT page. The dataset, the evaluation kit and the results are publicly available at the challenge website(1).Funding Agencies|Slovenian research agencySlovenian Research Agency - Slovenia [J2-8175, P2-0214, P2-0094]; Czech Science Foundation Project GACR [P103/12/G084]; MURI project - MoD/DstlMURI; EPSRCEngineering &amp; Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [EP/N019415/1]; WASP; VR (ELLIIT, LAST, and NCNN); SSF (SymbiCloud); AIT Strategic Research Programme; Faculty of Computer Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia</p