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Electrochemical energy storage systems based on sulfur and lithium can theoretically deliver high energy with the further benefit of low cost. However, the working mechanism of this device involves the dissolution of sulfur to high‐molecular weight lithium polysulfides (LiPs with general formula Li2Sn, n≥4) in the electrolyte during the discharge process. Therefore, the resulting migration of partially dissociated LiPs by diffusion or under the effect of the electric field to the lithium anode, activates an internal shuttle mechanism, reduces the active material and in general leads to loss of performance and cycling stability. These drawbacks poses challenges to the commercialization of Li/S cells in the short term. In this study, we report on the decoration of reduced graphene oxide with MoO3 particles to enhance interactions with LiPs and retain sulfur at the cathode side. The combination of experiments and density functional theory calculations demonstrated improvements in binding interactions between the cathode and sulfur species, enhancing the cycling stability of the Li/S cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La0.6Sr0.4CoO3 (LSC) coatings with a thickness of 50–100 µm were deposited on Fe-25Cr ferritic stainless steel (DIN 50049) via screen printing. The required suspension had been prepared using fine LSC powders synthesised using EDTA gel processes. In its bulk form, the LSC consisted entirely of the rhombohedral phase with space group R-3c, and it exhibited high electrical conductivity (~144 S·cm−1). LSC-coated steel was oxidised in air at 1073 K, i.e., under conditions corresponding to SOFC cathode operation, for times of up to 144 h. The in situ electrical resistance of the steel/La0.6Sr0.4CoO3 layered system during oxidation was measured. The products formed on the samples after the oxidation reaction resulting from exposure to the corrosive medium were investigated using XRD, SEM-EDS, and TEM-SAD. The microstructural, nanostructural, phase, and chemical analysis of films was performed with a focus on the film/substrate interface. It was determined that the LSC coating interacts with the oxidised steel in the applied conditions, and a multi-layer interfacial zone is formed. Detailed TEM-SAD observations indicated the formation of a main layer consisting of SrCrO4, which was the reaction product of (La,Sr)CoO3, and the Cr2O3 scale formed on the metal surface. The formation of the SrCrO4 phase resulted in improved electrical conductivity of the investigated metal/ceramics layered composite material, as demonstrated by the low area-specific resistance values of 5 mΩ·cm2, thus making it potentially useful as a SOFC interconnect material operating at the tested temperature. In addition, the evaporation rate of chromium measured for the uncoated steel and the steel/La0.6Sr0.4CoO3 layered system likewise indicates that the coating is capable of acting as an effective barrier against the formation of volatile compounds of chromium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Bismuth titanate (BTO) nanoparticles were obtained by pulsed laser ablation in liquid media (PLAL). Distilled water, ethanol, isopropanol, and acetone were used as media for laser ablation experiments, in which the colloidal solutions were obtained. Laser ablation was carried out using the second harmonic and fundamental wavelength of a pulsed Nd:YAG laser (532 nm and 1064 nm, respectively) with laser fluences of 25 and 12 mJ/cm2, respectively. Transmission electron microscopy was utilized for morphological characterization. BTO nanoparticles obtained have spherical shapes with orthorhombic structure and the average size distribution depended on the liquid media nature. In alcohols, BTO NPs were spherical with a carbon layer around them. X-ray diffraction, UV-Vis absorption spectra, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to confirm the structural, optical, and elemental properties of the ablated products. The presented results show that PLAL is a viable technique for the synthesis of high-quality BTO nanoparticles with enhanced optical properties for possible applications in photocatalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pathway for improving lithium‐ion batteries′ energy density strongly depends on finding materials with enhanced performance. Although great efforts have been done, on the anode‐side, graphite is still the best choice. In the last decade, silicon elements are attracting growing attention as anode since their use can theoretically increase specific capacity of the negative electrode side. However, as the electrochemical mechanism involves the alligation of a large amount of Li, the silicon electrode experiences huge volume changes (more than 300 % of its initial volume), leading to fractures and pulverizations of the electrode. Herein, we propose for the first time using Molybdenum and Chromium Carbides as additive to stabilize graphite/silicon composites. Spark plasma sintering technology is used to sinter the electrode powders. We demonstrated that the presence of molybdenum or chromium carbides promotes the performance of C/Si electrodes, improving the cycling stability compared to pristine graphite/silicon electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This manuscript contains an investigation about the influence of the chromium content on the properties of novel graphite–chromium composites obtained by spark plasma sintering (SPS), with great potential application in heat dissipation. Green compacts of 40 mm in diameter were first obtained by uniaxial pressing at 60 MPa, and then the composite was sintered at 1800°C in SPS under vacuum conditions and a pressure of 30 MPa. These sintering conditions involved local liquid phase, which promoted the densification of the composite up to values close to 90%. Different chromium contents were studied, 0, 1, 2, 5, 7, and 10 vol.%, where the best properties (densification, young modulus, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and flexural strength) were obtained in the case of the composite with 7 vol.% Cr: 86.22%, 52.7 GPa, 0.79 MS/m, 264 W/m K, and 38.97 MPa, respectively, measured in the in‐plane direction due to the anisotropic behavior of the composite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar energy is a renewable energy source that is mainly used in the production of electricity. However, research is nowadays conducted to investigate solar energy use beyond electricity production, i.e. in heating fluids for processes or directly synthesize metals or compounds. This last application emerges from the high temperatures that can be reached when solar energy is suitably concentrated, which promotes numerous possibilities in metallurgy and materials processing or recycling. Because of the great potential of this energy source in the field of materials, research within this topic has significantly grown in the last decade: 25% of the papers on the topic were published in the last 5 years (>50% in the last 10). This state-of-the-art review tries to serve as a review of the development of research throughout history. The manuscript has been divided into different categories: metallurgy and materials, cement industry and ceramics, materials processing, and recycling of materials’ wastes, to cover all the research topics where solar energy has been applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we studied the phases in a Mg-Ti-O system using a 1:1 formulation of MgO:TiO2, mixing synthetic brucite of Mexican origin with TiO2 microparticles of high purity, with a heat treatment at 1100 °C for 1 h. Due to its valence electrons, TiO2 can contribute to the sintering process to improve density in MgO products. The raw materials and formulation by XPS and X-RD techniques were characterized. The results demonstrate the presence of different oxidation states in titania and the formation of different oxides in the Mg-Ti-O system when mixed and calcined at 1100 °C; additionally, we estimated the formation of vacancies in the crystal lattice during the transformation from hexagonal brucite to magnesia with a cubic structure centered on the faces. Its thermal behavior is indicated by the MgO-TiO2 phase diagram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deterioration of the refractory lining represents a significant problem for the smooth operation in the ferroalloys industry, particularly in the production of silicomanganese, due to the periodic requirements of substitution of the damaged refractory. Within this context, magnesia refractories are commonly employed in the critical zones of the furnaces used in silicomanganese production since the slag involved in the process has a basic character. The behavior of MgO–ZrO2 ceramic composites with different ZrO2 nanoparticles (0, 1, 3, and 5 wt.%) contents in the presence of silicomanganese slags is proposed in this manuscript. XPS, XRD and SEM–EDX were used to evaluate the properties of the ceramic composite against the silicomanganese slag. The static corrosion test was used to evaluate the corrosion of the refractory. Results suggest that corrosion is controlled by the change in slag viscosity due to the reaction between CaZrO3 and the melted slag. Besides, ZrO2 nanoparticles located at both triple points and grain boundaries act as a barrier for the slag advance within the refractory. The utilization of MgO refractories with ZrO2 nanoparticles can extend the life of furnaces used to produce silicomanganese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manganese is an element of interest in metallurgy, especially in ironmaking and steel making, but also in copper and aluminum industries. The depletion of manganese high grade sources and the environmental awareness have led to search for new manganese sources, such as wastes/by-products of other metallurgies. In this way, we propose the recovery of manganese from anodic lodes and scrapings of the zinc electrolysis process because of their high Mn content (>30%). The proposed process is based on a mixed leaching: a lixiviation-neutralization at low temperature (50 °C, reached due to the exothermic reactions involved in the process) and a lixiviation with sulfuric acid at high temperature (150-200 °C, in heated reactor). The obtained solution after the combined process is mainly composed by manganese sulphate. This solution is then neutralized with CaO (or manganese carbonate) as a first purification stage, removing H2SO4 and those impurities that are easily removable by controlling pH. Then, the purification of nobler elements than manganese is performed by their precipitation as sulphides. The purified solution is sent to electrolysis where electrolytic manganese is obtained (99.9% Mn). The versatility of the proposed process allows for obtaining electrolytic manganese, oxide of manganese (IV), oxide of manganese (II), or manganese sulphate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different wastes are generated in ferromanganese and silicomanganese alloy production. One of them is the ultrafine oxidized dust (UOD) produced in the collection and control of flying dusts in the ferroalloy industry. This waste has fairly high manganese content (20%–40% Mn), making it suitable to be a secondary raw material for the ferromanganese industry. This research proposes a method for the transformation of UOD into a useable raw material. Cold agglomeration is the best option, due to its low energy consumption. Portland cement and refractory cement are compared as suitable candidates in the management of the UOD for their reuse in the electric arc furnace feed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A known way to improve the accuracy of dependency parsers is to combine several different parsing algorithms, in such a way that the weaknesses of each of the models can be compensated by the strengths of others. For example, voting-based combination schemes are based on variants of the idea of analyzing each sentence with various parsers, and constructing a combined output where the head of each node is determined by "majority vote" among the different parsers. Typically, such approaches combine very different parsing models to take advantage of the variability in the parsing errors they make. In this paper, we show that consistent improvements in accuracy can be obtained in a much simpler way by combining a single parser with itself. In particular, we start with a greedy implementation of the Nivre pseudo-projective arc-eager algorithm, a well-known left-to-right transition-based parser, and we combine it with a "mirrored" version of the algorithm that analyzes sentences from right to left. To determine which of the two obtained outputs we trust for the head of each node, we use simple criteria based on the length and position of dependency arcs. Experiments on several datasets from the CoNLL-X shared task and the WSJ section of the English Penn Treebank show that the novel combination system obtains better performance than the baseline arc-eager parser in all cases. To test the generality of the approach, we also perform experiments with a different transition system (arc-standard) and a different search strategy (beam search), obtaining similar improvements in all these settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dependency parsers, which are widely used in natural language processing tasks, employ a representation of syntax in which the structure of sentences is expressed in the form of directed links (dependencies) between their words. In this article, we introduce a new approach to transition-based dependency parsing in which the parsing algorithm does not directly construct dependencies, but rather undirected links, which are then assigned a direction in a postprocessing step. We show that this alleviates error propagation, because undirected parsers do not need to observe the single-head constraint, resulting in better accuracy. Undirected parsers can be obtained by transforming existing directed transition-based parsers as long as they satisfy certain conditions. We apply this approach to obtain undirected variants of three different parsers (the Planar, 2-Planar, and Covington algorithms) and perform experiments on several data sets from the CoNLL-X shared tasks and on the Wall Street Journal portion of the Penn Treebank, showing that our approach is successful in reducing error propagation and produces improvements in parsing accuracy in most of the cases and achieving results competitive with state-of-the-art transition-based parsers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The arc-eager system for transition-based dependency parsing is widely used in natural language processing despite the fact that it does not guarantee that the output is a well-formed dependency tree. We propose a simple modification to the original system that enforces the tree constraint without requiring any modification to the parser training procedure. Experiments on multiple languages show that the method on average achieves 72% of the error reduction possible and consistently outperforms the standard heuristic in current use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the one hand, copper slag is nowadays a waste in copper pyrometallurgy despite the significant quantities of iron (>40 wt. %) and copper (1 to 2 wt. %). On the other hand, solar energy, when properly concentrated, offers great potential in high-temperature processes. Therefore, concentrated solar power (CSP) could be used in the treatment of copper slag to transform fayalite into magnetite and copper sulfides and oxides into copper nodules. This is the objective of this paper. The results show that fayalite was partially decomposed into magnetite and silica. Moreover, copper nodules (65–85 wt. % Cu) were identified in the treated samples, while the initial slag, analyzed by X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, and SEM-EDX, did not show the presence of metallic copper. Finally, the treated copper slag was crushed and grinded down to 40 μm, and two fractions were obtained by magnetic separation. The magnetic fraction (85%) was mainly comprised of magnetite, while the non-magnetic fraction (15%) had 5–10 wt. % Cu. Considering the experimental results, 7.5–18 kg Cu/t slag might be recovered from the slag. A preliminary economic analysis, considering the current copper price, indicates that only the recovery of copper could represent a significant economic benefit (>30 €/t slag). Therefore, CSP might be a potential candidate for the treatment of copper slag to recover copper and iron. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the corrosion mechanism on 100 wt.% MgO and 95 wt.% MgO with 5 wt.% nano-ZrO2 ceramic composites. First, MgO powder and powder mixtures (MgO + nano ZrO2) were uniaxially and isostatically pressed; then, they were sintered at 1650 °C. Corrosion by copper slag was studied in sintered samples. Physical properties, microstructure, and penetration of the slag in the refractory were studied. Results reveal that ZrO2 nanoparticles enhanced the samples' densification, promoting grain growth due to diffusion of vacancies during the sintering process. Additionally, magnesia bricks were severely corroded, if compared with those doped with nano-ZrO2, mainly due to the dissolution of MgO grains during the chemical attack by copper slag. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present work, the effect of mineral aggregates (pumice stone and expanded clay aggregates) and chemical admixtures (superplasticizers and shrinkage reducing additives) as an alternative internal curing technique was investigated, to improve the properties of high-performance concrete. In the fresh and hardened state, concretes with partial replacements of Portland cement (CPC30R and OPC40C) by pulverized fly ash in combination with the addition of mineral aggregates and chemical admixtures were studied. The physical, mechanical, and durability properties in terms of slump, density, porosity, compressive strength, and permeability to chloride ions were respectively determined. The microstructural analysis was carried out by scanning electronic microscopy. The results highlight the effect of the addition of expanded clay aggregate on the internal curing of the concrete, which allowed developing the maximum compressive strength at 28 days (61 MPa). Meanwhile, the replacement of fine aggregate by 20% of pumice stone allowed developing the maximum compressive strength (52 MPa) in an OPC-based concrete at 180 days. The effectiveness of internal curing to develop higher strength is attributed to control in the porosity and a high water release at a later age. Finally, the lowest permeability value at 90 days (945 C) was found by the substitutions of fine aggregate by 20% of pumice stone saturated with shrinkage reducing admixture into pores and OPC40C by 15% of pulverized fly ash. It might be due to impeded diffusion of chloride ions into cement paste in the vicinity of pulverized fly ash, where the pozzolanic reaction has occurred. The proposed internal curing technology can be considered a real alternative to achieve the expected performance of a high-performance concrete since a concrete with a compressive strength range from 45 to 67 MPa, density range from 2130 to 2310 kg/m3, and exceptional durability (< 2000 C) was effectively developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chemical environment and the internal conditions of the furnaces and ladles are extremely aggressive for the refractories, so metallurgical industries demand refractory linings with greater durability and resistance to avoid unforeseen stoppages and to reduce the changes of the furnace lining. Therefore, the current work aims to evaluate the impact of the additions of ZrO2-nanoparticles (1, 3, and 5 wt. %) in magnesia-based bricks. A comparative study of the physical and chemical properties in bricks obtained using two cold pressing techniques (uniaxial and isostatic pressing) and two sintering temperatures (1550 and 1650 °C) was carried out. The microstructure and crystalline phase characteristics obtained after the heat treatments and the slag corrosion test was studied using scanning electron microscopy/electron dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results reveal that the sample with 5 wt. % of ZrO2 nanoparticles (obtained by cold isostatic pressing and sintering at 1650 °C) has the lowest porosity and greatest resistance to penetration of blast furnace slag. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental protection is deeply rooted in current societies. In this context, searching for new environmentally friendly energy sources is one of the objectives of industrial policies in general, and of the metallurgical industries in particular. One of these energy sources is solar energy, which offers a great potential in high temperature applications, such as those required in metallurgy processes, when properly concentrated. In this paper, we propose the utilization of concentrated solar energy in ironmaking. We have studied the utilization of concentrated solar thermal in the agglomeration of iron ore mixtures and in the obtaining of iron via reduction with carbon (and coke breeze). The results from the experiments show the typical phases of the iron ore sinters and the presence of iron through smelting reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrochemical energy storage systems based on sulfur and lithium can theoretically deliver high energy with the further benefit of low cost. However, the working mechanism of this device involves the dissolution of sulfur to high-molecular weight lithium polysulfides (LiPs with general formula Li 2 S n , n≥4) in the electrolyte during the discharge process. Therefore, the resulting migration of partially dissociated LiPs by diffusion or under the effect of the electric field to the lithium anode, activates an internal shuttle mechanism, reduces the active material and in general leads to loss of performance and cycling stability. These drawbacks poses challenges to the commercialization of Li/S cells in the short term. In this study, we report on the decoration of reduced graphene oxide with MoO 3 particles to enhance interactions with LiPs and retain sulfur at the cathode side. The combination of experiments and density functional theory calculations demonstrated improvements in binding interactions between the cathode and sulfur species, enhancing the cycling stability of the Li/S cells., (© 2024 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)