Developing Eco-Friendly and Cost-Effective Porous Adsorbent for Carbon Dioxide Capture.

To address the issue of global warming and climate change issues, recent research efforts have highlighted opportunities for capturing and electrochemically converting carbon dioxide (CO2). Despite metal doped polymers receiving widespread attention in this respect, the structures hitherto reported lack in ease of synthesis with scale up feasibility. In this study, a series of mesoporous metal-doped polymers (MRFs) with tunable metal functionality and hierarchical porosity were successfully synthesized using a one-step copolymerization of resorcinol and formaldehyde with Polyethyleneimine (PEI) under solvothermal conditions. The effect of PEI and metal doping concentrations were observed on physical properties and adsorption results. The results confirmed the role of PEI on the mesoporosity of the polymer networks and high surface area in addition to enhanced CO2 capture capacity. The resulting Cobalt doped material shows excellent thermal stability and promising CO2 capture performance, with equilibrium adsorption of 2.3 mmol CO2/g at 0C and 1 bar for at a surface area 675.62 m2/g. This mesoporous polymer, with its ease of synthesis is a promising candidate for promising for CO2 capture and possible subsequent electrochemical conversion

Engineering Biodegradable and Biocompatible Bio-ionic Liquid Conjugated Hydrogels with Tunable Conductivity and Mechanical Properties

Conventional methods to engineer electroconductive hydrogels (ECHs) through the incorporation of conductive nanomaterials and polymers exhibit major technical limitations. These are mainly associated with the cytotoxicity, as well as poor solubility, processability, and biodegradability of their components. Here, we describe the engineering of a new class of ECHs through the functionalization of non-conductive polymers with a conductive choline-based bio-ionic liquid (Bio-IL). Bio-IL conjugated hydrogels exhibited a wide range of highly tunable physical properties, remarkable in vitro and in vivo biocompatibility, and high electrical conductivity without the need for additional conductive components. The engineered hydrogels could support the growth and function of primary cardiomyocytes in both two dimentinal (2D) and three dimensional (3D) cultures in vitro. Furthermore, they were shown to be efficiently biodegraded and possess low immunogenicity when implanted subcutaneously in rats. Taken together, our results suggest that Bio-IL conjugated hydrogels could be implemented and readily tailored to different biomedical and tissue engineering applications

Development of Functionalized Nanoporous Materials for Biomass Transformation to Chemicals and Fuels

An ever increasing global energy demand and evolving geopolitical scenarios has put the non- renewable and depleting petroleum resources under pressure. This, coupled with a concern for the environment, make the development of alternative and renewable sources of fuel, as a replacement for fossil fuels, an imperative task for the transition to a sustainable energy future. The production of biofuels from waste and renewable biomass needs to be catalyzed by acids and bases. However, homogenous acids, while efficient, come with concomitant problems of product purification, equipment corrosion, non-reusability while being environmental hazards. These issues are mitigated by heterogeneous catalysts. This thesis explores the development and application of several novel nanoporous heterogeneous solid acids and solid bases that successfully catalyze the conversion of renewable and waste biomass feedstock such as vegetable oils, cellulose, algae, brown grease and acidulated bone oil into fuels and biorenewable chemicals. The catalysts were used for developing and optimizing renewable resource utilization processes. As an example, the 100% transformation of a municipal waste such as brown grease into biodiesel, synthesis gas and bio-oil illustrates the prototype blue print of a process which can be used for power generation and biofuel production from a low grade feedstock and a potential health hazard with high municipal management costs and little alternative avenues for usage. The novel chemistries employed in the synthesis of these structures results in nano materials with very high surface area, mesoporosity and superhydrophobic character with catalytic activities superior to all corresponding commercially available solid catalysts. In some studies, the catalytic activity was found to be superior to even homogenous catalysts. In addition, the limited reduction in catalytic activity over cycles of usage make these nanoporous heterogeneous catalysts attractive and sustainable candidates for the development of scaled up reactor modules to commercialize biofuels and biorenewable chemical production with minimal ramifications on the environment and production equipment

Swelling behavior and controlled drug release from cross-linked k-carrageenan/ NaCMC hydrogel by diffusion mechanism

We studied a model system of controlled drug release using beta carotene and k-carrageenan/NaCMC hydrogel as a drug and a device, respectively. Electrostatic interactions between beta carotene and k-carrageenan/NaCMC polymer segments are strong, since beta carotene is positively charged, NaCMC is a weak polyelectrolyte which behaves almost neutrally in pH 7.4 and each disaccharide repeating unit of k-carrageenan chains has one sulfate group.Results have shown that the cross-linked beads possess lower swelling ability in all pH conditions (pH 1.2 and 7.4), and swelling ratio decreases with increasing genipin concentration. Beta-carotene was loaded into the hydrogel by combining into blend solution of kappa-carrageenan/NaCMC. Different concentrations of genipin were then added to the hot solution followed by hardening for about 30 minutes to form cross-linked beta carotene loaded beads by using dripping method. Microstructure study shows that cross-linking has enhanced the stability and structure of the beads network. This phenomenon was well explained by our kinetic model studied. Determination of diffusion coefficient for the release of encapsulated beta-carotene indicates less diffusivity when beads are cross-linked. Swelling models using adaptive neuro fuzzy show that using genipin as a cross-linker in the kC/NaCMC hydrogels affects the transport mechanism. The model shows very good agreement with the experimental data which indicates that applying ANFIS modeling is an accurate, rapid and simple way to model in such a case for controlled release applications

Accurately predicting anticancer peptide using an ensemble of heterogeneously trained classifiers

The use of therapeutic peptides for the treatment of cancer has received tremendous attention in recent years. Anticancer peptides (ACPs) are considered new anticancer drugs which have several advantages over chemistry-based drugs including high specificity, strong tumor penetration capacity, and low toxicity level for normal cells. Due to the rise of experimentally verified bioactive peptides, several in silico approaches became imperative for the investigation of the characteristics of ACPs. In this paper, we proposed a new machine learning tool named iACP-RF that uses a combination of several sequence-based features and an ensemble of three heterogeneously trained Random Forest classifiers to accurately predict anticancer peptides. Experimental results show that our proposed model achieves an accuracy of 75.9% which outperforms other state-of-the-art methods by a significant margin. We also achieve 0.52, 75.6%, and 76.2% in terms of Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC), Sensitivity, and Specificity, respectively. iACP-RF as a standalone tool and its source code are publicly available at: https://github.com/MLBC-lab/iACP-RF

Hydrogel-Encapsulated Heterogenous Mesoporous Resin Catalyst for In Situ Anti-Cancer Agent Production under Biological Conditions.

A heterogenous Palladium anchored Resorcinol-formaldehyde-hyperbranched PEI mesoporous catalyst, made by one-pot synthesis, was used successfully for in situ Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling synthesis of anticancer prodrug PP-121 from iodoprazole and boronic ester precursors. The mesoporous catalyst with the non-cytotoxic precursors were tested in 2D in vitro model with excellent cytocompatibility and a strong suppression of PC3 cancer cell proliferation, underscored by 50% reduction in PC3 cells viability and 55% reduction in cell metabolism activity and an enhanced rate of early and late apoptosis in flow cytometry, that was induced only by successful in situ pro drug PP121 synthesis from the precursors. The 3D gelatin methacrylate hydrogel encapsulated in vitro cell models underscored the results with a 52% reduction in cell metabolism and underscored apoptosis of PC3 cells when the Pd anchored catalyst was combined with the precursors. In situ application of Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling of non-cytotoxic precursors to cancer drug, along with their successful encapsulation in an injectable hydrogel could be applied for tumor point drug delivery strategies that can circumvent deleterious side effects and poor bioavailability chemotherapy routes with concomitant enhanced efficacy

Programmable bio-ionic liquid functionalized hydrogels for in situ 3D bioprinting of electronics at the tissue interface

The increased demand for personalized wearable and implantable medical devices has created the need for the generation of electronics that interface with living systems. Current bioelectronics has not fully resolved mismatches between biological systems and engineered circuits, resulting in tissue injury and pain. Thus, there is an unmet need to develop materials for the fabrication of wearable electronics that are biocompatible at the tissue interface. Here, we developed a tailorable gelatin-based bio-ink functionalized with a choline bio-ionic liquid (BIL) for in situ 3D bioprinting of bioelectronics at the tissue interface. The resultant photocrosslinked polymer is programmable, transparent, ion conductive, and flexible. BILs are stably conjugated with a gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogel using photocrosslinking to make BioGel, which routes ionic current with high resolution and enables localized electrical stimulation delivery. Controllable crosslinking, achieved by varying reactants composition, allows the BioGel bio-ink platform for easy and rapid in-situ 3D bioprinting of complex designs directly on skin tissue. Bio-ionic modified polymers thus represent a versatile and wide-applicable bio-ink solution for personalized bioelectronics fabrication that minimizes tissue damage

Efficient Transformation of Waste Bone Oil into High Quality Biodiesel via a Synergistic Catalysis of Porous Organic Polymer Solid Acid and Porous γ‑Al₂O₃‑K₂O Solid Base

We report here a novel synergistic catalysis system combined with porous organic polymeric solid acid (H-PDVB-SO₃H) and K₂O doped porous γ-Al₂O₃ solid base (γ-Al₂O₃-K₂O). H-PDVB-SO₃H and γ-Al₂O₃-K₂O have abundant nanopores, controllable surface wettability, and high concentrations of acidic and basic sites. The synergistic catalysis system exploited by us could efficiently transform acidulated bone oil and plant oil into high quality biodiesel under mild conditions, which achieved ASTM specifications pertaining to acid number and total and free glycerin. Acidulated bone is a bone meal treated with sulfuric acid containing high-value hydrocarbons, which is generated in large amounts by the cattle industry. This work develops an efficient and cost-effective approach to transform animal waste into high quality biodiesel