Evaluation of tire derived rubber (TDR) fixed biofilm reactor (FBR) for remediation of Methylene blue dye from wastewater.

The present investigation is focused on development of aerobic biofilm on tire-derived rubber (TDR) media and then evaluation of such system for bioremediation of Methylene blue (MB) dye for 9 weeks. After 9 weeks of operation, the COD, BOD, ammonia and color values have been declined by 89.2%, 98.3%, 99.61% and 99.81%, respectively, While SEM-EDX results showed a variance in weight percent of various elements in TDR without biofilm i.e. raw TDR media, as well as in the 1st and 9th-week samples. Moreover, fine and strong peaks were observed in both the MB simulated wastewater and 9th week TDR samples at 1190, 1300, 1400, 1450, 1500 and 1618 cm-1 respectively by Raman Spectroscopic analysis. Further, FTIR analysis was performed for the MB simulated wastewater, and absorbance peaks ranging from 1591 to 1363 cm-1 and 3410 cm-1 were observed in all the samples with different intensities. To assess the biodeterioration of the TDR media, ATR was performed for the raw, 1st, 2nd and 9th week TDR media samples and in the raw TDR, two important bands, 842 and 2962 cm-1 were noticed representing -CH = CH and -CH3. A clear variation of bands and peak intensities were observed in different support media samples. The results indicate that TDR media is a resilient, chemically resistant material and could be employed for the biofilm growth for biological treatment of textile dye wastewater.

Synthesis of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) from cotton using ultrasound-assisted acid hydrolysis.

This present work reports the synthesis of Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) from cotton using an ultrasound-assisted acid hydrolysis. Further, the synthesized CNCs was comprehensively characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) to analyze surface functional groups and X-ray diffraction (XRD) in studying structural characteristics. Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA) and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) have been used to study the thermal properties of CNCs. Morphology of CNCs was studied using a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The crystallite size was found to be 10-50 nm using XRD data and the average particle size to be 221 nm using PSD analysis.

A Study on removal of Methylene Blue dye by photo catalysis integrated with nanofiltration using statistical and experimental approaches.

In this work, the removal of Methylene Blue dye from the synthetic textile effluent has been investigated using a hybrid system (photocatalysis and nanofiltration). The Commercial ZnO powder was used as a catalyst in the photocatalytic operation. Response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize the various operating parameters such as pH, catalyst loading and time duration and this optimization has enhanced the decolorization efficiencies. The results were compared and contrasted with the individual as well as the combined systems at optimized conditions. The results indicate that the photocatalysis process alone has resulted in 33% of dye decolorization and 26.5% of total organic carbon (TOC) removal, while the individual ceramic nanoflitration system has yielded 43% of decolorization and 35.03% TOC removal. About 94% of the dye was decolorized, and 70% of TOC was removed in 94.23 minutes of operation by the hybrid system at optimized initial operating conditions.