Recently, medium-Mn steels have attracted attention for high-strength automotive components. However, because they exhibit martensitic microstructure at room temperature, low cold roll-ability is concerned so that annealing or tempering is often performed before cold rolling. Therefore, we investigated whether cold roll-ability can be improved by adjusting coiling condition in the hot rolling process. For comparison, some specimens were water-quenched or air-cooled after hot rolling. While the water-quenched specimen revealed cracks at ∼30% cold reduction, air-cooled and coiling-simulated specimens at high reductions above ∼68%. This is because the latter had lower and wider ranged hardness values compared to the former due to partial auto-tempering occurring after coiling. The higher coiling temperature caused higher cold roll-ability probably due to the active recovery of austenite. This paper is part of a Thematic Issue on Medium Manganese Steels.
In the operation of the forward osmosis (FO) process, biofouling of the membrane is a potentially serious problem. Development of an FO membrane with antibacterial properties could contribute to a reduction in biofouling. In this study, quaternary ammonium cation (QAC), a widely used biocidal material, was conjugated with a silane coupling agent (3-(trimethoxysilyl)-propyldimethyloctadecyl ammonium chloride) and used to modify an FO membrane to confer antibacterial properties. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) demonstrated that the conjugated QAC was successfully immobilized on the FO membrane via covalent bonding. Bacterial viability on the QAC-modified membrane was confirmed via colony count method and visualized via bacterial viability assay. The QAC membrane decreased the viability of Escherichia coli to 62% and Staphylococcus aureus to 77% versus the control membrane. Inhibition of biofilm formation on the QAC modified membrane was confirmed via anti-biofilm tests using the drip-flow reactor and FO unit, resulting in 64% and 68% inhibition in the QAC-modified membrane against the control membrane, respectively. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the modified membrane in reducing bacterial viability and inhibiting biofilm formation, indicating the potential of QAC-modified membranes to decrease operation costs incurred by biofouling.
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