A review on removal of pharmaceuticals from water by adsorption

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products are recognized as emerging pollutants in water resources. Various treatment options have been investigated for the removal of pharmaceuticals that include both conventional (e.g., biodegradation, adsorption, activated sludge) and advanced (e.g., membrane, microfiltration, ozonation) processes. This article reviews literature for adsorptive removal of pharmaceuticals from water sources. Adsorbents from various origins were reviewed for their capacity to remove pharmaceuticals from water. These adsorbents include carbonaceous materials, clay minerals, siliceous adsorbents, and polymeric materials. The adsorption capacity of adsorbents to adsorb pharmaceuticals from water is discussed in this study. The review discusses the mechanism for adsorption of pharmaceuticals onto adsorbents as well. Finally, effectiveness of processing parameters during adsorption processes is presented

Relaying in the Internet of Things (IoT): A Survey

The deployment of relays between Internet of Things (IoT) end devices and gateways can improve link quality. In cellular-based IoT, relays have the potential to reduce base station overload. The energy expended in single-hop long-range communication can be reduced if relays listen to transmissions of end devices and forward these observations to gateways. However, incorporating relays into IoT networks faces some challenges. IoT end devices are designed primarily for uplink communication of small-sized observations toward the network; hence, opportunistically using end devices as relays needs a redesign of both the medium access control (MAC) layer protocol of such end devices and possible addition of new communication interfaces. Additionally, the wake-up time of IoT end devices needs to be synchronized with that of the relays. For cellular-based IoT, the possibility of using infrastructure relays exists, and noncellular IoT networks can leverage the presence of mobile devices for relaying, for example, in remote healthcare. However, the latter presents problems of incentivizing relay participation and managing the mobility of relays. Furthermore, although relays can increase the lifetime of IoT networks, deploying relays implies the need for additional batteries to power them. This can erode the energy efficiency gain that relays offer. Therefore, designing relay-assisted IoT networks that provide acceptable trade-offs is key, and this goes beyond adding an extra transmit RF chain to a relay-enabled IoT end device. There has been increasing research interest in IoT relaying, as demonstrated in the available literature. Works that consider these issues are surveyed in this paper to provide insight into the state of the art, provide design insights for network designers and motivate future research directions