• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.44-52
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• 2002

Composite materials are created by combining two or more component to achieve desired properties which could not be obtained with the separate components. The use of reinforcing fillers, which can reduce material costs and improve certain properties, is increasing in thermoplastic polymer composites. Currently, various inorganic fillers such as talc, mica, clay, glass fiber and calcium carbonate are being incorporated into thermoplastic composites. Nevertheless, lignocellulose fibers have drawn attention due to their abundant availability, low cost and renewable nature. In recent, interest has grown in composites made from lignocellulose fiber in thermoplastic polymer matrices, particularly for low cost/high volume applications. In addition to high specific properties, lignocellulose fibers offer a number of benefits for lignocellulose fiber/thermoplastic polymer composites. These include low hardness, which minimize abrasion of the equipment during processing, relatively low density, biodegradability, and low cost on a unit-volume basis. In spite of the advantage mentioned above, the use of lignocellulose fibers in thermoplastic polymer composites has been plagued by difficulties in obtaining good dispersion and strong interfacial adhesion because lignocellulose fiber is hydrophilic and thermoplastic polymer is hydrophobic. The application of lignocellulose fibers as reinforcements in composite materials requires, just as for glass-fiber reinforced composites, a strong adhesion between the fiber and the matrix regardless of whether a traditional polymer matrix, a biodegradable polymer matrix or cement is used. Further this article gives a survey about physical and chemical treatment methods which improve the fiber matrix adhesion, their results and effects on the physical properties of composites. Coupling agents in lignocellulose fiber and polymer composites play a very important role in improving the compatibility and adhesion between polar lignocellulose fiber and non-polar polymeric matrices. In this article, we also review various kinds of coupling agent and interfacial mechanism or phenomena between lignocellulose fiber and thermoplastic polymer.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.21 no.3 s.54
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• pp.255-266
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• 2006

Soil organic matter (OM) is well documented for its capacity to retain persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and thus is important in dictating the environmental partitioning of POPs between media such as air, water, and soil. Black carbon (BC) is a small component of OM and exhibitt a 10$\sim$100 times greater sorption capacity of POPs than humified OM. Furthermore, due to the inherent long environmental life time of BC, a result of its resistance to physical and biological degradation, POPs can continue to accumulate in BC over a long period of time. The unique properties of BC have been of particular interest over the last 30 years and have resulted in broad research being conducted into its effects of POP cycling in atmospheric, oceanographic and soil matrices. The results of such studies have proved valuable In providing new research initiatives into the role of BC in the cycling of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) as well as giving further insight into the long range atmospheric transport (LRAT) potential and subsequent risk assessment criteria for persistent organic pollutants (POPs). In this report, we introduce a novel study examining the relationships between BC and OM with respect to their POP sorption capacity and discuss the role of BC in influencing the environmental regulation of organic pollutants.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.17-22
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• 2003

This paper presents an experimental investigation of a reversible colloidal seismic damper, which is statically loaded, The porous matrix is composed from silica gel (labyrinth or central-cavity architecture), coated by organo-silicones substances, in order to achieve a hydrophobic surface. Water is considered as associated lyophobic liquid. Reversible colloidal damper static test rig and the measuring technique of the static hysteresis are described. Influence of the pare and particle diameters, particle architecture and length of the grafted molecule upon the reversible colloidal damper hysteresis is investigated, for distinctive types and mixtures of porous matrices, Variation of the reversible colloidal damper dissipated energy and efficiency with temperature, pressure, is illustrated.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.128-135
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• 2005

Mixed-mode hydrophobic/ionic matrices exhibit a salt-tolerant property for adsorbing target protein from high-ionic strength feedstock, which allows the application of undiluted feedstock via an expanded bed process. In the present work, a new type of mixed-mode adsorbent designed for expanded bed adsorption, Fastline $PRO^{\circledR}$, was challenged for the capture of nattokinase from the high ionic fermentation broth of Bacillus subtilis. Two important factors, pH and ion concentration, were investigated with regard to the performance of nattokinase ad-sorption. Under initial fermentation broth conditions (pH 6.6 and conductivity of 10 mS/cm) the adsorption capacity of nattokinase with Fastline PRO was high, with a maximum capacity of 5,350 U/mL adsorbent. The elution behaviors were investigated using packed bed adsorption experiments, which demonstrated that the effective desorption of nattokinase could be achieved by effecting a pH of 9.5. The biomass pulse response experiments were carried out in order to evaluate the biomass/adsorbent interactions between Bacillus subtilis cells and Fastline PRO, and to demonstrate a stable expanded bed in the feedstock containing Bacillus subtilis cells. Finally, an EBA process, utilizing mixed-mode Fastline PRO adsorbent, was optimized to capture nattokinase directly from the fermentation broth. The purification factor reached 12.3, thereby demonstrating the advantages of the mixed-mode EBA in enzyme separation.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.299-308
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• 2009

We manufactured PVA-derived hydrogels using a foam generation technique that has been widely used to prepare colloidal gas aphrons(CGA). These gels were differentiated to the conventional gels such as for medical or pharmaceutical applications, which have tiny pores and some crystalline structure. Rather these should be used in de-pollution devices or adhesion of cells or biomolecules. The crosslinkers used in this work were amino acid, organic acid, sugars and lipids(vitamins). The structures of the gels were observed in a scanned electron microscope. Amino acids gels showed remarkably higher swelling ratios probably because their typical functional groups help constructing a highly crosslinked network along with hydrogen bonds. Boric acid and starch would catalyze dehydration while structuring to result in much lower water content and accordingly high gel content, leading to less elastic, hard gels. Bulky materials such as ascorbic acid or starch produced, in general, large pores in the matrices and also nicotinamide, having large hydrophobic patches was likely to enlarge pore size of its gels as well since the hydrophobicity would expel water molecules, thus leading to reduced swelling. Hydrophilicity(or hydrophobicity), functional groups which are involved in the reaction or physical linkage, and bulkiness of crosslinkers were found to be more critical to gel's cross linking structure and its density than molecular weights that seemed to be closely related to pore sizes. Microscopic observation revealed that pores were more or less homogeneous and their average sizes were $20{\mu}m$ for methionine, $10-15{\mu}m$ for citric acid, $50-70{\mu}m$ for L-ascorbic acid, $30-40{\mu}m$ for nicotinamide, and $70-80{\mu}m$ for starch. Also a sensory test showed that amino acid and glucose gels were more elastic meanwhile acid and nicotinamide gels turned out to be brittle or non-elastic at their high concentrations. The elasticity of a gel was reasonably correlated with its water content or swelling ratio. In addition, the PVA gel including 20% ascorbic acid showed fair ability of cell adherence as 0.257mg/g-hydrogel and completely degraded phenanthrene(10 mM) in 240 h.