Polyacrylic acid (PAA) hydrogel prepared by radical polymerization in a clean and extremely simple way was used to adsorb U(vi) ions from aqueous solutions.

An economical and stabilized immobilized-enzyme method was developed for the removal of phenol in wastewater. Tyrosinase was immobilized on the PAN-based beads with glutaraldehyde as was confirmed successfully by a series of characterizations involving Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The biodegradation of phenol was investigated by using the immobilized beads and compared to free tyrosinase. The optimum pH and temperature were determined to be 7.0 and 40 C, respectively.Experiments showed that the immobilized tyrosinase was much more stable than the free tyrosinase in storage and that the immobilized tyrosinase could even retain about 78% of its original activity after repeated use 6 times in a batch system. Furthermore, the comparative in vitro cytotoxicity of phenol/ treated solutions were evaluated in LO2 and HepG2 cells by using the CCK-8 assay for cell viability along with flow cytometry detection for apoptosis. The results showed that the toxicity of the phenol solutions only exerted toxicity on cells in a certain concentration range (>0.5 mM for LO2 and HepG2 cells) and that the toxicity of the phenol solutions was greatly decreased after treatment with the tyrosinaseimmobilized beads. Thereby, the results confirm that we have established a suitable strategy with promising application to remove phenol economically and efficiently, which could even lower the toxicity of phenol at the cellular level.

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An effective solution for oxytetracycline detection in actual food samples by a novel BODIPY-based fluorescent probe.

In this study, a novel electrospun nanofibrous composite was synthesized from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and well-dispersed oxide nanoparticles containing Ti and Ag (PAN-TA). The nanoparticles incorporated into the nanofibers can endow the composite with photocatalytic and antimicrobial ability. The morphologies and structure of the nanofibers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Controlled experiments were carried out with the effects of chemical modification, solution pH, temperature, dosage, contact time, and initial concentration of the dye. The methylene blue (MB) dye was completely removed within 20 min at room temperature 25 o C with high maximum retention capacity of 155.4 mg g -1 . Moreover, equilibrium data and kinetics data indicated that the dye adsorption agreed well with the Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second order model, respectively. In addition, the nanofibers could be easily separated from dye solution and showed high reusability for numerous repeat cycles, thus indicating good application prospects for the wastewater treatment.