Influence of the filler on thermal properties of porous VP-TRIM copolymers

Preparation and performance evaluation of novel magnetic porous carriers in fluidized bed bioreactor for wastewater treatment

Biofilm process is a promising wastewater treatment technology and biofilm carrier (biocarrier) is regarded as the core of this process. However, the traditional commercial biocarriers have their inherent drawbacks, therefore, the development of new-type biocarrier to enhance wastewater treatment efficiency is significantly important to biofilm-based reactors. In this study, based on radical suspension polymerization, a novel kind of magnetic porous carriers (PMCs) was prepared by modifying the porous polymer carriers (PPCs) with inorganic particles, and then applied in a fluidized bed bioreactor (FBBR) with a low packing ratio of 10 % (v/v) to synthetic wastewater treatment. The results showed that this novel biocarrier possesses paramagnetism with saturation magnetization of 1.01emu/g, low density (1.26 g/cm³), excellent hydrophilicity (surface water contact angle approaching zero) and rough surface. Besides, compared with the PPCs, the developed PMCs have larger pores (up to 50 μm or more), in which the larger-sized microbes are able to colonize. Moreover, as compared to the PPCs-based FBBR, the PMCs-based reactor achieved shorter time (7 days) for biofilm formaiton and significantly enhanced NH₃-N removal efficiency ( nearly 20 % increase at the level of influent NH₃-N concentration about 100 mg/L). High-throughput sequencing (HTS) results indicated that this new biocarrier could promote biodiversity and improve the abundance of Nitrosomonadales (the functional bacteria for ammonia removal in the bio-system), thus enhancing the ammonification process. Therefore, the developed PMCs could be preferable biocarriers for biofilm formation and provide an alternative to the traditional suspended biocarrier, demonstrating a promising potential, even at a lower filling ratio, to enhance the pollutants removal performance.

A new application of micellar liquid chromatography in the determination of free ampicillin concentration in the drug-human serum albumin standard solution in comparison with the adsorption method

The determination of free drug concentration is a very important issue in the field of pharmacology because only the unbound drug fraction can achieve a pharmacological effect. Due to the ability to solubilize many different compounds in micellar aggregates, micellar liquid chromatography (MLC) can be used for direct determination of free drug concentration. Proteins are not retained on the stationary phase probably due to the formation of protein - surfactant complexes which are excluded from the pores of stationary phase. The micellar method is simple and fast. It does not require any pre-preparation of the tested samples for analysis. The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate a completely new applicability of the analytical use of MLC concerning the determination of free drug concentration in the standard solution of human serum albumin. The well-known adsorption method using RP-HPLC and the spectrophotometric technique was applied as the reference method. The results show that the free drug concentration value obtained in the MLC system (based on the RP-8 stationary phase and CTAB) is similar to that obtained by the adsorption method: both RP-HPLC (95.83μgmL(-1), 79.86% of free form) and spectrophotometry (95.71μgmL(-1), 79.76%). In the MLC the free drug concentration was 93.98μgmL(-1) (78.3%). This indicates that the obtained results are within the analytical range of % of free ampicillin fraction and the MLC with direct sample injection can be treated like a promising method for the determination of free drug concentration.