Effect of molecular weight of sodium polyacrylates on the particle size distribution and stability of a TiO2 suspension in aqueous stirred media milling

A Comprehensive Review of Water-Based Nanolubricants

Applying nanomaterials and nanotechnology in lubrication has become increasingly popular and important to further reduce the friction and wear in engineering applications. To achieve green manufacturing and its sustainable development, water-based nanolubricants are emerging as promising alternatives to the traditional oil-containing lubricants that inevitably pose environmental issues when burnt and discharged. This review presents an overview of recent advances in water-based nanolubricants, starting from the preparation of the lubricants using different types of nanoadditives, followed by the techniques to evaluate and enhance their dispersion stability, and the commonly used tribo-testing methods. The lubrication mechanisms and models are discussed with special attention given to the roles of the nanoadditives. Finally, the applications of water-based nanolubricants in metal rolling are summarised, and the outlook for future research directions is proposed.

Eco-Friendly Water-Based Nanolubricants for Industrial-Scale Hot Steel Rolling

Eco-friendly and low-cost water-based nanolubricants containing rutile TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) were developed for accelerating their applications in industrial-scale hot steel rolling. The lubrication performance of developed nanolubricants was evaluated in a 2-high Hille 100 experimental rolling mill at a rolling temperature of 850 °C in comparison to that of pure water. The results indicate that the use of nanolubricant enables one to decrease the rolling force, reduce the surface roughness and the oxide scale thickness, and enhance the surface hardness. In particular, the nanolubricant consisting of 4 wt % TiO2, 10 wt % glycerol, 0.2 wt % sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) and 1 wt % Snailcool exhibits the best lubrication performance by lowering the rolling force, surface roughness and oxide scale thickness by up to 8.1%, 53.7% and 50%, respectively. The surface hardness is increased by 4.4%. The corresponding lubrication mechanisms are attributed to its superior wettability and thermal conductivity associated with the synergistic effect of rolling, mending and laminae forming that are contributed by TiO2 NPs.

Nearly monodispersed MoS2 hierarchical architectures as superior anodes for electrochemical lithium-storage

In this paper, we developed a facile approach to synthesize well-dispersed 3D hierarchical porous MoS₂ architectures with assistance of polyacrylate and demonstrated their applications in lithium ion batteries (LIBs). It was confirmed that the uniform flower-like MoS₂ architectures were assembled by nanosheets comprising about ∼10 stacking layers. Polyacrylate was revealed to have a significant impact on controlling the formation of the uniform hierarchical flower-like architectures with desirable dispersity. It was believed that the polyacrylate could direct assembly of the MoS₂ nanosheets into hierarchical structures and could well stabilize and disperse MoS₂ architectures. Furthermore, a stable cycling capability (839 mAh g^-1 at 0.1 A g^-1 after 120 cycles) and superior rate ability of the MoS₂ architectures were achieved as anodes for LIBs. This remarkably enhanced electrochemical property could be ascribed to their beneficial structural features and surface-dominated capacitive contribution.