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The utilization of medicinal plants and their derivatives in treating illnesses is more appropriately recognized as herbal remedy than traditional medicine. For centuries, medicinal herbs have been used for the treatment of diseases in many countries. Malva sylvestris L. is a kind of mallow derived from Malvaceae species and is recognized as common mallow. This amazing plant has antimicrobial, hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties and is considered as one of the most promising herbal medicinal species. This plant’s traditional use in treating many diseases and preparing pharmaceutical compounds can show us how to know in depth the plant origin of drugs used to produce antibiotics and other therapeutic agents.

The utilization of medicinal plants and their derivatives in treating illnesses is more appropriately recognized as herbal remedy than traditional medicine. For centuries, medicinal herbs have been used for the treatment of diseases in many countries. Malva sylvestris L. is a kind of mallow derived from Malvaceae species and is recognized as common mallow. This amazing plant has antimicrobial, hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties and is considered as one of the most promising herbal medicinal species. This plant's traditional use in treating many diseases and preparing pharmaceutical compounds can show us how to know in depth the plant origin of drugs used to produce antibiotics and other therapeutic agents.

Green materials are an emerging solution for reducing waste and pollution. Various studies show that green materials have reached every aspect of product design, which covers the entire life cycle of a product from conceptual design to disposal, causing a minimal adverse impact on the environment by the optimized use of resources. Green materials-based products have the target to minimize the effects of human actions on the environment and ecosystem. Nevertheless, the production of biocompatible composites with the necessary hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity, adhesion, affinity, and mechanical properties pose significant challenges. These issues have, to an extent, been addressed through nanotechnological interventions. Nanobiopolymers have shown immense potential in the biomedical, food, and electronic industries and it may be justly expected that further research into advanced green nanocomposites may be the solution to waste management, pollution control, and lower cost of production. This chapter highlights the future aspects and prospects of green materials toward sustainable production and recycling. To save the environment and reduce the product cost, green materials are essential for sustainable development for the current global issues.

Graphene and its derivative materials present high potential towards medical and biological applications, including drug delivery and bioimaging, due to their exceptional properties such as thermal conductivity and high specific surface area. The main focus of this work is to review the current development of graphene materials and the derivatives for biocompatible, bioimaging and drug delivery applications. Also, the synthesis methods with variation of graphene nanocomposites and the functionalisation will be further explained. For the graphene approaches, chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is the best-known technique to make high-quality graphene sheet by growth route with mass production. By considering the organic graphene nanocomposites, the biocompatibility and cytotoxic effects against graphene nanocomposites were evaluated for biomedical employments such as high quality bioimaging and effective drug delivery for cancer treatments. For example, graphene oxide incorporated with PEG and loaded with SN 38 for camptothecin analolgue as anticancer drug and revealed high cytotoxicity has an effect of 1000 times better effect than CPT in HCT-116 cells. Their drug delivery ability for both in-vivo and in-vitro applications compared to the controlled drugs such as doxorubicin (DOX) will be discussed accordingly. The graphene and its deriavatives possess some intriguing properties, which will lead to drug delivery due to strong biocompatibility and cyctotoxic effect towards biomedicine applications.

Dairy industries are growing day by day with the increase in demand. These industries produce so many products with milk as a raw material. Dairy industry generates enormous amounts of wastewater, sludge and whey. The wastes have a high concentration of organic and inorganic material, high COD, BOD and mineral ions. These wastes need to be treated before discharge to prevent pollution to water, soil and air. This chapter aims to describe the different types of dairy waste and their remediation techniques to remove specific kinds of pollutants in wastewater.

In the present scenario, the elimination of toxic heavy metal pollutants from wastewater effluents has emerged as a severe worldwide environmental issue. Due to the severe and recalcitrant nature of heavy metals, their accumulation occurs in the food web which seriously affects the life forms in the ecosystem and further degrades the environment. Recently, the advancement of nanotechnology has gained much attention towards remediation of heavy metals due to superior characteristics such as higher surface area/volume ratio, spatial confinement and reduced imperfections and resulted in an excellent immobilising capacity of heavy metals due to high reaction rate. This book chapter summarises an overview of variously advanced nanomaterials comprising carbon-, metal oxide (MO)-, zero-valent metal (ZVM)- and nanohybrid-based nanomaterials, and their applicability towards amelioration of heavy metals from wastewater effluents was investigated systematically. The advantages, disadvantages and efficiency of various nanomaterials were also correlated and studied. Additionally, this book chapter discusses future insights and directions for the betterment of nanomaterials concerning heavy metal remediation from wastewater with minimum environmental impacts.

This article studies the enhancement of bitumen properties by the addition of crumb rubber obtained from different scrap tyres. Crumb rubber extracted from scrap tyres through shedding and other traditional process has smaller size, which has the ability to enrich the various relevant characteristics of bitumen. An extensive study of different scrap tyres obtained from different automobiles (heavy, medium, and light) was conducted and also analysed its effects on bitumen properties. Different dosages of the crumb rubber added to bitumen evaluate its physical properties, Marshall stability, and indirect tensile strength to identify the optimum dosage. And retained Marshall stability test is used to assess the resistance against moisture susceptibility. The result obtained proved that modified crumb rubber bitumen is more effective and can be utilized for wide applications such as road constructions. A comparative analysis is executed between the CRMB samplings and bituminous mixes utilizing waste tyres of different automobiles and recommended the best automobile waste tyre for the purpose of bitumen modification and to acquire best outcomes.

With the rising population in India the demand for energy is also shooting up. This paper examines the potential, scope and the opportunities of biomass in the Indian economy. India, being an agricultural country, has a lot of possible resources from the agronomic sector like crop residue, animal manure, etc., which has not been utilised in an efficient way. This paper also gives an insight into anaerobic digestion and the many other digesters implemented in India. The accelerating economic growth leads to the rapid rise in urbanisation which in turn generates an increased production of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). This MSW can be used in biomass production in quite a lot of innovative ways. The study also focused on the potential sources and their proper conversion technique. The feasibility of biomass conversion and achievements made by India was also looked into. Use of bioenergy in cheaper and economically feasible ways is also a practical solution to the energy crisis.

This work illustrates the potential applications of the raw cotton shell (RCS) and cotton shell biochar (CSB) in the remediation of sulfate contaminants from aqueous solvents. Comprehensively, optimal batch and adsorption kinetics of sulfate by RCS and CSB were intensively analyzed and determined by varying the adsorption parameters. For RCS, the optimal series of parameters were at (pH-7, sulfate conc-150 mgL−1, adsorbent dose- 0.5 g and time-150 min). While for CSB optimum conditions were at (pH-9.8, sulfate conc-100 mgL−1, dosage- 0.1 g and time-90 min). The maximum adsorption efficiency for both RCS and CSB was achieved at 86.47% and 90.77%, respectively. Sulfate adsorption by RCS and CSB was examined by isotherm models and kinetic studies. The data are best suited to the Langmuir isotherm model with the highest RCS and CSB sulfate adsorption capability of 61.35 and 153.85 mg g−1 and followed pseudo-second-order kinetics. Box-Behnken design (BBD) based response surface methodology (RSM) model-based analysis of variance test has demonstrated optimum conditions and sulfate adsorption by both RCS and CSB. The recovery studies on sulfates from marcasite soil were evaluated at different doses of RCS and CSB. This study provides insights into the usage of the developed process towards the circular economy of the sulfates.

Even though adsorption by nanomaterial adsorbents epitomises an emergent technique to ameliorate the dye pollutants in the aqueous medium, the facile agglomeration and low recovery have circumscribed such potential applications. The present study exposes the furtherance in water treatment technology which embodies the advancement of the economic, photogenic, and eco-friendly nanohybrid composite. This study investigates the synthesis and characterisation of novel magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles loaded with cocoa pod carbon composite (Fe3O4/CC) for dye removal. The magnetic cocoa pod carbon composite was modified using EDTA through low cost biogenic green synthesis route and their application for adsorption of methylene blue and crystal violet. The characterisations of both Fe3O4/CC and EDTA- Fe3O4/CC were carried out using XRD, FTIR, FESEM, EDX, VSM, TGA and TEM. The adsorption studies of methylene blue and crystal violet were studied in batch mode experiments. The influence of operating parameters on dye adsorption efficacy was evaluated by performing the central composite design followed by modelling using artificial neural network. The experimental colour removal was found to match with the prediction value obtained by utilising response surface methodology with an artificial neural network (RSM-ANN) model, respectively. The maximum adsorption capacity of EDTA functionalised composite for methylene blue and crystal violet was 147.43 mg/g and 162.25 mg/g respectively. To understand dye mechanism involved in dye adsorption, isotherms and kinetic studies were carried out which proved that adsorption follows Freundlich isotherm and Pseudo-second order. The adsorbent demonstrated high regeneration, and recoverability studies showed that EDTA functionalised Fe3O4/CC is an efficient adsorbent for both cationic textile dyes. The efficient capturing of dye pollutant with the minimum usage of biocompatible adsorbent presents a simple and cost-effective technique for water treatment.

Zinc oxide (ZnO)/rGO (reduced graphene oxide) composites have recently gained much interest in electrochemical gas sensor devices due to their fascinating electrochemical properties such as active surface sites, high surface area to volume ratios and high carrier large mobility. ZnO is a significant gas sensing material due to its excellent response towards oxidizing/reducing gases, easy preparation, and less toxicity. At the same time, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide-based sensors exhibited high surface area, and the presence of surface functional groups facilitated gas sensing properties. The synergistic effect of ZnO/rGO improved sensing properties and binding stability with macromolecules, thus making them potential candidates for the design of gas sensor devices. However, the fabrication and utilization of gas sensors operating at the low-temperature condition is still a significant hurdle. This review encompasses the recent advancements of ZnO/rGO nanostructures synthesis, studying nanocomposite interactions in various gas sensing applications. This study also proposes future outlooks on the ZnO-rGO gas sensors high selectivity and sensitivity for gas detection at low working temperature.

Biogas is one of the most promising renewable energy fuel sources obtained from various organic matters and used for energy requirements. This work is focused on the usage of biogas in power production. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the different factors that affect the power production during anaerobic digestion. This study examines the usage of Organic Fraction Municipal Solid Waste (OF-MSW), wastewater sludge, and co-digestion of both OF-MSW and wastewater sludge for power production. The digestions are performed under mesophilic conditions at an optimum temperature of 36°C. The maximum power produced is 128 kW when using OF-MSW alone and 48.9 kW for co-digestion (50% OF-MSW + 50% wastewater sludge) and 35.5 kW for wastewater sludge. The paper also focuses on various factors such as pH, temperature, and nitrogen concentration and its influence on power production.