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Water pollution is a major concern due to its detrimental effects on the environment and public health. The particular danger of inorganic pollutants arises from their persistent toxicity and inability to biodegrade. Recently, electrocoagulation (EC) has been demonstrated as an alternative sustainable approach to purifying wastewater due to the increasingly strict pollution prevention rules. In particular, EC has been used to remove inorganic pollutants, such as Cr, Zn, Pb, or As. EC has emerged as a sustainable tool for resource recovery of some inorganic pollutants such as N and P that, when recovered, have value as plant nutrients and are critical in a circular economy. These recovered materials can be obtained from diverse agricultural drainage water and recycled as fertilizers. In this work, a state-of-the-art technique is reviewed describing the advances in contaminant removal and nutrient recovery using EC through an in-depth discussion of the factors influencing the contaminant removal process, including operating pH, time, power, and concentration. Furthermore, limitations of the EC technology are reviewed, including the high-power consumption, fast deterioration of the sacrificial electrodes, and the types of contaminants that could not be efficiently removed. Finally, new emerging constructs in EC process optimization parameters are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing scaffolds to fit with essential requirements for wound dressings is still a challenge. A material with high antibacterial activity and biocompatibility is targeted. In this case, the electrospinning technique is used to fabricate a nanofiber scaffold of polylactic acid (PLA) embedded with ginger and/or molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) and cupric oxide (CuO). The nanofiber scaffolds were examined using SEM, TEM, Raman, XRD, FTIR, and EDX. In addition, the surface topography of the nanofiber scaffold of MoO3/ginger@PLA showed that the nanofiber diameters differ from 0.085 to 0.34 µm. Furthermore, the contact angle of the water drop on the surface of the pure PLA and MoO3/CuO/GO/ginger@PLA is remarkably changed from 32.3° to 18.9°. Moreover, the cell viability test of the composition MoO3/CuO/GO/ginger@PLA is above the IC50 at all concentrations. Meanwhile, the antibacterial test exhibited antibacterial activity against E. coli and S. aureus for the scaffolds, with an inhibition zone of 23 ± 0.816 mm and 16.33 ± 0.942 mm for MoO3/CuO/ginger@PLA and 20.3 ± 0.471 mm and 15.33 ± 0.943 mm for MoO3/CuO/GO/ginger@PLA. The obtained results are appropriate to aid the cells to grow and proliferate. As a result of that, the fabricated scaffolds could be utilized in biomedical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fast advancements in technology have generated significant interest in optoelectronic materials. Nevertheless, the difficulty of creating affordable materials with exceptional optical characteristics is an ongoing challenge. Therefore, the objective of this work was to tune the optical properties of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) by embedding silver vanadate (SV) in the polymer matrix. Moreover, the wettability test of the fabricated composite membranes showed a hydrophobic behavior, with the PMMA film containing 0.6 wt.% SV showed a contact angle of 86.75 ± 0.7°. Furthermore, SV showed high thermal stability with a maximum weight loss of 0.74% at 830°C, which is very high thermal stability at high temperatures. In addition, the 0.6 wt.% SV@PMMA film exhibited a maximum weight loss of 96.7% at 785°C. Moreover, the 0.6 wt.% SV@PMMA film showed the lowest indirect band gap energy (2.02 eV) compared to the other films and pure SV NPs. The findings demonstrate the potential of the synthesized films for optoelectronic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]