Engineered nanoporous materials mediated heterogeneous catalysts and their implications in biodiesel production

World’s energy needs are majorly dependent on the fossil fuels, including petrochemical sources and coal. The alternate of these fuels include hydro and nuclear powers. However, all these resources are finite and current rate of consumption indicates the shortening of the fuels and energy in the near future. Diesel plays a remarkable role in the economy of the developing and developed countries in industry and other sectors being a basic fuel used in transportation. The increasing demand of alternate energy based on renewable resources and pollution-free production is a major concern these days for environmentalists. Biodiesel, in this regard is set to be the best entrant to acquire the desired alternative of conventional fuels. The production of biodiesel is carried out through transesterification reaction using edible oil feedstocks, which is not feasible for developing countries. Hence, utilization of low-grade feedstocks for biodiesel production is the new clinch for the developing countries. In general, the transesterification reaction is mediated by catalysts and hence, design of an effective catalyst is the key to produce efficient and commercially viable biodiesel. In this direction, it is necessary to understand the material chemistry of catalysts and mechanism of the catalytic transesterification reaction. This review enlightens the basics of transesterification, role of various process parameters and factors affecting biodiesel production from different feedstocks. In this review we have discussed various nanoporous heterogeneous catalysts investigated for biodiesel production and mainly focused on the mechanism involved in transesterification using heterogeneous catalysts. Keywords: Nanoporous materials, Biodiesel, Transesterification, Heterogeneous catalyst, Feedstocks, Yiel

Onsite Quality Controls for Food Safety Based on Miniaturized Biosensing

Health and wellness are linked to the food we regularly consume. Although the emergence of advanced technologies, such as intelligent packaging, safety, and transportation in temperature-controlled containers, has greatly improved the quality of food, certain microbial invasions and deliberate adulterations are unavoidable when it involves long transportation and extensive commercialization. These activities eventually make the food unhealthy to consume. Onsite quality control (QC) tends to check such food items not only to control the food spoilage in commercialization but also to protect the consumers from the consumption of unhealthy food. In this context, advances in miniaturized sensing devices have paved numerous possibilities to monitor food quality in an onsite context. This chapter discusses the existing ways of ensuring quality assurances for food safety and their associated challenges. Thereby, common indicators of quality and spoilage in different types of food items have comprehensively been described as control of the different types of food. Thereafter, the miniaturized biosensor-based devices for food quality assurance have been described, where a brief discussion on the development processes, analytical performances, and commercial potentials are discussed with various examples and reported potential products for food quality assurance and safety

Prospects of Nanostructure Materials and Their Composites as Antimicrobial Agents

Nanostructured materials (NSMs) have increasingly been used as a substitute for antibiotics and additives in various products to impart microbicidal effect. In particular, use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) has garnered huge researchers' attention as potent bactericidal agent due to the inherent antimicrobial property of the silver metal. Moreover, other nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, graphene, chitosan, etc.) have also been studied for their antimicrobial effects in order ensure their application in widespread domains. The present review exclusively emphasizes on materials that possess antimicrobial activity in nanoscale range and describes their various modes of antimicrobial action. It also entails broad classification of NSMs along with their application in various fields. For instance, use of AgNPs in consumer products, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in drug delivery. Likewise, use of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) and titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) as additives in consumer merchandises and nanoscale chitosan (NCH) in medical products and wastewater treatment. Furthermore, this review briefly discusses the current scenario of antimicrobial nanostructured materials (aNSMs), limitations of current research and their future prospects. To put various perceptive insights on the recent advancements of such antimicrobials, an extended table is incorporated, which describes effect of NSMs of different dimensions on test microorganisms along with their potential widespread applications