the down-flow hanging sponge (dhs) reactor, which was developed for post-treatment of effluent from up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (uasb) process treating sewage, uses polyurethane sponge as media to retain biomass. wastewater is trickled from the top of the reactor and purified by microorganisms retained both inside and outside of the sponge media as the wastewater flows vertically down thro...

INTRODUCTION Down-flow hanging sponge (DHS) reactors employ polyurethane sponge media to retain biomass. Wastewater is trickled from the top of the reactor and purified by microorganisms within and on the surface of the sponge media as influent flows vertically downward through the reactor. Since the sponge media of DHS reactors are exposed to the atmosphere, oxygen dissolves continually into t...

Heterorhabditis heliothidis is reared monoxenically on an artificial medium consisting of commercially available nutrient broth, yeast extract, and vegetable oil. These components are cooked with flour and coated onto polyether polyurethane sponge, autoclaved, inoculated with a suspension of the bacterial symbiont of the nematode, and incubated at 25 C for 3 d. The bacterial garden on sponge pr...

Photochromic polymeric films were prepared by doping photochromic dye spironaphthooxazine into polymer resin gels such as polyurethane, vinyl copolymer, and copolymer of vinyl and nitorocellulose at different concentrations. All of the composite films show normal photochromism. The kinetics of the photochromism/decoloration in the films were quantified by fitting biexponential equations to thei...

A simple strategy toward versatile encapsulations of inorganic nanocrystals, through a green hydrothermal treatment of commercial polyurethane sponge, was developed. This approach enables us to realize a general method to form a surface-adherent, N-doped coating with a controllable thickness for well-defined structures. These composites exhibit active properties in optical applications and ener...

This study investigated the removal of micropollutants using polyurethane sponge as attached-growth carrier. Batch experiments demonstrated that micropollutants could adsorb to non-acclimatized sponge cubes to varying extents. Acclimatized sponge showed significantly enhanced removal of some less hydrophobic compounds (log D<2.5), such as ibuprofen, acetaminophen, naproxen, and estriol, as comp...

Surface topography of medical implants provides an important biophysical cue on guiding cellular functions at the cell-implant interface. However, few techniques are available to produce polymeric coatings with controlled microtopographies onto surgical implants, especially onto implant devices of small dimension and with complex structures such as drug-eluting stents. Therefore, the main objec...

A universal and robust strategy using polyurethane sponge as a precursor was developed to synthesize highly-soluble nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots via solvothermal method.

BACKGROUND/AIM Using vacuum in medicine has been known from long ago, however, it has not been used for the treatment of wounds. The first experiments in this field were performed by Wagner Fleischmann, University of Ulm, Ulm, West Germany, in 1993. The aim of this study was to present our clinical experience with the treatment of surgical wounds complications in vascular patients by the use of...