No abstract

No abstract

The Sambhar Salt Lake in Rajasthan, India, offers a unique opportunity to explore halophilic surfactin-producing microorganisms with industrial application. The phylogenetic study, comparative genomics combined with chemotaxonomic research provided insight into the interspecies relativeness of Bacillus sp. Considering the nonribosomal protein sequences (NRPS), Bacillus haynesii strain SAII strain and Bacillus swezeyi strain SEIII showed a high degree of conservation. In silico studies of the isolated Bacillus sp. confirmed the presence of NRPS indicating the presence of surfactin-type lipopeptide biosurfactants. Structural investigation using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, liquid quadrupole triple quadrupole mass spectrometry, 1 H Nuclear mass resonance of the crude biosurfactant revealed further similarities among these two Bacillus species. Methyl esters of the crude biosurfactant indicated high likeliness among them and indicated the presence of pentadecanoic acid and tetradecanoic acid as the crucial fatty acids. Enhanced recovery of oil from contaminated sand using 100% crude biosurfactant ranged from 20% AE 0.05 to 69.20% AE 1.22. This opens the door to a bright future for understanding the molecular diversity of closely related halophilic Bacillus sp. and the potential use of the extracted biosurfactants for bioremediation of contaminants.

No abstract

No abstract

The toxicity imparted by the commercialized use of nanoparticles in environmental remediation has become a big concern.

No abstract

In this paper, we report the simple synthesis, detailed characterization, and total wastewater cleanup by adsorption using bare and surfactant-functionalized cerium oxide (CeO 2 ) nanoparticles. The synthesis of CeO 2 nanoparticles was performed by a facile aqueous solution process and characterized by a diverse range of techniques, which confirmed that the nanoparticles are well-crystalline, possessing good structural and optical properties. The competence of the prepared nanoparticles was further explored to determine the dye removal efficiency. The developed nanoparticles have also provided chlorine-free disinfection of water. The observed results revealed that the synthesized nanoparticles efficiently lower the pollutant concentrations, reduced turbidity, and exhibited significant reductions in total dissolved solids, chemical and biochemical oxygen demands, and pathogenic load. Interestingly, the surfactant-functionalized nanoparticles revealed that they possess the ability to remove approximately 99% of dye (at a specific set of conditions) from a wastewater system. Further, the dye removal efficiencies of functionalized nanoparticles varied from 112.4 to 171.3 mg/g of dye, which is superior as compared to those of other nanoadsorbents studied for the same dye. The excellent dye adsorption performance was mainly due to the higher available surface area of the functionalized CeO 2 nanoparticles. The regeneration of both dyes as well as nanoparticles further strengthens the importance of functionalized nanoparticles to utilize them for the next dye removal cycle. The in vitro antimicrobial and antimold activities of functionalized nanoparticles further revealed their disinfective nature, which is a crucial step in wastewater treatment. The presented work demonstrates that simply synthesized surface-functionalized CeO 2 nanoparticles can be used efficiently for other potential environmental remediation applications.