Ultrafast and on-demand oil/water separation with vertically aligned cellulosic smart sponge.

Slow oil sorption speed of commercial non-woven polypropylene (PP) sorbent remains a major challenge for efficient clean-up of oil spillage. Adsorption-based polymeric sponge oil removing offers an appealing way to solve this challenge by increasing surface area. However, the tortuous oil sorption path and plastic waste after oil uptake are two long-standing bottlenecks for realizing efficient oil spill removal. Here, we report a vertically aligned-biomass fiber junctioned sorbents (a-BFJS), by confining delignified biomass with carbon nanotube (CNT), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS). The sorbent shows an excellent performance towards xylene sorption capacity with uptake about 50 g g-1 within 10 s. This is due to the wide and short pathway of their aligned channels, which improves the capillary effect and fast oil transport in the oriented channels. Moreover, the sponge exhibits fast oil sorption-desorption kinetics enabled by simple mechanical squeezing. We further engineered a scalable rapid continuous oil skimming with simple peristaltic pump. The oil recovering using a-BFJS realized high oil selectivity from xylene/water emulsion. Our demonstration of the high-performance aligned channel sorbent and scalable oil removing sponge offers an eco-friendly and promising strategy for efficiently removing oil from oil spills from water.

Electrospinning fabrication of magnetic nanoparticles-embedded polycaprolactone (PCL) sorbent with enhanced sorption capacity and recovery speed for spilled oil removal.

The use of oil-soaked sorbents in the recovery and cleaning of oil spills presents challenges due to disposal. Recently, magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) based collection has been gaining interest as a new technique to lower the amount of labor required to treat oil spills. In this study, we devised a new method for the preparation of a magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) embedded polycaprolactone (PCL) sorbent with oleophilic and environmentally friendly features, capable of bring easily collected under a magnetic field. Compared with conventional polypropylene sorbents, the MNP embedded PCL sorbent (MNP/PCL) displayed excellent Arabian light (AL) crude oil sorption capacity (45.7 g g-1) and decreased the absorption time of the oil-soaked sorbent due to its electrospun structure and efficient distribution of hydrophobic MNPs. Furthermore, the MNP/PCL based sorbent became fully pyrolyzed under certain temperatures and conditions. The MNP embedded PCL-based sorbent demonstrated broad applicability and utility in large scale oil spill projects.

Superhydrophobic polypropylene sorbent derived from discarded face masks: A highly efficient adsorbent for oil spill sorbent.

Globally, an estimated 130 billion face masks are used and disposed of every month. Thus, recycling or upcycling discarded face masks has attracted significant attention due to economic benefits and environmental concerns. To reduce the amount of used face masks going to waste, this study features a superhydrophobic face mask prepared by simple chemical modification with environmentally preferable alkane solvents (n-hexane, n-heptane, and n-decane), that is effective as a sorbent for oil spill cleanup. All alkanes examined increased the surface roughness of the face masks and improved face mask hydrophobicity. The heptane treated face mask (at 90 °C for 1 h), can adsorbed Arabian light crude oil up to 21 times of their weight on the water surface. In addition, chloroform, toluene, gasoline, and diesel were adsorbed 18, 13, 8 and 16 times, respectively. More importantly, heptane has a high recycling efficiency as a treatment solvent and is reusable for at least 10 cycles of mask surface treatment. Consequently, this inexpensive and easily fabricated material is a promising development in waste face mask (WFM) upcycling.

Water and Oil Insoluble PEGDA-Based Microcapsule: Biocompatible and Multicomponent Encapsulation.

Despite the recent development in various materials capable of encapsulating biomolecules, there exist limited reports on multicomponent encapsulation in biocompatible microcapsules. In this letter, we utilize the molecular weight dependent solubility of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) and droplet microfluidics to achieve direct encapsulation of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic cargoes in PEG microcapsules. By using PEGDA 250 as the middle phase, we demonstrate that these PEGDA-based microcapsules allow simultaneous encapsulation of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic cargoes. We further confirm the validity of this approach by demonstrating that complex biomolecule such as protein can be effectively encapsulated within these PEGDA-based microcapsules.

Polyolefin-based interpenetrating polymer network absorbent for crude oil entrapment and recovery in aqueous system.

In this research, a series of different two polyolefin-based interlaced polymer network material was prepared with a semi-crystalline linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE, thermoplastic) and a crosslinked 1-decene/divinylbenzene (1-D/DVB, elastomer) having high crude oil absorption capacity. The prepared absorbents, LLDPE/D/DVB, were characterized by NMR, TEM, contact angle measurement and TGA analysis. It was observed that the mixing ratio of two interlaced polymer network played a crucial role in determining its crude oil absorption capacity. The swelling capacity of absorbent prepared from a 1:1 mixing of LLDPE and D/DVB (0.2 ml) exhibit high removal efficiency in crude oil absorption over 40 g/g at both 25 °C and 0 °C. The removal of the absorbed crude oil from the water surface is effective. As the absorbent made of polyolefin materials have pure hydrocarbon content, offer significant advantages such as high absorption capacity, simple recovery, and recyclability.

Fragile histidine triad gene alterations are not essential for hepatocellular carcinoma development in South Korea.

AIM: To establish the role of FHIT in the pathogenesis hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS: We examined genomic alterations, as well as, mRNA and protein expression patterns from the FHIT gene, in 48 surgically resected hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues. Additionally, p53 mutations were analyzed. RESULTS: Aberrant FHIT transcripts were detected in 11 of 48 surrounding non-tumor liver tissues and 27 of 48 HCC samples (22.9% vs 56.3%, P = 0.002). No point mutations were identified within the open reading frame region of FHIT. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) of the FHIT locus was detected in 4 of 42 informative cases for D3S1300, and 3 of 29 informative cases for D3S1313. Reduced expression of FHIT protein (Fhit) was observed in 8 (16.7%) of 48 HCC samples, with complete loss of Fhit in only 1 case. There were no associations with abnormal transcripts, LOH, and Fhit expression. p53 mutations were identified in 9 of the 48 HCC cases. However, none of the cases displayed a G to T transversion at p53 codon 249. CONCLUSION: Aberrant FHIT transcripts were more common in HCC tissues as compared to non-cancerous liver tissues. However, Fhit expression was lost or reduced in a minor fraction of HCC tissues, while it was strongly expressed in non-cancerous liver tissues. Therefore, our study suggests that FHIT plays a role in relatively few HCC cases in South Korea.