By releasing of azo dye through textile effluent, textile industry is the main cause of water pollution resulting into acute effect on environment and human health. Development of any eco-friendly and cost-effective method that may address the drawbacks to physical or chemical methods of dye removal is the recent global priority. Physical or chemical methods for textile wastewater pretreatment are of high cost, extremely energy consuming, and environmentally low efficient and generate toxic sludge. Thus, the use of microbial technique for textile dye degradation will be eco-friendly and is probably a lucrative alternative to physico-chemical processes. Microbial enzymes, viz. laccase and azoreductase, are cost-efficient, easy to harvest, easily downstream processable, and effortlessly mobilizable. Recent research trends on nanoparticle-microbial enzyme conjugates are also highly efficient to remove the azo dye from textile waste within a few minutes. But unfortunately, due to some gap between academia and industry, these methods remain only limited up to laboratory and its industrialization is still a challenge. The present review is an illustrated compilation of the use of microbial enzymes in removal of textile dyes.

Pure and drinkable water will be rarer and more expensive as the result of pollution induced by industrialisation, urbanisation and population growth. Among the numerous sources of water pollution, the textile industry has become a major issue because effluents containing dyes are often released in natural water bodies. For instance, about two years are needed to biodegrade dye-derived, carcinogenic aromatic amines, in sediments. Classical remediation methods based upon physicochemical reactions are costly and still generate sludges that contain amine residues. Nonetheless, recent research shows that nanomaterials containing biopolymers are promising to degrade organic pollutants by photocatalysis. Here, we review the synthesis and applications of biopolymeric nanomaterials for photocatalytic degradation of azo dyes. We focus on conducting biopolymers incorporating metal, metal oxide, metal/metal oxide and metal sulphide for improved biodegradation. Biopolymers can be obtained from microorganisms, plants and animals. Unlike fossil-fuel-derived polymers, biopolymers are carbon neutral and thus sustainable in the context of global warming. Biopolymers are often biodegradable and biocompatible.

Functional polyurethanes have several important advanced applications. In this investigation, a dual-functional polyurethane (PU) elastomer having disulfide as well as furfuryl functionality was developed. For this purpose, a functional diol having furfuryl and disulfide functionality was synthesized and used as a chain extender for the synthesis of a PU elastomer based on polycaprolactone (PCL) diol and 4,4′-methylenebis (phenyl diisocyanate) (MDI). This dual functional PU elastomer was cross-linked using a bismaleimide (BM) via the Diels–Alder (DA) reaction with the furfuryl pendant group in PU. This dual functional PU having thermoreversible DA linkage and disulfide linkage showed excellent tensile strength (σ = 39.5 MPa) and, importantly, good self-healing characteristics (self-healing efficiency, E σ ≈ 97%). This healable PU having a thermoresponsive as well as a double dynamic covalent system based on the DA reaction and the disulfide metathesis reaction will have potential applications in specialty paints, coatings, and various advanced materials.

The investigation of the binding of 4-AC to biomolecular systems using photophysical techniques and molecular docking studies.

We have prepared an antifouling and self-healable PDMS based hydrogel which consists of a mixture of curcumin loaded zwitterionic PDMS polymersomes and amine functionalized PDMS polymersomes prepared via RAFT polymerization and Schiff-base reaction.