Engineered Nanomaterials for Industrial Application: An Overview

The change in the world since thousands of year brought drastic growth in the business as described by the quick expansion and generation of compounds that use nanotechnology. The primary principal component of nanotechnology is the engineered nanomaterials. The current book chapter is entirely devoted to the development of industrial areas due to engineered nanomaterials. The growth and rapid improvement of the industrial process with the use of engineered nanomaterial may finally lead to affecting the activity which has been already formulated to deliver the output. The raised utilization of nanomaterial is the main reason to develop the material. Hence, various governments, agencies, and organization are continuously working to emulate the target program to determine the impact of nanotechnology. But so far different limitations are being forth in the path of formulation. The constitution referring to the environment will be helpful in providing the better input for fate model by using the behaviour of engineered nanomaterial which is dependent on the features of mass input

Exploring the rearrangement of sensory intelligence in proteobacteria: insight of Pho regulon

Pho regulon is a highly evolved and conserved mechanism across the microbes to fulfil their phosphate need. In this study, 52 proteobacteria genomes were analyzed for the presence of phosphorus acquisition genes, their pattern of arrangement and copy numbers. The diverse genetic architecture of the Pho regulon genes indicates the evolutionary challenge of nutrient limitation, particularly phosphorus, faced by bacteria in their environment. The incongruence between the Pho regulon proteins phylogeny and species phylogeny along with the presence of additional copies of pstS and pstB genes, having cross similarity with other genera, suggest the possibility of horizontal gene transfer event. The substitution rate analysis and multiple sequence alignment of the Pho regulon proteins were analyzed to gain additional insight into the evolution of the Pho regulon system. This comprehensive study confirms that genes perform the regulatory function (phoBR) were vertically inherited, whereas interestingly, genes whose product involved in direct interaction with the environment (pstS) acquired by horizontal gene transfer. The substantial amino acid substitutions in PstS most likely contribute to the successful adaptation of bacteria in different ecological condition dealing with different phosphorus availability. The findings decipher the intelligence of the bacteria which enable them to carry out the targeted alteration of genes to cope up with the environmental condition

Heterogeneous Electro-Fenton Process: Principles and Applications

Electro-Fenton (EF) process has received much attention among the various advanced oxidation process, due to its higher contaminant removal and mineralization efficiencies, simplicity in operation, in situ generation of hydrogen peroxide, etc. Heterogeneous EF process rectifies some of the drawbacks of con- ventional EF process by using solid catalyst for the generation of reactive hydroxyl radicals in water medium. The efficiency of various heterogeneous EF catalysts such as iron oxides, pyrite, iron supported on zeolite, carbon, alginate beads, etc. was tested by various researchers. All of these catalysts are insoluble in water; and most of them are stable and reusable in nature. Depending on the iron leaching characteristics, hydroxyl radicals are generated either in the solution or over the catalyst surface. Catalysts with higher leaching characteristics exhibit the first radical generation mechanism, while the stable catalyst with insignificant leaching exhibits the second radical generation mechanism. Adsorption of the pollutant over the surface of the catalyst also enhances the pollutant degradation. Overall, hetero- geneous EF process is very potent, powerful, and useful for the pollutant decon- tamination from the water medium

Removal of Chromium and Iron from Real Textile Wastewater by Sorption on Soils

Discharge of textile effluents creates serious environmental problems. This paper investigates the ability of various natural and modified soils to remove heavy metals present in the textile wastewater. Natural soils such as kaolinite, bentonite, and laterite, along with modified soils such as organoclay and biopolymer-amended laterite are considered as the potential adsorbents. Iron and chromium present in the textile wastewater are considered as model pollutants. Batch adsorption studies are carried out to determine the heavy metals sorption capacity of soils. The heavy metals removal efficiency of soils follows the order bentonite > biopolymer amended laterite soil > laterite soil > kaolinite > organoclay. Almost complete removal of heavy metals is observed with bentonite and biopolymer-amended laterite. Therefore soil is determined to be a cost-effective and efficient adsorbent for the removal of heavy metals from textile wastes

Use of water quality index and multivariate statistical techniques for the assessment of spatial variations in water quality of a small river

Rapid urban development has led to a critical negative impact on water bodies flowing in and around urban areas. In the present study, 25 physiochemical and biological parameters have been studied on water samples collected from the entire section of a small river originating and ending within an urban area. This study envisaged to assess the water quality status of river body and explore probable sources of pollution in the river. Weighted arithmetic water quality index (WQI) was employed to evaluate the water quality status of the river. Multivariate statistical techniques namely cluster analysis (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to differentiate the sources of variation in water quality and to determine the cause of pollution in the river. WQI values indicated high pollution levels in the studied water body, rendering it unsuitable for any practical purpose. Cluster analysis results showed that the river samples can be divided into four groups. Use of PCA identified four important factors describing the types of pollution in the river, namely (1) mineral and nutrient pollution, (2) heavy metal pollution, (3) organic pollution, and (4) fecal contamination. The deteriorating water quality of the river was demonstrated to originate from wide sources of anthropogenic activities, especially municipal sewage discharge from unplanned housing areas, wastewater discharge from small industrial units, livestock activities, and indiscriminate dumping of solid wastes in the river. Thus, the present study effectively demonstrates the use of WQI and multivariate statistical techniques for gaining simpler and meaningful information about the water quality of a lotic water body as well as to identify of the pollution sources