Recent progress in sodium alginate based sustainable hydrogels for environmental applications

Recently, there is a growing research interest in the applications and development of novel sustainable hydrogel materials in waste water treatment because of radically distinctive chemical and physical characteristics of hydrogels such as hydrophilicity, swell ability and modifiability to name a few. Hydrogels have exposed the hypernym functioning in the removal of a wide range of aqueous pollutants containing toxic dyes and heavy metal ions. A large amount of water gets incorporated in the three dimensional networks of hydrophilic structures of hydrogels. The prime objective of this review article is to render a presentation on the recent advances in the modifications of sodium alginate based hydrogels for the adsorptive removal of toxic pollutants. In addition, article also briefly gives the classification and properties of hydrogels and alginate

Recent approaches in guar gum hydrogel synthesis for water purification

Guar gum based hydrogels have evoked great attention in research as well as in industry for exploring miscellaneous applications in the field of water purification, medicine, agriculture, explosives, cosmetics, textile, paper, and food to name a few. In this article, latest modifications for developing guar gum based hydrogels and composite materials for water purification application are extensively reviewed. Regenerative nature of Guar gum hydrogels makes it a better choice for treating wastewater as well as other value-added applications. Moreover, nonionic nature makes guar gum an acceptable material for further modifications. In this article, we also present a brief discussion on structure and properties of guar gum

Sustainability of bioplastics: opportunities and challenges

Recycling is groundwork of the worldwide efforts to diminish the amount of plastics in waste. Mostly around 7.8–8.2 million tons of poorly-used plastics enter the oceans every year. Non-biodegradable plastics settlements in landfills are uncertain, which hinders the production of land resources. Non-biodegradable plastic solid wastes, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, various air pollutants, cancerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins, released to the environment cause severe damage and harmfulness to the inhabitants. Due to the bio-degradability and renewability of biopolymers, petroleum-based plastics can be replaced with bio-based polymers in order to minimize the environmental risks. In this review article, bio-degradability of polymers has been discussed. The mechanisms of bio-recycling have been particularly emphasized in the present article

Progress in pectin based hydrogels for water purification: trends and challenges

Pectin is one of the finest natural polymer which has drawn great attention because of its applications in different fields. Due to the quintessential structure of pectin, it can be transformed into variety of useful products. It can be utilized as a blend in many polymers to make a mixture or a composite material. Owing to considerable collection in chemical conformation and cross-linking mechanism, different pectin based hydrogels have been prepared for different characteristics in pharmaceutical and bio-medical sites. Inventive properties of hydrogels like volubility, swellability, solvability and hydrophilicity make them better alternative for wastewater treatment. Recently, pectin based hydrogels have demonstrated excellent performance to eliminate various metal ions and dyes from the polluted water. The adsorption characteristics of pectin based hydrogels can be upgraded by using nanoparticles, which prompts to the development of hydrogel nano-composites. In this review article, we have summarized a comprehensive assessment in the direction of using pectin based hydrogels to remove toxic pollutants from aqueous solution. Sodium acrylate-co-N-isopropylacrylamide based pectin hydrogel has demonstrated the maximum adsorption capacities of 265.49, 137.43, 54.86, 53.86, 51.72 and 50.01 mg g−1 for the adsorption of methyl violet, methylene blue, Pb(II), Cu(II), Co(II) and Zn(II) respectively. We have also discussed the pectin structure, properties and applications in this article

Electrocatalysts for electrooxidation of direct alcohol fuel cell: Chemistry and applications

In the present scenario, civilization wholly depends on energy generation and storage for better technological progress and extension in several scientific applications. Owing to limited conventional energy sources and high energy requirement, absolute, cost-effective, and eco-friendly substitute roots of energy are of the principal interest. In this direction, direct alcohol fuel cell is becoming more familiar and promising because of its straightforward configuration system, weight, and elevated power generation efficiency. Indeed, recent years have seen extensive research on the preparation and properties of the fuel cell system. The literature review presented in this article provides comprehensive information on electrooxidation of alcohol developed on different type of electrocatalyst. The integration of a range of nanomaterials is depicted to comprehend the effect of different properties such as a well-ordered porous structure, exemplary high specific surface areas, electronic conductivity, tremendous convenience to active sites, and improved mass transport for electrooxidation of fuel cell. In this article, we have presented a detailed review of fuel cells and defined the main perspective, rationale and motivation, research tasks, and objectives of study as well as the delimitation of the study

Graphite modified sodium alginate hydrogel composite for efficient removal of malachite green dye

Herein, porous sodium alginate/graphite based hybrid hydrogel was fabricated as an effective adsorbent for organic pollutant. Sodium alginate was modified through graft polymerization of acrylic acid and subsequently loaded with graphite powder to enhance its adsorption capability. The synthesized sodium alginate cross-linked acrylic acid/graphite (NaA-cl-AAc/GP) hydrogel composite was utilized in the removal of malachite green (MG) dye from aqueous solution using batch adsorption experiments. The NaA-cl-AAc/GP hydrogel composite was characterized by infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, thermo-gravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction. Under optimized experimental conditions, a maximum adsorption capacity of 628.93 mg g−1 was attained for malachite green dye. Moreover, the adsorption process could be well described by the Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The hydrogel composite also showed 91% adsorption after three consecutive cycles of dye adsorption-desorption. Therefore, the NaA-cl-AAc/GP hydrogel composite is a potentially favourable material towards dye pollution remediation owing to its better swelling rate, environment friendliness, high adsorption potential and regeneration capability

Recent progress in gelatin hydrogel nanocomposites for water purification and beyond

Innovative characteristics of hydrogels such as swellability, modifiability and hydrophilicity make them materials of choice for water treatment and other applications. Hydrogels have shown excellent adsorptive performance for different types of water pollutants comprising toxic dyes, nutrients and heavy metals. Among different types of hydrogel based materials, hydrogel-nanomaterials combination represent a highly viable method to further improve the properties of hydrogel for numerous applications. The combination of hydrogel and nanomaterials leads to the development of hybrid hydrogel with multifunctional network. This novel combination gives synergistic effect to the newly formed novel hydrogel materials. In this article, we briefly review the recent progress in gelatin based hydrogel nanocomposites with particular emphasis on wastewater treatment along with biomedical applications

Recent progress in gelatin hydrogel nanocomposites for water purification and beyond

Innovative characteristics of hydrogels such as swellability, modifiability and hydrophilicity make them materials of choice for water treatment and other applications. Hydrogels have shown excellent adsorptive performance for different types of water pollutants comprising toxic dyes, nutrients and heavy metals. Among different types of hydrogel based materials, hydrogel-nanomaterials combination represent a highly viable method to further improve the properties of hydrogel for numerous applications. The combination of hydrogel and nanomaterials leads to the development of hybrid hydrogel with multifunctional network. This novel combination gives synergistic effect to the newly formed novel hydrogel materials. In this article, we briefly review the recent progress in gelatin based hydrogel nanocomposites with particular emphasis on wastewater treatment along with biomedical applications

Recent developments in recycling of polystyrene based plastics

Due to their superior properties, plastics derived from petroleum have been extensively used almost in everyday life since last few decades. Because of lack in the manageability of plastic solid waste, their volume is increasing steadily in the natural world. Unfortunately, the disposal of plastics wastes in the oceans and land filling has led to a global issue. To effectively and efficiently deal with plastic solid waste is becoming a great challenge for the society as plastic solid waste creates big threat to our environment. Recycling of plastics solid waste should be performed to produce products having same quality to original plastics. This review article gives an overview of plastics solid waste with particular emphasis on the recent progress in polystyrene based plastics