The upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor has been used successfully treat a variety of wastewaters. The aim of this review is to synthesize and analyze information on how the process of granulation is affected by environmental and operational conditions in the reactor. The factors reviewed are strength of substrate, nutrients, multivalent cations and heavy metals, exocellular polymer,...

The helical and tubular structures self-assembled from proteins have inspired scientists to design synthetic building blocks that can be "polymerized" into supramolecular polymers through coordinated noncovalent interactions. However, cooperative supramolecular polymerization from large, synthetic macromolecules remains a challenge because of the difficulty of controlling the structure and inte...

Biodegradable polymers have attracted a lot of attention in the recent years. These biopolymers are large macromolecules composed of single, repeating monomer units. They are of very high molecular weight and their material characteristics vary according to the nature of their monomer composition. Over the last decade, depletion in the petroleum reserves has resulted in the emergence of biodegr...

This review addresses the design and synthesis of synthetic glycopolymers. Glycopolymers with pendant saccharides exhibit high affinities for proteins owing to their multivalency. Glycopolymers have molecular recognition abilities and amphiphilicity and can be applied as biomaterials and in bioassays. Most synthetic glycopolymers are prepared from polymerizable saccharide derivatives, and the r...

introduction:packaging is an important factor in food industry and is dominated by petroleum-derived polymers. therefore, the amount of research involving the production and characterization of biodegradable films has increased substantially, mainly due to interest in minimizing the ecological impact caused by the use of synthetic packaging materials. several biopolymers have been exploited to ...

Biomaterials are the main focuses of scientists’ efforts to develop new materials to replace or repair bone tissues [1]. Biomaterials are natural or synthetic materials which can interface with biological systems allowing the increase, repair or even the replacement of tissues and organs of the human body [2]. Within biomaterials, the polymers can be natural or synthetic as well. The main polym...