The impact of nanoparticle aggregation on their size exclusion during transport in porous media: One- and three-dimensional modelling investigations

Greater particle mobility in subsurface environments due to larger size, known as size exclusion, has been responsible for colloid-facilitated transport of groundwater contaminants. Although size exclusion is not expected for primary engineered nanoparticles (NP), they can grow in size due to aggregation, thereby undergoing size exclusion. To investigate this hypothesis, an accurate population balance modelling approach and other colloid transport theories, have been incorporated into a three-dimensional transport model, MT3D-USGS. Results show that incorporating aggregation into the transport model improves the predictivity of current theoretical and empirical approaches to NP deposition in porous media. Considering an artificial size-variable acceleration factor in the model, NP breakthrough curves display an earlier arrival when aggregation is included than without. Disregarding the acceleration factor, aggregation enhances NP mobility at regions close to the injection point at a field scale and causes their retention at greater distances through alteration of their diffusivities, secondary interaction-energy minima, and settling behaviour. This results in a change of residual concentration profiles from exponential for non-aggregating dispersions to non-monotonic for aggregating dispersions. Overall, aggregation, hitherto believed to hinder the migration of NP in subsurface porous media, may under certain physicochemical conditions enhance their mobilities and deliver them to further distances

Characterization of plug and slug multiphase flows by means of image analysis

Multiphase flow is involved in a wide range of applications, and among the flow patterns that a multiphase mixture may develop in its flow, the intermittent one is particularly complex both in behaviour and for analysis. Experimental analysis about the characteristics of the flow structures (plugs and slugs) is therefore still mandatory for a detailed description of the phenomenon. In this work an image-based technique for the determination of the plug/slug characteristics was applied to air-water, oil-air and three-phase oil-water-air flows in horizontal ducts with different diameters, with superficial velocities of the phases in the range 0.2-2.1 m/s. The technique is based on the acquisition of a video of the flow and the conversion of each frame (or part of it) into a Boolean signal, in which the non-zero part represents the structure of interest. Concatenation of such signals along the singleton dimension creates a space-time representation of the flow, from which information about the flow velocities, the structure lengths and frequencies and the void fraction can be extracted. Focus here is particularly on the performances of the technique when using high-speed videos. The results were also compared with the predictions of the drift-flux model

The Existence and Uniqueness of Solutions for a Class of Nonlinear Fractional Differential Equations with Infinite Delay

We prove the existence and uniqueness of solutions for two classes of infinite delay nonlinear fractional order differential equations involving Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives. The analysis is based on the alternative of the Leray-Schauder fixed-point theorem, the Banach fixed-point theorem, and the Arzela-Ascoli theorem in Ω={y:(−∞,b]→ℝ:y|(−∞,0]∈ℬ} such that y|[0,b] is continuous and ℬ is a phase space

Water holdup estimation from pressure drop measurements in oil-water two-phase flows by means of the two-fluid model

The Two-Fluid Model (TFM) has been applied to determine water holdup from pressure drop measurements for core-annular flows in horizontal pipes. The fluids are Milpar 220 oil (Ïo=890 kg/m3, μo=0.832 Paâ¢s at 20 °C) and tap water (μw=1.026Ã10-3 Paâ¢s at 20°C). The investigated volume flow rates range from 2 to 6 m3/h, for water, and from 1 to 3.5 m3/h, for oil, respectively. The results are in very good agreement with available experimental data from the literature and a simple correlation between water holdup and water input fraction has been benchmarked to the overall data set. Eventually, the TFM endowed with the holdup correlation has been adopted to predict the pressure drop with quite satisfactory results: 98% of data fall within a percentage error of ±10%, 99% of the data fall within ±15%, and all the data are predicted within ±20%. On the other hand, the mean absolute relative error for the pressure drop reduction factor is 5.5%

Mineralogical control on methylotrophic methanogenesis and implications for cryptic methane cycling in marine surface sediment.

Minerals are widely proposed to protect organic carbon from degradation and thus promote the persistence of organic carbon in soils and sediments, yet a direct link between mineral adsorption and retardation of microbial remineralisation is often presumed and a mechanistic understanding of the protective preservation hypothesis is lacking. We find that methylamines, the major substrates for cryptic methane production in marine surface sediment, are strongly adsorbed by marine sediment clays, and that this adsorption significantly reduces their concentrations in the dissolved pool (up to 40.2 ± 0.2%). Moreover, the presence of clay minerals slows methane production and reduces final methane produced (up to 24.9 ± 0.3%) by a typical methylotrophic methanogen-Methanococcoides methylutens TMA-10. Near edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy shows that reversible adsorption and occlusive protection of methylamines in clay interlayers are responsible for the slow-down and reduction in methane production. Here we show that mineral-OC interactions strongly control methylotrophic methanogenesis and potentially cryptic methane cycling in marine surface sediments

Effects of hair follicle stem cells on partial-thickness burn wound healing and tensile strength

Background: The recent improvements in wound healing have led to new strategies in regenerative medicine. Burn wound healing is an important issue in skin regeneration and has multiple indications for stem cell therapy. HFSCs are a highly promising source of stem cells for healing use, as these cells are accessible, active and pluripotent adult stem cells. Methods: HFSCs of the rat whisker were isolated, cultured, and labeled with DiI. Flow cytometry method was used to detect special markers of HFSCs. Deep partial-thickness burn wound was created, and labeled HFSCs were injected around the wound bed. Wound closure was recorded via digital photographs. The inflicted rats were sacrificed at 3, 7, or 14 days post burn and used for subsequent histological and tensiometry analysis. Results: Our results indicated that HFSCs were positive for Nestin and CD34 markers, but negative for Kr15. Morphological and histological photographs revealed that wound closure rate was accelerated in stem cell-treated group compared with other groups. In addition, faster re-epithelialization and collagen deposition were observed. The immunohistochemical analysis suggested that CD31 expression and vascular density enhanced in the stem cell-treated group. Further, tissue tensile strength increased in HFSCs-treated rats in comparison to the control group. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that HFSCs could accelerate burn wound healing as well as tensile strength in rats. © 2020, Pasteur Institute of Iran. All rights reserved

Potential use of engineered nanoparticles in ocean fertilization for large-scale atmospheric carbon dioxide removal

Artificial ocean fertilization (AOF) aims to safely stimulate phytoplankton growth in the ocean and enhance carbon sequestration. AOF carbon sequestration efficiency appears lower than natural ocean fertilization processes due mainly to the low bioavailability of added nutrients, along with low export rates of AOF-produced biomass to the deep ocean. Here we explore the potential application of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) to overcome these issues. Data from 123 studies show that some ENPs may enhance phytoplankton growth at concentrations below those likely to be toxic in marine ecosystems. ENPs may also increase bloom lifetime, boost phytoplankton aggregation and carbon export, and address secondary limiting factors in AOF. Life-cycle assessment and cost analyses suggest that net CO2 capture is possible for iron, SiO2 and Al2O3 ENPs with costs of 2–5 times that of conventional AOF, whereas boosting AOF efficiency by ENPs should substantially enhance net CO2 capture and reduce these costs. Therefore, ENP-based AOF can be an important component of the mitigation strategy to limit global warming

Long-term organic carbon preservation enhanced by iron and manganese.

The balance between degradation and preservation of sedimentary organic carbon (OC) is important for global carbon and oxygen cycles1. The relative importance of different mechanisms and environmental conditions contributing to marine sedimentary OC preservation, however, remains unclear2-8. Simple organic molecules can be geopolymerized into recalcitrant forms by means of the Maillard reaction5, although reaction kinetics at marine sedimentary temperatures are thought to be slow9,10. More recent work in terrestrial systems suggests that the reaction can be catalysed by manganese minerals11-13, but the potential for the promotion of geopolymerized OC formation at marine sedimentary temperatures is uncertain. Here we present incubation experiments and find that iron and manganese ions and minerals abiotically catalyse the Maillard reaction by up to two orders of magnitude at temperatures relevant to continental margins where most preservation occurs4. Furthermore, the chemical signature of the reaction products closely resembles dissolved and total OC found in continental margin sediments globally. With the aid of a pore-water model14, we estimate that iron- and manganese-catalysed transformation of simple organic molecules into complex macromolecules might generate on the order of approximately 4.1 Tg C yr-1 for preservation in marine sediments. In the context of perhaps only about 63 Tg C yr-1 variation in sedimentary organic preservation over the past 300 million years6, we propose that variable iron and manganese inputs to the ocean could exert a substantial but hitherto unexplored impact on global OC preservation over geological time

Carboxyl-richness controls organic carbon preservation during coprecipitation with iron (oxyhydr)oxides in the natural environment

The coprecipitation of organic carbon with iron minerals is important for its preservation in soils and sediments, but the mechanisms for carbon-iron interactions and thus the controls on organic carbon cycling are far from understood. Here we coprecipitate carboxylic acids with iron (oxyhydr)oxide ferrihydrite and use near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy and wet chemical treatments to determine the relationship between sequestration mechanism and organic carbon stability against its release and chemical oxidative remineralisation. We show that organic carbon sequestration, stabilisation and persistence increase with an increasing number of carboxyl functional groups. We suggest that carboxyl-richness provides an important control on organic carbon preservation in the natural environment. Our work offers a mechanistic basis for understanding the stability and persistence of organic carbon in soils and sediments, which might be used to develop an overarching relationship between organic functional group-richness, mineral interactions and organic carbon preservation in the Earth system