Article Highlights
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 16-May-2026 06:15 ET (16-May-2026 10:15 GMT/UTC)
Experimental efficient source-independent quantum conference key agreement
Research- Journal
- Research
- Funder
- National Natural Science Foundation of China, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Research Funds of Renmin University of China
Turning plastic-contaminated farm waste into safer biochar for soil remediation
Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University- Journal
- Biochar
Cracking the code of hypersonic flight: A decade of BOLT breakthroughs
Texas A&M University- Journal
- AIAA Journal
- Funder
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
Inherent alkali and alkaline earth metals drive CO₂ gasification of energy crop char
Higher Education PressResearchers have demonstrated that inherent alkali and alkaline earth metals (AAEMs) play the dominant catalytic role in the CO₂ gasification of biochar derived from the energy crop Arundo donax. Even though acid washing created a more disordered carbon structure – which typically enhances reactivity – the removal of AAEMs significantly reduced gasification reactivity. Kinetic analysis showed that the average activation energy increased from 164.30 kJ·mol⁻¹ to 210.85 kJ·mol⁻¹ after AAEM removal. Temperature‑programmed desorption confirmed that AAEMs promote the formation of carbon‑oxygen surface complexes, acting as catalytic active centers that sustain a continuous reaction cycle. These findings highlight that AAEMs, rather than carbon structural order, are the key factor governing gasification efficiency.
- Journal
- ENGINEERING Chemical Engineering
Acid zeolites reduce hydrogen sulfide in sewage sludge pyrolysis gas, boosting yields
Higher Education PressResearchers have shown that adding acid zeolites (H‑mordenite and H‑ZSM5) during municipal sewage sludge pyrolysis at 500 °C can reduce hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) concentration in the pyrolysis gas by up to 46 %, while increasing gas yield by up to 55 % and bio‑oil yield by up to 24 %. The work demonstrates that zeolite choice and silica‑to‑alumina ratio (SAR) determine whether H₂S reduction occurs via dilution in higher gas yields or direct suppression of H₂S formation. This in‑situ catalytic approach could simplify downstream gas cleaning for energy recovery or biological fermentation.
- Journal
- ENGINEERING Chemical Engineering
Cost-effective ytterbium-doped zirconia electrolyte boosts solid oxide fuel cell performance
Higher Education PressResearchers have demonstrated that defect engineering and post‑synthetic copper metalation are two effective and complementary strategies for tailoring ammonia adsorption in the robust metal–organic framework UiO‑67. By varying the acidity and amount of modulator acids, defect density can be tuned nearly 10‑fold (from 5.4 % to 50.1 %), which directly controls the characteristic stepwise features of the adsorption isotherms. Introducing copper via bipyridyl linkers enhances uptake by over 50 % in the optimal sample. These approaches enable application‑specific design of NH₃ adsorbents for storage, separation, and sensing.
- Journal
- ENGINEERING Chemical Engineering
Deep learning‑based soft measurement enables real‑time yield prediction for microchannel gas‑liquid sulfonation
Higher Education PressResearchers have developed a soft measurement method based on a convolutional long short‑term memory (ConvLSTM) network that predicts product yield levels directly from real‑time image sequences of a microchannel reactor during gas‑liquid sulfonation. To overcome limited experimental data, a frame‑sampling spatio‑temporal augmentation strategy expands the training set. On the experimental data set, the augmented ConvLSTM model achieved an average accuracy of 97.44 %, outperforming the model without augmentation by 19.66 % and a conventional convolutional neural network by 9.94 %. This work provides a robust, non‑invasive tool for monitoring and optimizing complex micro‑chemical processes.
- Journal
- ENGINEERING Chemical Engineering
Deep learning‑enhanced QSPR model improves prediction of supercritical properties for thousands of organic compounds
Higher Education PressResearchers have developed a novel approach that integrates complete threedimensional molecular structures with traditional quantitative structureproperty relationship (QSPR) methods using deep learning. By combining molecular descriptors with chargedensity fields from density functional theory, a convolutional neural networkenhanced artificial neural network model significantly improves the prediction of critical temperature and critical pressure for 1359 organic compounds. The model achieves high accuracy (for Tc: R2=0.888, MAPE = 5.03 %; for pc: R2=0.919, MAPE = 6.37 %), outperforming both conventional QSPR and the widely used JOBACK group contribution method.
- Journal
- ENGINEERING Chemical Engineering