In the context of global climate crisis and growing world population there is urgent need for viable technical solutions to harvest energy from alternative, renewable continuous sources recover pure water at affordable costs. Herein, we capitalize on study direct contact membrane distillation technology treating hypersaline simulating reverse electrodialysis outgoing mixed streams, in logic val...

Meat rendering operations produce stick water waste which is rich in proteins, fats, and minerals. Membrane distillation (MD) may further recover water and valuable solids, but hydrophobic membranes are contaminated by the fats. Here, commercial hydrophobic polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE) membranes with a hydrophilic polyurethane surface layer (PU-PTFE) are used for the first time for direct cont...

Previous data have indicated that the opc gene encoding an immunogenic invasin is specific to Neisseria meningitidis (Nm) and is lacking in Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ng). The data presented here show that Nm and Ng both contain two paralogous opc-like genes, opcA, corresponding to the former opc gene, and (psi)opcB, a pseudogene. The predicted OpcA and OpcB proteins possess transmembrane regions w...

Membrane scaling during the treatment of aqueous solutions containing sparingly soluble salts by direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) was investigated. The results reveal that membrane scaling caused by CaSO4 was more severe than that by CaCO3 or silicate. However, under the experimental condition used in this study and at feed and distillate temperature of 20 C and 40 C, respectively, C...

In this work, the hydrophobic modification of TiO2 nanoparticles (HTiO2) was carried out by reacting with dodecylphosphonic acid (DDPA) and hexylamine solution. A facile approach of the self-assembly technique was used for the coating of hydrophobic HTiO2 layer over the microporous polypropylene (PP) membrane. The self-assembled layer was formed between the interface of trimesoyl chloride (TMC)...

in this study, the influence of the salts as an additive on the performance of the membrane was investigated and an extensive work was performed to optimize pvdf hollow fiber membranes through a response surface methodology (rsm). the prepared membranes were characterized by sem, contact angle and lep measurement. then, the rsm was used for the optimization of surface pore size, porosity and hy...

In this study, the influence of the salts as an additive on the performance of the membrane was investigated and an extensive work was performed to optimize PVDF hollow fiber membranes through a response surface methodology (RSM). The prepared membranes were characterized by SEM, contact angle and LEP measurement. Then, the RSM was used for the optimization of surface pore size, porosity and hy...

Abstract The outstanding capabilities of membrane distillation (MD) process to handle highly saline solutions are still driving research efforts take this the industrial level. MD scale-up remains a challenge as objective increasing performance faces several design issues imposed by intrinsic physical constraints. Among major hurdles encountered with an increase in active area stands temperatur...

1. The lobula giant movement detector neurone (LGMD) and its postsvnaptic cell, the descending contralateral movement detector neurone (DCMD), show a preference for smallrather than large-area stimuli within their 180 receptive field. Intracellular recordings from LGMD show that two different neural mechanisms are responsible. 2. Large-field moving stripes cause little decrement in the labile a...

Locusts possess a bilateral pair of uniquely identifiable visual neurons that respond vigorously to the image of an approaching object. These neurons are called the lobula giant movement detectors (LGMDs). The locust LGMDs have been extensively studied and this has lead to the development of an LGMD model for use as an artificial collision detector in robotic applications. To date, robots have ...