The aim of the present study was to investigate biosurfactant-producing culturable bacteria inhabiting the coast of the Arabian Sea at Karachi. Overall, 15 seawater samples were collected from the Arabian Sea coast of Karachi. Isolation, characterization, and screening for 89 biosurfactant-producing bacterial strains were conducted through 8 conventional screening tests. Through GSP agar plate method 22 strains were found to be Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Gram reaction revealed 70% of the isolates to be gramnegative. Furthermore, 24% of the isolates showed hemolytic activity, 44% exhibited positive results for oil-spreading test, 54% showed emulsification to at least 1 of the 3 hydrocarbons tested, BATH assay results indicated maximum adhesion for hexane, 52.8% produced positive results for CTAB agar plate assay, drop-collapse activity was found in 84% of the isolates, and emulsification assay revealed highest emulsification for xylene. Findings revealed none of the isolates to be negative for every screening test conducted, while only one gram-negative isolate, DGHE65, identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, was positive for all the tests for biosurfactant production. Results indicate that these isolates have potential for future environmental friendly applications such as bioremediation and industrial biotechnology.

Ammonia (NH3) is an important chemical in several fields, such as agriculture, pharmaceutical, material, and chemicals manufacturing. However, NH3 is a toxic gaseous pollutant and NH3 release results in environment pollution. Minimizing NH3 emission is of great significance for solving NH3-related environmental issues and promoting the reuse of NH3 resources. Ionic liquids (ILs) are energy-saving gas absorbents, because of their low vapor pressure, good chemical stability, and high NH3 solubility. The recent research progress of conventional, functionalized ILs and novel IL-based materials and solvents for NH3 separation was summarized. The effects of anions and cations on NH3 absorption capacity, as well as the absorption mechanism of ILs, were discussed in detail in this Review. The simulated dynamic parameters of NH3–IL systems including mass diffusivity, heat- and mass-transfer coefficient were also discussed. In addition, this Review summarized the industrial application achievement of ILs in NH3 separation and recovery from NH3-containing tail gas, which spans from simulation, pilot plant to industrial applications. Finally, the research trends in NH3 separation by IL-based systems were proposed based on existing research.

The efficient capture of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) has industrial, economic, and environmental significance. Here, CO 2 capture performance in terms of CO 2 /CH 4 selectivity for the zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8) is enhanced by impregnation of 1-nbutyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanide [BMIM][DCA]. The preparation of ionic liquids (ILs)/ZIF-8 composites, their comprehensive characterization, and the impact of IL impregnation are all investigated. The crystal structure and morphology of ZIF-8 remained intact even after the impregnation of ILs, according to X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy studies. The infrared spectroscopy known as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy determines the interaction between ILs and ZIF-8 in the composite. The isotherm fitting was also performed by dual site Langmuir models, which showed good agreement with the experimental results. The CO 2 /CH 4 selectivity results demonstrated that the ideal selectivity for the IL-impregnated ZIF-8 composite has five times higher selectivity than pristine ZIF-8 at 0.05 bar which is the highest reported selectivity. The normalized selectivity of this type of IL/ZIF-8 composite is also higher. This study suggested that the IL/MOF composite with a tunable structure have a strong potential for enhanced acid gas separation performance to meet the environmental challenges.

In this paper, a two-level finite element method for Oseen viscoelastic fluid flow obeying an Oldroyd-B type constitutive law is presented. With the newly proposed algorithm, solving a large system of the constitutive equations will not be much more complex than the solution of one linearized equation. The viscoelastic fluid flow constitutive equation consists of nonlinear terms, which are linearized by taking a known velocity b(x), and transforms into the Oseen viscoelastic fluid flow model. Since Oseen viscoelastic fluid flow is already linear, we use a two-level method with a new technique. The two-level approach is consistent and efficient to study the coupled system which contains nonlinear terms. In the first step, the solution on the coarse grid is derived, and the result is used to determine the solution on the fine mesh in the second step. The decoupling algorithm takes two steps to solve a linear system on the fine mesh. The stability of the algorithm is derived for the temporal discretization and obtains the desired error bound. Two numerical experiments are executed to show the accuracy of the theoretical analysis. The approximations of the stress tensor, velocity vector, and pressure field are P1-discontinuous, P2-continuous and P1-continuous finite elements respectively.

In this paper, we present a stabilized lowest equal-order mixed finite element (FE) method for the Oseen viscoelastic fluid flow obeying an Oldroyd-B type constitutive law. To approximate the velocity, pressure, and stress tensor, we choose lowest equal-order FE triples p1-p1-p1 dg respectively. It is well known that these elements don't satisfy the inf-sup (or LBB) condition. Owing to the violation of the essential stability condition, the system became unstable. To overcome this difficulty, a standard pressure stabilization term is added to the discrete variational formulation, which ensures the well-posedness of the FE scheme. The existences and uniqueness of the FE scheme are derived. The desired optimal error bound is obtained. Three numerical experiments are executed to illustrate the validity and efficiency of the numerical method. The stabilized method provides attractive computational advantages, such as simpler data structures, parameter-free, no calculations of higher-order derivatives, and fast solver in simulations.