Fundamentals of Electrostatic Spraying

The desired attributes of electrostatic spraying are uniform deposition onto both directly exposed or obscured crop surfaces which minimize the off-target losses of active ingredients to soil, water, atmosphere and provide more effective and economical pest control. This chapter presents an overview of electrostatic spraying technologies in the field of agriculture emphasizing the key role of advanced electrostatic instrumentation and chronicles the scientific innovations in the parlance of providing cost effective and reliable commercial systems along with an insight on the needs of future research perspectives and directives. It is aimed primarily at a familiarization with spraying concepts and engineering practices. This text is to bridge the knowledge and experience gap among researchers and technology developers and the people involved in electrostatic processes applied to agriculture and food processing. It will also introduce the engineering aspects of design and development of an electrostatic spraying nozzle for agricultural applications.

Restoration of Environment Through Phytoremediation

Environmental restoration is a phenomenon required to keep the ecosystem intact, or enhance the rejuvenation of impaired environmental media; soil, water and air. Various methods of remediation exist, yet restoring the environment to the proximal or original state appear elusive to most methods. Interestingly, phytoremediation which is a biological process does not only restore environment in a greener way, but also can adopt diverse mechanisms such phytoextraction, phytodegradation, rhizodegrdation, phytostabilization and phytovolatization, to achieve the desired outcome. The chapter also unlined the merits and a few demerits of this principle, while the identification of sustainable plants and the mitigation of time constraints were the future directions mentioned for the projection of phytoremediation as the ideal approach for the restoration of the environment.

Bioremediation of Pesticides under the Influence of Bacteria and Fungi

The demand and development of chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals is increasing constantly posing a potential threat to the environment. The presence of pesticides and their impact makes their removal and detoxification a more urgent need. Bioremediation technologies have been successfully used and are gaining more and more importance with increased acceptance of eco-friendly remediation solutions among the scientific community. Bioremediation by fungi and bacteria is considered a better option for making environment free from pesticides, as chemical and physical methods are not only costly but also not very effective. However, the complex nature of pesticides is an obstacle to degrade the pesticides, so more versatile and robust microorganisms need to be identified which can produce the desired result in a very cost-effective manner. This study examines the role played by fungi and bacteria in degradation of the pesticides in environment and also identify the future research problems in this regard that need to be experimented.

Microbe Associated Phytoremediation Technology for Management of Oil Sludge

Environmental contamination due to petroleum compounds is a serious global issue. Oil /petroleum refineries produce huge amount of oil sludge during drilling, storage, transport, refining which spoil soil and ground water resources. Such activities release different compounds viz. alkane, mono- polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), asphaltene, resins and heavy metals. Due to physico-chemical properties, PAHs are one of most targeted compounds as they are highly persistent, carcinogenic, and have mutagenic effects on ecosystem. Such problems of PAHs drag researcher's attention to find some reliable and cost effective solution for oil sludge disposal management. Since last few decades, extensive research work has been carried out on various methods for treatment of oil sludge. In recent years, microbial assisted phytoremediation treatment technologies are being studied since these are reliable and cost effective for field applications. Here, we have discussed about combined eco-friendly technology of plant and microbe(s) to treat oil sludge for its better management.

Optimization Studies on Biosorption of Ni(ii) and Cd(ii) from Wastewater in a Packed Bed Bioreactor

This chapter refers to the study of the biosorption of Ni(II) and Cd(II) in packed bed bioreactor by Pseudomonas putida. The conventional treatment methods of Nickel and Cadmium were elaborated and compared with biosorption. The methods for optimization of process conditions for biosorption of Ni(II) and Cd(II) in packed bed bioreactor by Pseudomonas putida were explained. The optimum conditioned were determined to be flow rate of 300 mL/h, initial metal ion concentration of 100 mg/L and bed height of 20 cm with weight of biosorbent of 12 g, and it was found that the Agar immobilized Pseudomonas putida showed maximum percent biosorption and bed saturation occurred at 20 minutes. Optimization results of Ni(II) and Cd(II) by Pseudomonas putida from the Design Expert software were obtained as bed height of 19.93 cm, initial metal ion concentration of 103.85 mg/L, and flow rate of 310.57 mL/h. The percent biosorption of Ni(II) and Cd(II) is 87.2% and 88.2% respectively. The predicted optimized parameters are in agreement with the experimental results. Experiments were carried out at established optimum conditions of bed height of 20.77 cm, flow rate of 309.09 mL/h, and initial metal ion concentration of 109.23 mg/L and results of biosorption of Ni(II) and Cd(II) were reproduced and they were in agreement with the predicted results. Based the experimental results, it was observed that the Pseudomonas putida was the best choice to remove Nickel and Cadmium ions from wastewater in a continuous column system.

Green Strategy for Production of Antimicrobial Textiles

The article deals with the measurement of the antimicrobial activity for some natural dyes against various types of microbes as (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomons aeruginosa), Using nano materials for some metals or its oxides as titanium oxide for treatment of fabrics before dyeing, these materials were fixed on the fiber by chemical bonds to acquire new properties as antimicrobial activities against bacteria and fungi and also to protect from ultra violet rays. Using a traditional and microwave heating for extraction of dyes and dyeing methods because microwave heating is a more effective method than traditional heating. Other additional features are that, they are cheaper, more economical, eco-friendly, and produce a higher dye uptake as compared to conventional techniques, environmentally friendly pre-treatment by chitosan before dyeing in order to obtain dyed fabric with high quality and more protected against microbes. Application of antimicrobial agents in the development in the textiles as chitosan, qutenary ammonium salt and neem.

Bioremediation of Oil Contaminated Soil and Water

Pollution from petroleum, plant and animal origin oils, which are released via oil production and shipping operations, refineries, accidental spills, effluents of different industries such as hotels, restaurants, food processing, etc. is ubiquitous in the environment. This necessitates the need for cost effective and efficient remediation technologies. Dealing with the problem chemically and physically is known to generate secondary pollutants and incurs high cost. Expediting natural attenuation via stimulating pollutant degradation activity of residential microbial community and/or introducing competent microflora in to polluted sites has been identified as the most successful and cost effective technology and is termed bioremediation. Phytoremediation, an emerging branch of bioremediation, has also been recognized as a promising treatment technology. Chapter examines the extent of work carried out in in situ and ex situ bioremediation strategies to mitigate oil pollution, the validity of such practices in terms of efficiency of the process and the future research directives.

Engineering of Microbes for Heavy Metal Tolerance

Use of microorganisms and their enzymes to degrade heavy metal contaminants from the environment, is termed as bioremediation. This chapter majorly deals with heavy metals, their toxicity and their ill effects upon the environment. It depicts how microbes can help to combat the side effect of heavy metal toxicity by stimulating their natural defensive mechanism. In spite of their natural defensive system against metal pollution, still there is an urgent need of utilizing advanced molecular tools to further exaggerate their resistance ability for bioremediation. Earlier accumulation of heavy metals was done through overproduction of various metal binding proteins located in the cytoplasm. Recently cell surface engineering of microbes appears an attractive technology for removal or recovery of metal ions from the environment. To expedite the degradation of pollutant, a number of different molecular tools have been established for improving the microbial strains at molecular and genetic level. Microbial engineering thus, seems a promising approach which elucidates the effect of biotechnological processes used for decontaminating the polluted environment and in the future, humans and animals might gain from these organisms in remediating environmental contamination. However, these genetic modifications should be stable and harmless towards the nature as well as for the microbes itself and any genetic alterations must always ensure the actual pros and cons behind it.

Bioremediation via Nanoparticles

Arena of nanotechnology has revolutionized the field of bioremediation to overcome the problems of environmental pollutions. Approaches applied for the monitoring and treatment of contaminants includes control of pollutants, sensing the pollutants and remediation by nanoparticles. Among the three approaches, the most important is to remediate the pollutants. This chapter highlights the eco-friendly, accurate, cost effective, ex-situ and sustainable approach for the “Green Bioremediation” with the help of nanoparticles. Nanoparticles covers the treatment of surface water, groundwater and industrial wastewater contaminated by toxic metal ions, radionuclides, organic and inorganic solutes and also reduce aromatic recalcitrant compounds from soil and air pollution. There is also a scope of enhancing the remediation potential of nanoparticles by manipulating size and geometry. They have given a new hope towards positive sustainable approach for environment and human welfare.

Arsenic Pollution in the Environment

Arsenic (As) pollution in drinking water and soils poses a threat to over 100 million people worldwide, making it one of the largest environmental catastrophes particularly in Bangladesh and West Bengal- where more than one-third of the population are at risk. Microbial As metabolism and mobilization in aqua system is relatively a recent issue.The presence of the arsenic oxidation, reduction, and extrusion genes (aioA, arrA, arsB, and acr3) are explored within microorganisms retrieved from As-contaminated environments. However, the nature of microbiome involved within a certain As transformation environment is still an area of research, specifically how microbial redox transformations occur, that can be exploited to mitigate the longstanding problem. The present chapter overviews the mechanism of As pollution in various environment, microbial diversity in such environment, correlation of their activities to the biogeochemistry of As and finally application of microbes as a bioremediation tool for As detoxification and bioremediation.