The life test of the 30 cm diameter ion thruster developed by the Lanzhou institute of physics began in Apr. 2018 and ended in Jan. 2020, lasting 6,500 h. This paper introduces the results of the 6,500-h life test of the 30 cm diameter ion thruster completed on the ground, including the ground facility for life test, the variations of the thrusters working performance, the times of the breakdown and power restart, and the erosion of the key components. The results show that the performance parameters, such as thrust, specific impulse and efficiency, do not change obviously during the test and magnetic field of the discharge chamber has no change. With the increase of test time, breakdown times increased significantly, whereas the power restart time decreased correspondingly. The diameter of the cathode orifice decreases gradually and there is a blockage risk of orifice. However, the diameter of the keeper orifice increases and presents an inverted cone erosion pattern. The diameter of the decelerator grid aperture expanded from 1.6 to 1.8 mm from 0 to 1,000 h and slightly enlarged after that. The aperture diameter of the accelerator grid presented linear enlargement but the pits-and-grooves erosion is obvious.

Developing highly active and stable self-supported electrodes is critical for efficient hydrogen production from high-strength livestock wastewater. Herein, self-supported Ni_xMo₁LDH-SP/NF electrodes (x = 1, 2, 3, and 4) were fabricated on nickel foam (NF) via a two-step hydrothermal process followed by sulfur/phosphorus (S/P) heat treatment. The effects of Ni precursor dosage on the electrode structure and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance were systematically investigated. Varying the Ni dosage primarily modulated surface-layer assembly, while the electrodes exhibited similar Mo-based crystalline features across the series. Among the as-prepared electrodes, Ni₂Mo₁LDH-SP/NF exhibited the best HER performance in 1 M KOH, which was attributed to its radially assembled hierarchical rod architecture and abundant surface species that promoted electrolyte accessibility and active-site exposure. During electrolysis of high-strength livestock wastewater (OP3), Ni₂Mo₁LDH-SP/NF delivered lower cell voltages than NF in OP3-U, OP3-CF, and OP3-D, resulting in 18.4%, 17.4%, and 36.7% higher hydrogen production rates, respectively, while maintaining high hydrogen purity. Moreover, Ni₂Mo₁LDH-SP/NF consistently maintained higher hydrogen production rates than NF across varying concentrations of ammonia nitrogen (NH₃-N), nitrate nitrogen (NO₃⁻-N), total phosphorus (TP), and chemical oxygen demand (COD). Overall, the intermediate Ni/Mo precursor ratio enabled Ni₂Mo₁LDH-SP/NF to achieve a favorable balance between reaction kinetics, active-site accessibility, and interfacial mass transfer, highlighting its potential for hydrogen production from high-strength livestock wastewater.