In the present study, jatropha oil cake (JOC), a waste produced from processing jatropha seeds for biodiesel production, has been investigated for the removal of nickel (II) from aqueous solutions. Jatropha oil cake contains different functional groups that can participate in the metal ion complexation. Jatropha oil cake is used in its natural form (JOCN) as well as in its immobilized form (JOC...

The nonliving biomass of Pseudomonas oleovorans was used for the removal of Nickel and Copper from their single and binary solutions. The optimum conditions such as pH, initial metal ion concentration, contact time and biomass dose were determined experimentally. qmax and ‘b’ values for Ni(II) were 95.6 mg/g and 0.010 and for Cu(II) 137.5 mg/g and 0.008 respectively. The removal of the metals w...

Removal of heavy metals from wastewater needs advance chemical technology and is more expensive too. The cheaper alternative for this is the bioremediation using heavy metals resistant microorganisms. In this study, 10 heavy metal resistant bacteria were isolated from oxidation ditch of wastewater treatment plant of Bagmati Area Sewerage Project. These include chromium resistant Staphylococcus ...

A novel and facile synthetic method for h-BN films from borazine oligomer (B3N3H4)x precursors has been developed. This method only includes spin-coating of borazine oligomer onto nickel catalysts and a subsequent annealing step. Large areal and highly crystalline h-BN films were obtained. The stoichiometric B/N ratio of borazine oligomer precursor was preserved in the final h-BN product such t...

Duckweeds are of special interest, as they are naturally growing weeds that have the capacity to tolerate and remove toxic pollutants, including heavy metals from the environment. Studies have revealed that duckweed (Lemna minor) can tolerate and remove heavy metals from aqueous solutions. In the present study, the efficiency of L. minor in the removal of Ni and Cr individually from aqueous sol...

The toxicity and inhibitory effects of heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and zinc on alkylbenzene removal were evaluated with a Bacillus strain. The kinetics of alkylbenzene biodegradation with the different heavy metals at various concentrations were modeled using the Andrews equation which yielded a good fit between model and experimental data. Additional experiments undertaken with a Pseu...

The end-Permian extinction is associated with a mysterious disruption to Earth's carbon cycle. Here we identify causal mechanisms via three observations. First, we show that geochemical signals indicate superexponential growth of the marine inorganic carbon reservoir, coincident with the extinction and consistent with the expansion of a new microbial metabolic pathway. Second, we show that the ...