Sustainability serves as a predominant obstacle for advanced energy storage. Herein, we proposed biomass-based separator materials, with favorable flame retardancy, cost-effectiveness, potential sustainability, and excellent electrochemical performance. Specifically, the engineered hydroxyapatite (HAP) molecule incorporates solvent-friendly groups to establish enhanced ion transport channels. The resulting CF@HAP separator induces an orderly decomposition of the electrolyte, which could optimize the electrode/electrolyte interface layer and prevent dendrite growth, making the durable cycling process, let alone its great mechanical properties and potential versatility. The in-depth study clarifies its complicated interfacial chemistry, flame retardancy, and thermal control mechanisms, thus achieving a thermally closed pore behavior during the temperature regulation process. Furthermore, the CF@HAP separator achieves complete degradation in the soil naturally within 30 days. As-designed biomass-based separators could comprehensively improve electrochemical performance toward higher levels of reactivity, stability, and postlife self-degradability, further underscoring the promising prospects for sustainable energy storage systems.

At present, the potato's mechanized harvesting rate in hilly and mountainous areas is very low. The reasons for this are that in heavy soil, the separation of potato rhizomes from soil or vines is not sufficient, harvesting machinery is seriously damaged by the potato epidermis, and the harvested potato is easily buried in soil, resulting in a missed harvest. In this paper, a two-stage cleaning potato harvester with wave-type and roller-group-type separating mechanisms was designed, and its overall structure and working principle are introduced in detail. The new cleaning mechanism can increase the effective separating length and effective contact area of the potato-soil mixture so as to achieve the purpose of removing clay and heavy soil. The main separator uses a structure that combines offset waves with opposite waves and a staggered arrangement of large-small diameter straight bars. The secondary separator adopts a device combining left-hand and right-hand separating rollers. The discrete element model of the whole machine was established, and the results of the theoretical analysis were verified by simulation. The key factors affecting the harvest quality were analyzed by variance analysis and response surface analysis, and the field experiment was carried out with the rate of clean potatoes, damaged potatoes, and peeled potatoes harvested as the indexes. The field experiments showed that the machine achieved a rate of photos on or out of the earth of 98.87%, a damaged potato rate of 0.91%, and a peeled potato rate of 1.13%. The research results provide theoretical support and a technical reference for the design and optimization of potato harvesters, as well as the improvement of the potato-soil separating efficiency and harvest quality.

Charge distribution measurements are required to understand the spatiotemporal distribution of the number concentrations of submicron atmospheric particles that affect radiative forcing and particle deposition in human airways. The number concentrations of non -charged and charged particles within the 0.3-0.5 pm diameter (D) range were measured at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan, from June 2022 to January 2023 by combining a parallel -pate particle separator and optical particle counters to investigate critical parameters controlling the charging state of submicron atmospheric particles. The measurement uncertainties in the average charge number per particle (pave) and the standard deviation (1 sigma), derived from the charge distribution of the submicron particles, were within 15%. The monthly median values of 1 sigma increased in summer and decreased in winter and correlated with the water vapor amount and wind speed. The 1 sigma values in summer and winter, derived from the seasonally averaged charge distributions of particles, were close to those from the theoretically calculated charge distribution of particles within 0.387-0.5 pm D range and with D = 0.3 pm, respectively, suggesting that the observed particle charge distributions approached the stationary charge distribution for the effective D. In summer, the frequent transport of water molecules and ions from the Pacific Ocean causes efficient collisions between multiple ions and submicron particles with a larger effective D, which may expand the charge distribution of particles. The polarity ratio, the concentration of positively charged particles relative to that of negatively charged particles, was almost unity, indicating the well-balanced charge polarity of the submicron atmospheric particles. The polarity ratio and pave changed significantly during lightning events, indicating that the atmospheric particle charge balance broke. Our findings show that the charge distribution of submicron atmospheric particles can be partly controlled by meteorological parameters (e.g., absolute humidity) and the microphysical properties of the particles.