Particle assisted removal of microbes from surfaces.

Unlabelled: Increased reliance on kill based approaches for disinfection raises concerns of antimicrobial resistance development and has significantly elevated the need for alternate approaches for skin and substrate disinfection. This study focuses on reducing harmful microbes from substrates primarily via removal and to a lesser extent by kill.

Hypothesis: Functional micro-particles designed to adhere to microbes, with a force greater than the force of microbial adhesion to the substrate, would result in enhanced removal-based disinfection of substrates when subject to an external force.

Basic studies on the role of components of Bacillus megaterium as flotation biocollectors in sulphide mineral separation.

Studies were carried out to assess the utility of the cellular and extracellular constituents of Bacillus megaterium for the flotation of sphalerite and galena minerals. Based on the flotation results on the individual minerals, it was observed that sphalerite was preferentially floated compared to galena. A maximum selectivity index (SI) value of 11.

A novel property of DNA - as a bioflotation reagent in mineral processing.

Environmental concerns regarding the use of certain chemicals in the froth flotation of minerals have led investigators to explore biological entities as potential substitutes for the reagents in vogue. Despite the fact that several microorganisms have been used for the separation of a variety of mineral systems, a detailed characterization of the biochemical molecules involved therein has not been reported so far. In this investigation, the selective flotation of sphalerite from a sphalerite-galena mineral mixture has been achieved using the cellular components of Bacillus species.