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The designed WBE breaks the trade-off between water evaporation and salt resistance, achieving ultrahigh water evaporation capacity (3.02 kg m−2 h−1) and long-term salt resistance (continuous 100 h in 20 wt% brine) under 1 sun irradiation.

The nature of construction and formulation of the multi-objective functions in the flexible job shop (FJS) provides great insights about the study of the technique and the mechanism in scheduling helping to prioritize efforts for optimizing the manufacturing execution performance, which draw the focus of the researchers at home and abroad. From the perspective of the model, the solution method and the objective function, this paper reviews and analyzes the related academic papers and conferences articles during past few years. As a result, the construction forms of the multi-objective function and the scheduling scenarios show strongly positive correlation with the Makespan, the delivery tardiness, the energy consumption or the cost. Consequently, facing with the characteristic in a general way, the detailed construction analysis on the function for the flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is critical reviewed, and a total 6 types with 49 kinds classification are discussed. Obviously, the main goals are to summarize, analyze, discuss, and synthesize the existing achievements, the current research status, and the ongoing studies on the FJSP functions construction, and additionally to give useful insight into future research. Combined with the development trend of the intelligent manufacturing and the operations research, arguing for the formulation of the multi-obj. function, this review is expected to contribute to the future research of FJSP.

Three-dimensional (3D) elastic aerogels enable diverse applications but are usually restricted by their low thermal and electrical transfer efficiency. Here, we demonstrate a strategy for fabricating the highly thermally and electrically conductive aerogels using hybrid carbon/ceramic structural units made of hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbons (BNNRs) with in situ-grown orthogonally structured graphene (OSG). High-aspect-ratio BNNRs are first interconnected into a 3D elastic and thermally conductive skeleton, in which the horizontal graphene layers of OSG provide additional hyperchannels for electron and phonon conduction, and the vertical graphene sheets of OSG greatly improve surface roughness and charge polarization ability of the entire skeleton. The resulting OSG/BNNR hybrid aerogel exhibits very high thermal and electrical conductivity (up to 7.84 W m

Solar energy-facilitated materials are promising to solve energy problems by converting clean solar energy to thermal energy. However, heat loss of photothermal materials still limits the photothermal conversion phenomenon. Herein, we designed bio-inspired hollow carbon microtubes (HCMTs) by one-step carbonization of renewable cotton fibers, which can avoid the complex preparation procedures of the template method. Similar to polar bears, the hollow construction can efficiently reduce heat loss, which improves the utilization of light and photothermal property. The HCMTs can be applied on a variety of substrates to obtain multifunctional photothermal protective coatings. The temperature of the coating can rapidly warm up to 97.7 °C under 1 kW/m

Because of the high synthesis cost, strong chemical inertness, complex process, and easy to endanger environment of traditional carbon-based nanolubricant additives, the development of its application in lubrication is limited. Therefore, a new type of lubricant additive with low cost, high yield, high performance, and environmental protection is urgently needed. Herein, a kilogram-scale carbon dots (CDs) lubricant additive was prepared by a simple and green one-step reaction of aldol condensation, which showed excellent lubricating properties in water and sunflower oil. The tribological properties of the CDs lubricant additive at different concentrations, loads, and speeds were systematically studied. The results show that the average friction coefficient of water is significantly reduced by 75% by a CDs lubricant additive. In particular, CDs not only exhibited excellent service life and lubrication stability during friction but also kept the friction coefficient change rate of sunflower seed oil close to 0 within 500 min. According to the tribological evaluation and wear surface analysis, the lubrication mechanism of CDs was attributed to their own morphological characteristics and abundant oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface. In the friction process, the charge adsorption effect, the adsorption protective film, and the hydrogen bonding layer are generated, which play an essential role in obvious antiwear and friction reduction. Therefore, this work provides a reference for the preparation of high-performance and high-yield lubricant additives.

Commercial lithium sulfur batteries are hindered by unstable and unreliable cycling performances due to the dissolution and shuttle of lithium polysulfides. Defect engineering with plentiful active sites and high surface binding energies to restrain polysulfides dissolution and promote the redox conversion polysulfides. Here, we present a nano carbon intercalated by W18O49 nanorods composite materials as functional sulfur host. With high W/O ratio of 0.367 in tungsten oxide famliy (WOx), W18O49 achieves abundant oxygen vacancy in intrinsic atomic structure. These oxygen vacancies not only provide stable active sites to stabilize the Li2S but also immobilize polysulfides by strong coulombic interactions of W-S and Li-O bondings. Accordingly, this cathode achieves stable long cycling performance with decay rate of 0.038 % per cycle at 2 C for 1200 cycles. With high sulfur loading of 6.4 mg·cm−2, the cathode also shows stable cycling at 0.2 C for 150 cycles. This immobilizations of polysulfides by oxygen vacancy engineering in W18O49 is referential for developing commercial useable Li-S batteries.

Vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW), which is a typical NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem, plays an important role in modern logistics and transportation systems. Although the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm exhibits very promising performance on continuous problems, how to adapt PSO to efficiently deal with VRPTW is still challenging work. In this paper, we propose a neighborhood comprehensive learning particle swarm optimization (N-CLPSO) to solve VRPTW. To improve the exploitation capability of N-CLPSO, we introduce a new remove-reinsert neighborhood search mechanism. We calculate an information matrix (IM) recording the probability of adjacency between two clients based on the information about the clients themselves and the local information about the elite individuals to guide the removal operation of the neighborhood search. At the same time, we combine the cost matrix (CM) that records the cost of customer removal with IM to create a guided reinsertion operator based on local information to guide the routing. Moreover, to enhance the exploration of N-CLPSO, a semi-random disturbance strategy is proposed. To prevent degradation of the population, the longest common sequences of elites are saved when performing the disturbance. To illustrate the effectiveness of N-CLPSO, this paper conducts extensive experiments

Magnetic activated carbon particles (Fe3O4/active carbon composites) as auxiliary electrodes (AEs) were fixed on the surface of Ti/Sb-SnO2 foil by a NdFeB magnet to form a new magnetically assembled electrode (MAE). Characterizations including cyclic voltammetry, Tafel analysis, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were carried out. The electrochemical oxidation performances of the new MAE towards different simulated wastewaters (azo dye acid red G, phenol, and lignosulfonate) were also studied. Series of the electrochemical properties of MAE were found to be varied with the loading amounts of AEs. The electrochemical area as well as the number of active sites increased significantly with the AEs loading, and the charge transfer was also facilitated by these AEs. Target pollutants’ removal of all simulated wastewaters were found to be enhanced when loading appropriate amounts of AEs. The accumulation of intermediate products was also determined by the AEs loading amount. This new MAE may provide a landscape of a more cost-effective and flexible electrochemical oxidation wastewater treatment (EOWT).

Solar-driven water evaporation is an effective approach for using solar energy to purify seawater and wastewater. However, the high energy requirements of bulk water evaporation fundamentally restrict the practicality of solar freshwater production. Herein, we demonstrate an efficient hierarchical solar evaporator by combining polydopamine (PDA) and Ti3C2Tx MXene (MX) with a cellulose network skeleton of delignified wood (DW). By integrating activated water in a hydrated cellulose network and the synergistic photothermal effect between PDA and MX, the obtained PDMX@DW evaporator achieved a high evaporation rate of 2.08 kg m−2 h−1 and energy efficiency of 93.6% under 1 sun illumination. Differential scanning calorimetry and dark evaporation experiments indicated that the water in PDMX@DW exhibited a lower vaporization enthalpy (1915 J g−1) than bulk water (2440 J g−1). Raman spectral analysis and density functional theory calculations were used to investigate the structure of water molecules in the cellulose network, and it turns out that high contents of weakly hydrogen-bonded intermediate water were the most likely origin of the reduced vaporization enthalpy. More importantly, due to the interactive cellulose network structure and increased water supply rate, PDMX@DW exhibited excellent salt resistance and long-term stability in high-concentration brine. This work provides an effective method for breaking the evaporation limitation of the traditional wood-based evaporator and improving its salt resistance.

The severe problem of water scarcity has led to the derivation and rapid development of solar vapor generation (SVG) technology. However, high cost, short-term stability in harsh environments, and potential secondary pollution restrict the practical application of most solar evaporators, especially in economically underdeveloped areas. Herein, we design a low-cost and long-term stable sponge evaporator by combining carbonized pomelo peel particles (CPPs) with chitosan (CS) and bamboo fibers (BFs) for efficient solar vapor generation. Due to the interactive macroporous architecture formed by BF's random interspersion in chitosan lamellae and the excellent CPP solar absorbers, the obtained robust CS/BFs/CPPs sponge evaporator exhibits a water evaporation rate of 2.317 kg m−2 h−1 with an energy conversion efficiency of 89.23% under one sun illumination. In addition, this sponge evaporator can work in harsh water environments such as acid–base solutions, dye solutions, and high salinity brine for long periods of time because of the stable interactive structure. More importantly, since all green materials for constructing the evaporator belong to the natural world, we demonstrate, the first example of ageing evaporator that can be reutilized and transformed into the soil. This work not only highlights the potential for developing low-cost and long-term durable solar evaporators but also contributes to the research direction for recycling and reutilization of ageing evaporators.

To enhance the interface bonding of polyimide (PI)/carbon fiber (CF) composites, CFs were functionalized by introducing a polydopamine (PDA) transition layer, whose active groups provide absorption sites for the growth of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanosheets and improve the bonding strength with PI. Uniform and dense MoS2 nanosheets with thicknesses of 30–40 nm on the surface of the PDA@CF were obtained via a subsequent hydrothermal method. As a result, the interface between the CF and the PI matrix becomes more compact with the help of the PDA transition layer and MoS2 nanosheets. This is beneficial in forming PI/CF-MoS2 composites with better thermal stability, higher tensile strength, and enhanced tribological properties. The lubricating and reinforcing effects of the hybrid CF-MoS2 in the PI composite are discussed in detail. The tensile strength of the PI/CF-MoS2 composite increases by 43%, and the friction coefficient and the wear rate reduce by 57% and 77%, respectively, compared to those of the pure PI. These values are higher than those of the PI/CF composites without MoS2 nanosheets. These results indicate that the CF-MoS2 hybrid material can be used as an additive to improve the mechanical and tribological properties of polymers.

Rational design and synthesis of hollow core–shell hetero-structures with high complexity still remains challenging for high gas-sensing performances. Here, ZIF-8@ZnO (zeolite imidazolate framework-8) core–shell material was synthesized using an easy-to-use hydrothermal reaction. ZnO is a kind of homologous metal oxide of ZIF-8 material. Therefore, without adding other zinc salts, the formation of ZIF-8@ZnO was completed in a one-pot reaction. Then a series of morphology and structure analysis including XRD, BET, SEM, EDX, etc. were carried out to study the positive effect of ZIF-8 film on the sensing performance of ZnO nanospheres. The results show that the ZIF-8 film uniformly covers the surface of porous ZnO nanospheres with a diameter of about 400 nm, forming a core–shell structure. Compared to the other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ZIF-8@ZnO shows a higher sensitivity and selectivity to 50 ppm ethanol gas at an operating temperature of 220 °C, which can achieve 13.8. This is almost 2.7 times that of pure ZnO nanospheres (5.1). The obtained results show that ZIF-8@ZnO core–shell material not only greatly improves the sensitivity of the sensor, but also enhance the selectivity of ethanol gas sensing.

Acetone, as one of the volatile organic compounds, is harmful to human health. Thus, fast detection at an early stage plays a vital role. ZnSnO3 shows the merit for a wide range responsivity to VOCs, but the pure ZnSnO3 has slow response-recovery speeds. Herein, the sensors based on urchin-like ZnSnO3/α-Fe2O3 hierarchical hollow microspheres were synthesized by a simple two-step liquid-phase reaction. Porous α-Fe2O3 nanowires with lengths of about 30 nm and diameters of around 2.5 nm were densely anchored on the surface of ZnSnO3 microspheres, forming “urchin-like” geometries, which increased the specific surface area and supplied more active sites for the fast adsorption–desorption of gas molecules. An excellent gas sensing response value (14.24) and ultra-fast response-recovery times (3/8 s) have been recorded in as-obtained urchin-like ZnSnO3/α-Fe2O3 composite sensors at 200 °C. Compared with the pure ZnSnO3 and α-Fe2O3 sensors, the ZnSnO3/α-Fe2O3 sensor displayed an obvious enhancement in gas sensing properties for acetone, which can be put down to high surface area, porous nanostructure, and the synergistic effect of ZnSnO3 and α-Fe2O3.

Frequent oil spill accidents and industrial wastewater discharge result in severe health and ecological problems. Advanced materials with superwettability have been extensively applied for oil–wate...