Bi2O3/Nylon multilayered nanocomposite membrane for the photocatalytic inactivation of waterborne pathogens and degradation of mixed organic pollutants

Worldwide there is an increasing demand for clean water and sanitation systems and any different solutions are under evaluation, including advanced oxidation processes such as photocatalysis. This work describes the scalable synthesis process of an electrospun composite membrane made of Nylon and embedded α/β-Bi2O3 nanoparticles that can be activated by visible light instead of UV light typically used with other nanomaterials (e.g. TiO2). As a proof of concept, the efficacy of the α/β-Bi2O3 electrospun composite membrane in the visible light inactivation of pollutants and pathogens was demonstrated in a Continuous-flow Photocatalytic Membrane Reactor, highlighting the great potential of this advanced photocatalytic process for clean water and sanitation

How do material characteristics and antimicrobial mechanisms affect microbial control and water disinfection performance of metal nanoparticles?

Nanotechnology has been rapidly developing in the past decade, and metal nanomaterials have shown promising improvement in microbial control. Metal nanoparticles have been applied in medical settings for adequate disease spread control and to overcome the challenges of multidrug-resistant microorganisms. Recently, the demand for safe water supply has increased, requiring higher sanitation of the water treatment technology as well as being environmentally sustainable. However, the employed water disinfection technologies cannot meet the elevated demand due to limitations including chemical byproducts, immobility, energy consumption, etc. Metal nanomaterials are considered to be an alternative disinfection technology considering their high efficiency, mobility, and stability. A significant amount of research has been carried out on enhancing the antimicrobial efficiency of metal nanomaterials and determining the underlying antimicrobial mechanisms. This paper provides an overview of emerging metal nanomaterials development, including the synthesis method, material characteristics, disinfection performance, environmental factors, potential mechanism, limitations, and future opportunities in the water disinfection process. HIGHLIGHTS Antimicrobial mechanisms are governed by microbe–metal nanoparticles interactions.; Synthesis methods and material characteristics impact microbial control performance.; Demonstrations via experimental study and simulation support its applicability.; Nanoscale metal materials have multi-tasking ability versus conventional treatments.; Limitations of possible toxicity, cost, and manufacturing call for further research.

Lightweight hybrid cryptography algorithm for wireless body area sensor networks using cipher technique

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are based on connected and dedicated sensor nodes for patient monitoring in the healthcare sector. The sensor nodes are implanted inside or outside the patient’s body for sensing the vital signs and transmitting the sensed data to the end devices for decision-making. These sensor nodes use advanced communication technologies for data communication. However, they have limited capabilities in terms of computation power, battery life, storage, and memory, and these constraints make networks more vulnerable to security breaches and routing challenges. Important and sensitive information is exchanged over an unsecured channel in the network. Several devices are involved in handling the data in WBANs, including sink nodes, coordinator, or gateway nodes. Many cryptographic schemes have been introduced to ensure security in WBANs by using traditional confidentiality and key-sharing strategies. However, these techniques are not suitable for limited resource-based sensor nodes. In this paper, we propose a Lightweight Hybrid Cryptography Algorithm (LWHCA) that uses cryptographicbased techniques for WBAN networks to improve network security, minimize network overhead and delay issues, and improve the healthcare monitoring processes. The proposed solution is evaluated in a simulation scenario and compared with state-of-the-art schemes in terms of energy consumption, and ciphertext size

Lightweight hybrid cryptography algorithm for wireless body area sensor networks using cipher technique

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are based on connected and dedicated sensor nodes for patient monitoring in the healthcare sector. The sensor nodes are implanted inside or outside the patient’s body for sensing the vital signs and transmitting the sensed data to the end devices for decision-making. These sensor nodes use advanced communication technologies for data communication. However, they have limited capabilities in terms of computation power, battery life, storage, and memory, and these constraints make networks more vulnerable to security breaches and routing challenges. Important and sensitive information is exchanged over an unsecured channel in the network. Several devices are involved in handling the data in WBANs, including sink nodes, coordinator, or gateway nodes. Many cryptographic schemes have been introduced to ensure security in WBANs by using traditional confidentiality and key-sharing strategies. However, these techniques are not suitable for limited resource-based sensor nodes. In this paper, we propose a Lightweight Hybrid Cryptography Algorithm (LWHCA) that uses cryptographic-based techniques for WBAN networks to improve network security, minimize network overhead and delay issues, and improve the healthcare monitoring processes. The proposed solution is evaluated in a simulation scenario and compared with state-of-the-art schemes in terms of energy consumption, and ciphertext size.</p