Oil spilling has been a serious problem in the world for a long time, which can bring toxic substances to marine life. A large number of researchers around the world have introduced many measures to address this problem. One of the effective methods to remove oil from the oil/water mixture is to absorb oil from the mixture. Here, we prepared porous poly(lactic acid) (PLA) membranes using the electrospinning approach with different sized syringe needles, and used these membranes to absorb oil from the top of the water. It was found that the diameter of the needle has a big impact on the size and structure of the pores on the PLA fibers. The oil absorption capacity of membranes increases with a decreasing needle diameter due to the increased pore volume and specific surface area. The highest absorption capacity reached was 42.38 g/g for vacuum pump oil, 28.17 g/g for peanut oil, and 6.74 g/g for diesel oil.
Preparing stable highly dispersed Pt based electrocatalyst is promising to reduce material expense of H 2 product via electrocatalytic water splitting. However, it is still a great challenge to obtain stable single atomic Pt catalysts which can be applied in acidic electrolyte. In the present work, we synthesized Pt atomic clusters on carbon quantum dots (CQDs) grafting multiwall carbon nanotube (CNT) (Pt content: 1 wt.%) catalysts and then loading the catalysts on carbon cloth (Pt content: 0.01 mg▪cm -2 ) for activity test. The overpotential of 29 mV versus RHE was obtained over 1%Pt/CQDs/CNT catalysts at the current density of 10 mA▪cm -2 , and the Tafel slope of 22 mV decade -1 was obtained, too. Especially, the catalysts showed significant stability in hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) in acidic solution, of which the overpotential was still smaller than that of 20%Pt/C after 10,000 CV cycles. CQDs provided coordinating sites for dispersing Pt atomic clusters and improved the H + concentration in adjacent area around the Pt clusters. This method provides a general strategy to design the highly efficient electrocatalysts with ultra-low precious metals for H 2 evolution in acidic electrolyte.
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