direct contact membrane distillation (dcmd) which emerges as an alternative separation technology can effectively perform a colloidal separation process under thermal driven force. dcmd is capable of extracting pure water from aqueous solutions containing non-volatile nanoparticles through the hydrophobic microporous membrane when a vapour pressure difference was established across the membrane...

BACKGROUND Chelation therapy involving organic chelators for treatment of heavy metal intoxication can cause cardiac arrest, kidney overload, mineral deficiency, and anemia. METHODS In this study, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) modified with an edible biopolymer poly(γ-glutamic acid) (PGA) were synthesized by coprecipitation method, characterized and evaluated for their r...

One of the limiting factors in good performance of forward osmosis (FO) membranes is the internal concentration polarization (ICP). To reduce ICP, thin film nanocomposite forward osmosis (TFN-FO) membranes were fabricated by adding different amounts of graphene oxide (GO) nanoplates (0-1 wt. %) to polymer matrix of polysulfone (PSf) substrate. The prepared nanocomposite membranes exhibited both...

Displacement of one electrolyte solution by another in a microchannel is required in many biolab chip devices. The objective of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the displacement process between two electrolyte solutions under an applied electric field in a cylindrical microchannel in terms of the traveling distance of the interface between these two electrolyte solutions. In o...

Synthesis of BaTiO 3 /Au core-shell nanocavities. The principle of the synthesis of BaTiO3/Au core-shell nanocavities is shown in Fig. S1. All chemicals were of reagent-grade purity and were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich unless specified. 100 nm tetragonal BaTiO 3 nanoparticles were provided by Paul Bowen of the Powder Technology Laboratory at EPFL. Ultraviolet spectroscopy indicated a band gap ...

Odor thresholds of volatile compounds in fresh tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) were estimated and odor units calculated to determine whether the medium of evaluation affects aroma perception. The ‘ascending method of limits’ was used to determine odor thresholds of cis-3-hexenal, hexanal, trans-2-hexenal, hexanol, cis-3-hexenol, 2-isobutylthiazole, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, geranylacetone...

Graphite was electrochemically exfoliated in mixtures of room temperature ionic liquids and deionized water containing lithium salts to produce functionalized graphenes and such an electrochemical exfoliation technique can be directly used in making primary battery electrodes with significantly enhanced specific energy capacity.

A polymeric composite containing a 2-aminoimidazole derivative was synthesized. It was found that this polymer was resistant to biofilm colonization by Acinetobacter baumannii, no leaching of the 2-aminoimidazole derivative was observed after 2 weeks of treatment with deionized water, and the resulting polymer was not hemolytic.

Forward osmosis (FO) membrane is a promising technique. However, its application in desalination limited. Thus, we synthesized MIL-53(Fe)@γ-Al2O3 via solvent-thermal method to fabricate MIL-53(Fe)@γ-Al2O3/cellulose acetate (CA) composite membranes of high performance. and MIL-53(Fe) particles were studied using XRD, FITR, SEM, N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms, AFM. The structural features MIL...