Commercialization challenges of adsorbent materials for water and wastewater treatment

Abstract. Adsorption is commonly used to remove low-concentration natural organic matter or industrial contaminants from drinking water to improve the water’s taste, color, or safety. Adsorption is carried out with adsorbents, which are solid materials. Scientific research on adsorbent materials has increased exponentially, resulting in rapid advancements in preparation methods, chemical modification, and adsorbent quality assurance, revealing remarkable capacities to absorb organic and inorganic pollutants from natural water and industrial wastewater. However, the experimental new adsorbent materials are only seldomly productized and commercialized despite extensive research. The goal of the thesis was to facilitate the commercialization processes of adsorbent materials for water and wastewater treatment through productization. To achieve the goal, a productization platform for adsorbent materials was first developed through a literature review of business models, productization, and the new technology introduction. The second step was to perform qualitative research. Companies in Finland that represent adsorbent materials producers and vendors, consultants providing water treatment design services, and end-users of adsorbent materials were interviewed for the empirical research. The assessments of the opportunities and challenges in the adsorbent materials productization are based on the analysis of the current status of the interviewed companies. Finally, the research results and the concept of the literature review were combined to recommend a reference business model and productization structure of adsorbent materials for water and wastewater treatment. Clarifying offerings and building a business strategy to support the commercialization of the offering are the two aspects of the productization platform for adsorbent materials. The empirical results led to a determination of the water and wastewater treatment requirements and customer expectations. Materials, legislation and standards, cost, customer, and logistics were listed as the five most important water and wastewater treatment requirements, followed by a long list of consumers (companies with water and wastewater treatment plants) expectations (adsorbent materials should be legally proven, tested, validated, cost-effective, previously used for the same purpose, marketed, etc. ). These requirements and expectations indicate that an adsorbent materials manufacturer, distributor, and service provider should have compelling business models. A business model assists in integrating needs and expectations into the product application by understanding and linking the product’s commercial and technical structure, which results in a commercially successful product. As a result, even though companies face numerous challenges, the productization of adsorbent materials offers innumerable opportunities. Conclusively, a constructive and descriptive business model, as well as a productization framework, were recommended. An effective business plan and perfect productization of the adsorbent materials can aid in commercializing novel adsorbent materials. "The offerings (adsorbent materials) can be offered as — adsorbent materials as a product-oriented and adsorbent materials as a result-oriented," was the key recommendation for commercializing novel adsorbent materials

Dynamic instability of microtubules: effect of catastrophe-suppressing drugs

Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing very rapidly; this phenomenon is known as ``catastrophe''. However, often a shrinking microtubule is ``rescued'' and starts polymerizing again. Here we develope a model for the polymerization-depolymerization dynamics of microtubules in the presence of {\it catastrophe-suppressing drugs}. Solving the dynamical equations in the steady-state, we derive exact analytical expressions for the length distributions of the microtubules tipped with drug-bound tubulin subunits as well as those of the microtubules, in the growing and shrinking phases, tipped with drug-free pure tubulin subunits. We also examine the stability of the steady-state solutions.Comment: Minor corrections; final published versio

Washing studies with a limestone sample for reduction of insolubles: a case study

The paper deals with the washing studies conducted with a limestone sample received from Rourkela Steel Plant with a view to reduce the insolubles. The sample analysed 14.88% insolubles and it was required to reduce the same to below 12% level. As the sample contained some amount of clay both in the fines and coating the lumps, it was decided to conduct washing after crushing the sample to the desired size. Bench scale washing studies indicated that, bulk of the clayey matter could be removed. As the insolubles content of the coarser lumps was quite low, pilot plant scale washing studies were conducted both with -50 mm and -25 mm material separately. Results indicated that in both the cases, the insolubles could be reduced to below 12% level with a marginal loss of CaO values

Competition of coarsening and shredding of clusters in a driven diffusive lattice gas

We investigate a driven diffusive lattice gas model with two oppositely moving species of particles. The model is motivated by bi-directional traffic of ants on a pre-existing trail. A third species, corresponding to pheromones used by the ants for communication, is not conserved and mediates interactions between the particles. Here we study the spatio-temporal organization of the particles. In the uni-directional variant of this model it is known to be determined by the formation and coarsening of ``loose clusters''. For our bi-directional model, we show that the interaction of oppositely moving clusters is essential. In the late stages of evolution the cluster size oscillates because of a competition between their `shredding' during encounters with oppositely moving counterparts and subsequent "coarsening" during collision-free evolution. We also establish a nontrivial dependence of the spatio-temporal organization on the system size

Seasonal changes in thyroid activity in the female sheath-tailed bat, Taphozous longimanus (Chiroptera: Emballonuridae)

The present study was designed to investigate changes in thyroid activity during the reproductive cycle in Taphozous longimanus. Thyroid gland showed marked seasonal variation in weight and secretory activity. It was inactive in quiescence and early to mid-winter dormancy and active during recrudescence and breeding period during late winter dormancy. The serum 3,5,3’-triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) concentrations showed significant variation and closely coincided with thyroid activity. The T3 and T4 concentrations were higher in recrudescence, late winter dormancy and minimum in quiescence and initial stages of first pregnancy. The body weight (r = 0.56), ovary weight (r = 0.73), and thyroid weight (r = 0.70) showed correlation with each other and with T3 and T4 concentrations. The correlation between body weight, thyroid weight and T3 and T4 concentrations in non-pregnant bats was higher when compared with pregnant bats. The T3 and T4 levels remained low during the initial stages of development in first pregnancy when compared with the initial stages of second pregnancy. The scant food supply and low levels of T3 and T4 and low temperature during initial stages of first pregnancy might be responsible for differential rate of fetal development in two successive pregnancies in T. longimanus

A model for bidirectional traffic of cytoskeletal motors

We introduce a stochastic lattice gas model including two particle species and two parallel lanes. One lane with exclusion interaction and directed motion and the other lane without exclusion and unbiased diffusion, mimicking a micotubule filament and the surrounding solution. For a high binding affinity to the filament, jam-like situations dominate the system's behaviour. The fundamental process of position exchange of two particles is approximated. In the case of a many-particle system, we were able to identify a regime in which the system is rather homogenous presenting only small accumulations of particles and a regime in which an important fraction of all particles accumulates in the same cluster. Numerical data proposes that this cluster formation will occur at all densities for large system sizes. Coupling of several filaments leads to an enhanced cluster formation compared to the uncoupled system, suggesting that efficient bidirectional transport on one-dimensional filaments relies on long-ranged interactions and track formation.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

A Phenotype of Early Infancy Predicts Reactivity of the Amygdala in Male Adults

One of the central questions that has occupied those disciplines concerned with human development is the nature of continuities and discontinuities from birth to maturity. The amygdala plays a central role in the processing of novelty and emotion in the brain. While there is considerable variability among individuals in the reactivity of the amygdala to novel and emotional stimuli, the origin of these individual differences is not well understood. Four month old infants called high reactive (HR) demonstrate a distinctive pattern of vigorous motor activity and crying to specific unfamiliar visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli in the laboratory. Low-reactive infants show the complementary pattern. Here we demonstrate that the HR infant phenotype predicts greater amygdalar reactivity to novel faces almost two decades later in adults. A prediction of individual differences in brain function at maturity can be made on the basis of a single behavioural assessment made in the laboratory at four months of age. This is the earliest known human behavioural phenotype that predicts individual differences in patterns of neural activity at maturity. These temperamental differences rooted in infancy may be relevant to understanding individual differences in vulnerability and resilience to clinical psychiatric disorder. Males who were HR infants showed particularly high-levels of reactivity to novel faces in the amygdala that distinguished them as adults from all other sex/temperament subgroups, suggesting that their amygdala is particularly prone to engagement by unfamiliar faces. These findings underline the importance of taking gender into account when studying the developmental neurobiology of human temperament and anxiety disorders. The genetic study of behavioral and biologic intermediate phenotypes (or “endophenotypes”) indexing anxiety-proneness offers an important alternative to examining phenotypes based on clinically-defined disorder. Because the HR phenotype is characterized by specific patterns of reactivity to elemental visual, olfactory, and auditory stimuli, well before complex social behaviors such as shyness or fearful interaction with strangers can be observed, it may be closer to underlying neurobiological mechanisms than behavioral profiles observed later in life. This possibility, together with the fact that environmental factors have less time to impact the four-month phenotype, suggests that this temperamental profile may be a fruitful target for high-risk genetic studies.Psycholog