The article reviews the mechanism, how Schottky barrier and the SPR phenomena help to improve a photoreaction, focusing on the paradox between the Schottky barrier and SPR in the matter of the way of electron flow in the metal/semiconductor system.

A membrane material that can concurrently provide commercially acceptable levels of water permeability, high salt rejection, and of sufficient stability to withstand mechanical and chemical stresses seems to be necessary to guarantee the energy and environmental sustainability of desalination systems and other membrane separation processes. Recent developments in desalination have shown that bio-inspired membranes are moving steadily in this direction. Sustainable desalination via aquaporin-based bio-inspired membranes is elucidated in this paper in terms of recent commercialization exploitation and progress towards real operations. Current large-scale applications, viable opportunities, remaining challenges and sustainability of operations, in terms of comparison with established technologies, are discussed in this paper. The major drawback of aquaporin-based membranes, which has been highlighted repeatedly in recent studies, is the stability of the membranes during real operations. This review is focused on recent solutions provided by scientists towards the mitigation of these problems and commercialization of aquaporin-based membranes.

Lipomyces starkey were able to survive and proliferate in the presence of olive oil mill wastewaters (OMW), a medium difficult to process by biological treatments, due to the antimicrobial activities of their phenolic components. The microorganisms were grown in the presence of undiluted OMW, without external organic supplements, producing a significant reduction of both the total organic carbon (TOC) and the total phenols content. The OMW treated by L. starkey showed a significant increase of the germination index. The preliminary dilution of OMW enhanced the reduction of polluting components of OMW, leading to a complete TOC removal, as well as to lower levels of residual phenols. The activities of extracellular lipases and esterases significantly increased in the course of the OMW fermentation. A significant increase in lipid yield was observed in L. starkey in the course of the OMW treatment, particularly enhanced when the feedstock was preliminarily diluted. The fatty acid distribution showed a prevalence of oleic acid, demonstrating the potential of L. starkeyi as a source of lipids to be used as a feedstock for the synthesis of II generation biodiesel.

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