Boosting Demulsification and Antifouling Capacity of Membranes via an Enhanced Piezoelectric Effect for Sustaining Emulsion Separation.

Traditional superwettable membranes for demulsification of oil/water emulsions could not maintain their separation performance for long because of low demulsification capacity and surface fouling during practical applications. A charging membrane could repel the contaminants for a while, the charge of which would gradually be neutralized during the separation progress. Here, a superhydrophilic piezoelectric membrane (SPM) with sustained demulsification and antifouling capacity is proposed for achieving prolonged emulsion separation, which is capable of converting inherent pulse hydraulic filtration pressure into pulse voltage.

Designing Robust Superhydrophobic Materials for Inhibiting Nucleation of Clathrate Hydrates by Imitating Glass Sponges.

Superhydrophobic surfaces are suggested to deal with hydrate blockage because they can greatly reduce adhesion with the formed hydrates. However, they may promote the formation of fresh hydrate nuclei by inducing an orderly arrangement of water molecules, further aggravating hydrate blockage and meanwhile suffering from their fragile surfaces. Here, inspired by glass sponges, we report a robust anti-hydrate-nucleation superhydrophobic three-dimensional (3D) porous skeleton, perfectly resolving the conflict between inhibiting hydrate nucleation and superhydrophobicity.

Directional Self-Transportation of Droplets on Superwetting Wedge-Shaped Surface in Air and Underliquid Environments.

The directional self-transportation of droplets has aroused great attention in microfluidic systems. However, most reported surfaces are mainly designed for driving water droplets to move in air, displaying low adaptability in complex environments. This work presents a wedge-shaped surface with multiple superwettability, i.

Janus sand filter with excellent demulsification ability in separation of surfactant-stabilized oil/water emulsions: An experimental and molecular dynamics simulation study.

Developing efficient separation materials for surfactant-stabilized oil/water emulsions is of great importance while significantly challenging. In this work, a sand filter with Janus channels was prepared by simply mixing superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic quartz sand in a mass ratio of 1:1. Due to the imbalanced force of droplets in those Janus channels, better separation performance under gravity was achieved for both surfactant-stabilized oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions than the superhydrophilic or superhydrophobic sand filter alone.

Metformin-Induced Epigenetic Toxicity in Zebrafish: Experimental and Molecular Dynamics Simulation Studies.

The increased detection of many prescription drugs in aquatic environments has heightened concerns of their potential ecotoxicological effects. In this study, the effects of metformin (MEF) exposure on tissue accumulation, gene expression, and global DNA methylation (GDM) in zebrafish were investigated. The toxic mechanism of MEF exposure was simulated by molecular dynamics (MD) to reveal any conformational changes to DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1).