In recent years, widespread efforts have been directed towards decreasing the costs associated with microalgae culture systems for the production of biofuels. In this study, a simple and inexpensive strategy to bio-prospect and cultivate mixed indigenous chlorophytes with a high carbohydrate content for biomethane and biohydrogen production was developed. Mixed microalgae were collected from fo...

A composting product of marine animal resources has been used as a fertilizer and a soil conditioner in Japan. This compost was produced by a repeated fed-batch fermentation system with three successive aerobic bioreactors. Composting temperature reached about 75 degrees C without heating. The bacterial diversity in this compost was investigated by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE)...

Many articles have been published on coagulant dosing in membrane bioreactors, though few have been long-term studies examining the treatment of real wastewater. This study summarises the results of a membrane bioreactor pilot-plant (flat sheet membrane, nominal pore size 0.03 μm) that treated real municipal wastewater for two-years. Both influence of phosphorus precipitation by ferric sulphate...

Background Mammalian cells are used extensively in the production of recombinant proteins, and of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) in particular. The trend towards avoiding animal-derived components in biopharmaceutical production processes has led to the extensive use of nonanimal origin hydrolysates such as plant hydrolysates or yeast hydrolysates. The source of hydrolysates affects cell growth a...

The fate and removal of the estrogens 17beta-estradiol (E(2)), estrone (E(1)), and 17alpha-ethynylestradiol (EE(2)) and of the xenoestrogens bisphenol A (BPA), 4-tert-octylphenol (4-t-OP), 4-nonylphenol (4-NP), and nonylphenol mono- and diethoxylate (NPEO1 and NPEO2, respectively) were investigated in four South Australian sewage treatment plants (STPs; plants A-D) with different treatment tech...

Biodegradable plastics are those that can be completely degraded in landfills, composters or sewage treatment plants by the action of naturally occurring micro-organisms. Truly biodegradable plastics leave no toxic, visible or distinguishable residues following degradation. Their biodegradability contrasts sharply with most petroleum-based plastics, which are essentially indestructible in a bio...

Plant tissue culture technology is a technique for aseptic of plant tissues under artificial conditions. It can be used as means to directly mass-produce bioactive compounds from different systems such adventitious roots (ARs), hairy root, callus, somatic embryogenesis medicinal plants. ARs cultures show high root proliferation, biomass production and have the potential synthesize specific comp...

Bioactive compounds extracted from plants are widely used. The natural habitats for a large number of plants are rapidly destroyed leading to extinction of many valuable and even endemic species. Studies on the production of plant metabolites by callus and cell suspension cultures have been carried out on an increasing scale since the end of the 1950's. The prospect of using such culturing tech...

The assembling of bacterial communities in conventional activated sludge (CAS) bioreactors was thought, until recently, to be chaotic and mostly unpredictable. Studies done over the last decade have shown that specific, and often, predictable random and non-random factors could be responsible for that process. These studies have also motivated a "structure-function" paradigm that is yet to be r...