Engineering High-Performance Composite Cellulose Materials for Fast Hemostasis.

The development of an effective hemostatic agents is of vital importance for saving wounded individuals from uncontrolled hemorrhage, which is the main reason for preventable death after accidental injury. However, current high-performance hemostatic agents suffer from a cumbersome preparation procedures and poor biocompatibility. Here, we engineered a cellulosic-derived aerogel material by simply controlling the drying process of cellulose regeneration for fast hemostasis. Four different freeze-drying pretreatments were investigated. As compared with the other three, the cellulosic aerogel material prepared without freezing pretreatment exhibited the lowest crystallinity (21.3%) and the highest body fluid absorption capacity (20.3 times that of its own weight) due to its super hierarchical porous structure, which led to an excellent hemostatic performance in vitro blood coagulation (≈100 s). Moreover, the addition of gelatin and diatomite in the material could tune the functional groups and electrostatic properties of the aerogel and further enhance its hemostatic performance. Various characterizations, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray nanocomputed tomography (CT), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and zeta potential analysis, were carried out to probe the structure-function relationship of the prepared material, and its mechanism of fast hemostasis was thereafter revealed. The results indicate that the developed aerogel is a cost-effective and feasibly scalable hemostatic material suitable for practical use in industry.

Biomethane enhancement from corn straw using anaerobic digestion by-products as pretreatment agents: A highly effective and green strategy.

The development of biogas projects feed by lignocellulosic biomass has been constrained by the high cost of pre- and post-treatment. In this study, a novel strategy for pretreatment by using two by-products, i.e., CO2 and liquid digestate (LD), generated from anaerobic digestion (AD) was developed to overcome these shortcomings. Results showed that corn straw pretreated in LD pressurized under 1 Mpa CO2 at 55 â„ƒ resulted in increased glucose and xylose contents and a 9.80% decrease in cellulose crystallinity. After 45 days of AD conversion, the methane yield increased by 50.97% compared with untreated straw. However, pretreatment in LD pressurized under 1 Mpa CO2 at 170 â„ƒ produced 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and furfural, which led to a decrease in methane production from the straw in the subsequent AD conversion. The alteration of the microbial community in the pretreated slurry at 55 °C was another potential contributor to the enhanced performance of AD.