Production of bioflocculants prepared from formaldehyde wastewater for the potential removal of arsenic.

A novel bioflocculant (MBF-79) prepared using formaldehyde wastewater as carbon resource was investigated in the study. The optimal conditions for bioflocculant production were determined to be an inoculum size of 7.0%, initial pH of 6.0, and formaldehyde concentration of 350 mg/L. An MBF-79 of 8.97 g/L was achieved as the maximum yield. Three main elements, namely C, H, and O, were present in MBF-79 with relative weigh percentages of 39.17%, 6.74%, and 34.55%, respectively. The Gel permeation chromatography analysis indicated that the approximate molecular weight (MW) of MBF-79 was 230 kDa. MBF-79 primarily comprised polysaccharide (71.2%) and protein (27.9%). Additionally, conditions for the removal of arsenic by MBF-79 were found to be MBF-79 at 120 mg/L, an initial pH 7.0, and a contact time 60 min. Under the optimal conditions, the removal efficiencies of arsenate (0.5 mg/L) and arsenite (0.5 mg/L) were 98.9% and 84.6%, respectively. Overall, these findings indicate bioflocculation offers an effective alternative method of decreasing arsenic during water treatment.

Dendrimer-like assemblies based on organoclays as multi-host system for sustained drug delivery.

Chemical modification of nanoclay will ensure further progress on these materials. In this work, we show that montmorillonite (MTM) nanosheets can be modified with ß-cyclodextrin (CD) via a nucleophilic substitution reaction between mono-6-(p-toluenesulfonyl)-6-deoxy-ß-CD and an amino group of 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES)-functionalized MTM. The resulting MTM-APTES-CD can be further self-assembled into dendrimer-like assemblies, exhibit a well-dispersed property even in Dulbecco's phosphate-buffered saline and do not aggregate for a period of at least 20days. The structure, morphology and assembly mechanism are systematically studied by (29)Si MAS NMR, FT-IR, (1)H NMR, SEM, FE-TEM, DLS and AFM, and the change in assemblies during the drug release is monitored using FE-TEM images. MTT assays indicate that the assemblies only have low cytotoxicity, while CLSM and TEM observations reveal that the assemblies can easily penetrate cultured human endothelial cells. When clopidogrel is used as a guest molecule, the assemblies show not only much higher loading capacities compared to MTM and other containing ß-CD assemblies or nanoparticles, but also a sustained release of clopidogrel up to 30days. This is attributed to the fact that the guest molecule is both supramolecularly complexed within the dendritic scaffold and intercalated into CD and MTM hosts. Host-guest systems between assemblies and various guests hold promising applications in drug delivery system and in the biomedical fields.