The increasing demand for sustainable and efficient energy storage materials has led to significant research into utilizing waste biomass for producing activated carbons. This study investigates the impact of the structural properties of activated carbons derived from various lignocellulosic biomasses—barley straw, wheat straw, and wheat bran—on the electrochemical performance of supercapacitors. The Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analysis reveals the presence of key functional groups and their transformations during carbonization and activation processes. The Raman spectra provide detailed insights into the structural features and defects in the carbon materials. The electrochemical tests indicate that the activated carbon’s specific capacitance and energy density are influenced by the biomass source. It is shown that the wheat-bran-based electrodes exhibit the highest performance. This research demonstrates the potential of waste-biomass-derived activated carbons as high-performance materials for energy storage applications, contributing to sustainable and efficient supercapacitor development.

The development of neutron imaging facilities provides a growing range of applications in different research fields. The significance of the obtained structural information, among others, depends on the reliability of phase segmentation. We focused on the problem of pore segmentation in low-resolution images and tomography data, taking into consideration possible image corruption in the neutron tomography experiment. Two pore segmentation techniques are proposed. They are the binarization of the enhanced contrast data using the global threshold, and the segmentation using the modified watershed technique—local threshold by watershed. The proposed techniques were compared with a conventional marker-based watershed on the test images simulating low-quality tomography data and on the neutron tomography data of the samples of magnesium potassium phosphate cement (MKP). The obtained results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed techniques over the conventional watershed-based approach.

The WWR-K reactor is a multipurpose research reactor located in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Originally commissioned in 1967, it has undergone several modifications, including seismic safety improvements and a transition to low-enriched fuel, which doubled the thermal neutron flux in the reactor core. Currently, the WWR-K reactor supports a wide range of experimental and applied research activities, including nuclear fuel and structural materials testing, neutron radiography and tomography, neutron reflectometry, and neutron activation analysis. This paper provides an overview of the key experimental facilities available at the WWR-K reactor, including the critical facility, gas-vacuum loop facility, neutron tomography and radiography facility, neutron reflectometry, neutron diffraction, and instrumental neutron activation analysis systems. Each facility is described in terms of its technical parameters, capabilities, and applications in nuclear research, material science, and industrial testing. The reactor’s unique combination of neutron sources and experimental setups enables advanced studies in nuclear physics, radiation materials science, and applied engineering.

The processes occurring during hardening of special cement pastes for the construction of storage facilities or disposal of radioactive waste containing aluminum metal were studied by means of a neutron radiography method. High reactivity of aluminum causes rapid release of hydrogen-containing components from the entire volume of cement paste. The cement pastes with organic additives to suppress the process of hydrogen-contained gases formation during the hardening of the cement materials were studied. Time dependences of the neutron attenuation coefficients for these special cement materials were obtained. Based on the neutron radiography data, the kinetics of hardening of those special cement pastes is discussed.

The spatial arrangement, size distribution, and shape of internal pores in several archaeological ceramic vessels from the Akterek burial site at Zhambyl District of Almaty Region, Republic of Kazakhstan were studied using neutron tomography. The internal pores were segmented from the obtained neutron data and the porosity value for the ancient ceramic samples was calculated. Analysis of the structural tomography data showed that the ceramic materials contained a large number of relatively small pores, with an average diameter less than 1.5 mm, while some ceramic objects had larger pores or cavities exceeding 2 mm in diameter. In addition, there are differences in the morphological parameters of large and small pores. It was suggested that these large pores formed as a result of temperature changes during the firing of the pottery ceramics. The relative shifting of Raman peaks in the carbon group in amorphous carbon, as an indicator of the firing temperature of ceramic materials, confirms this assumption.

This article discusses the use of modern non-destructive diagnostic methods — neutron radiography/tomography and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) — to study the internal structure of archaeological objects from the collection of the Central State Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Based on the studies of ceramic and metal artifacts discovered during archaeological excavations and expeditions in the territory of Kazakhstan, the possibilities of diagnosing objects without damaging them are demonstrated. Particular attention is paid to identifying hidden inhomogeneities of the material and pores/cracks, determining the level of preservation and traces of manufacturing technology. The results of the analysis confirm the high efficiency of neutron tomography for studying and visualizing multicomponent materials, especially denser and metallic objects, and the XRF method for accurately determining the chemical composition without sampling. A conclusion is made about the importance of an integrated approach to the study of archaeological artifacts and the potential for introducing these technologies into regular museum practice.