Sharif Digital Repository

Horseradish peroxidase was encapsulated in calcium alginate for the purpose of phenol removal. Upon immobilization, pH profile of enzyme activity changes as it shows higher value at basic and acidic solution. Investigation into time course of phenol removal for both encapsulated and free enzyme showed that encapsulated enzyme had nearly similar efficiency in comparison with the same concentration of free enzyme; however the capsules were reusable up to four cycles without any changes in their retention activity  

Horseradish peroxidase was encapsulated in calcium alginate for the purpose of phenol removal. Considering enzyme encapsulation efficiency, retention activity and enzyme leakage of the capsules, the best gelation condition was found to be 1 % w/v of sodium alginate solution and 5.5 % w/v of calcium chloride hexahydrate. Upon immobilization, pH profile of enzyme activity changes as it shows higher value at basic and acidic solution. Besides, for each phenol concentration there would be an enzyme concentration which going further than this value has no significant effect on phenol removal. Investigation into time course of phenol removal for both encapsulated and free enzyme showed that... 

Background and Objective: During the manufacture and storage of probiotic products, there are always possibilities that probiotics be exposed to harmful stresses such as high temperature, low pH, various osmotic pressures and high oxygen levels, which can decrease the number of living cells. Encapsulation is one of the methods used to protect living cells such as probiotic bacteria from environmental challenges. Up-to-date, various compounds with abilities to protect bacteria during freeze-drying and to increase viability during storage have been identified. In this study, alginate with calcium chloride was used to encapsulate probiotic bacteria using extrusion method. Then, effects of... 

One of the main components of any solar power plant is its thermal heat storage system. Heat storage reduces the cost of power generation by increasing the capacity factor of the system. This paper aims to model and optimize the operation of a consecutive multi-layer Phase Change Material (PCM) thermal heat storage system, named Cascade Latent Heat Storage (CLHS), using the method of characteristics and genetic algorithm. The model is validated through comparison with experimental data available in the literature. The model can predict fluid and PCM temperature, PCM phase and the energy absorbed by PCM. A sensitivity analysis is employed for both the PCM and the fluid parameters. The PCM... 

With the increased occurrence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, alternatives to classical antibiotics are urgently needed for treatment of various infectious diseases. Medicinal plant extracts are among the promising candidates due to their bioactive components. The aim of this study was to prepare niosome-encapsulated Echinacea angustifolia extract and study its efficacy against multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae strains. Encapsulation was first optimized by Design of Experiments, followed by the empirical study. The obtained niosomes were further charac-terized for the size and morphology using dynamic light scattering (DLS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning... 

In this work, we have studied single-texture formation of CoSi2 layer in heat-treated Co/Ta0.7W0.3/Si(100) structure. Moreover, self-encapsulation process of the CoSi2 layer and surface roughness of the encapsulated layer, as a contact layer, has been examined. A direct current magnetron co-sputtering technique was employed to deposit a 10 nm Ta0.7W0.3 alloy intermediate layer. After growth of the layer on the Si substrate, a 25 nm Co layer was deposited using thermal evaporation method. Post-annealing process of the films was treated in an N2(80%) + H2(20%) ambient in a temperature range from 400 to 1000 °C for 60 min. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that a single-texture CoSi2 layer with... 

The demands for carrying data traffic in long distances have been increasing rapidly and Service providers encounter the challenging issue of the best approach for handling the high volumes of Ethernet traffic generated by the proliferation of network access applications. The next generation SONET/SDH solutions offer integration of several functionalities into a single network element, thus reducing the power and space requirements as well as facilitating the configuration and management of the network. They are expected to continuously support TDM services, while enabling carriers to offer new Ethernet-based data services. Therefore Ethernet over SDH standard that enables legacy SDH/SONET... 

The present simulation aims to investigate adding NEPCM nanoparticles to water in the natural convection inside a cavity by using FVM method and SIMPLE algorithm. Nano-encapsulated phase change material (NEPCM) consists of a shell and core with phase change property. The NEPCM particles in base fluid have the ability to transfer heat by absorbing and dissipating heat in the liquid-solid phase change state. In this study, the energy wall phenomenon due to the phase change of NEPCM core has appeared that the whose energy transfer strength is proportional to the latent heat of NEPCM core and the thickness of the energy wall. Moreover, the relationship between the energy wall and the heat... 

The gelatin/gum arabic microcapsules encapsulating peppermint oil were prepared by complex coacervationusing tannic acid as hardening agent. The effects of various parameters, including concentration of wall material, core material, tannic acid and Tween 80 were investigated on particle size and encapsulation efficiency. For statistical evaluation of the parameters, Taguchi method was concerned. The size of prepared spherical microcapsules was 19-66 micrometers. The results showed that, particle size increased with increasing the core and the wall concentration and decreased with increasing tannic acid and Tween 80 concentraIfd efficiency increased by increasing the core and wall... 

Droplet-based microfluidics offers significant advantages, such as high throughput and scalability, making platforms based on this technology ideal candidates for point-of-care (POC) testing and clinical diagnosis. However, the efficiency of co-encapsulation in droplets is suboptimal, limiting the applicability of such platforms for the biosensing applications. The homogeneity of the bioanalytes in the droplets is an unsolved problem. While there is extensive literature on the experimental setups and active methods used to increase the efficiency of such platforms, passive techniques have received less attention, and their fundamentals have not been fully explored. Here, we develop a novel... 

The dynamics driven interaction between the bubbles in a cavitation cluster is known to be a complex phenomenon indicative of a highly active nonlinear as well as chaotic behavior in ultrasonic fields. By considering the cluster of encapsulated microbubble with a thin elastic shell in ultrasonic fields, in this paper, the dynamics of microbubbles has been studied via applying the methods of chaos physics. Bifurcation, Lyapunov exponent, and time series are plotted with respect to variables such as amplitude, initial bubble radius, frequency and viscosity. The findings of the study indicate that a bubble cluster undergoes a chaotic unstable region as the amplitude and frequency of ultrasonic... 

In this study, a mixture of nano-encapsulated phase change materials in water has been used as the working fluid in a pulsating heat pipe in order to investigate its thermal performance. The results of the experiments showed that using the nano-encapsulated paraffin dispersed in water as working fluid improves heat transfer and decreases the thermal resistance of the pulsating heat pipe. On the other hand, among the tested concentrations for nano-encapsulated paraffin, there is an optimal value in which increasing the concentration causes an increase in the thermal resistance of the pulsating heat pipe due to the increased dynamic viscosity of the fluid. Enhancement in the thermal... 

In modern heat transfer systems, thermal storage not only causes the balance between demand and supply, but also improves the heat transfer efficiency in these systems. In the present study, a comprehensive review of the applications of micro- or nano-encapsulated phase change slurries (MPCMs/NPCMs), as well as their effects on thermal storage and heat transfer enhancement, has been conducted. MPCMs/NPCMs have a myriad of applications and various usages such as pipe and channel flows, photovoltaic/thermal, solar heaters, air conditioning systems, storage tanks and heat pipes that have been categorized and studied. It was found that there are many advantageous adding MPCM/NPCM to the base... 

Cell-laden hydrogel microcapsules enable the high-throughput production of cell aggregates, which are relevant for three-dimensional tissue engineering and drug screening applications. However, current microcapsule production strategies are limited by their throughput, multistep protocols, and limited amount of compatible biomaterials. We here present a single-step process for the controlled microfluidic production of single-core microcapsules using enzymatic outside-in cross-linking of tyramine-conjugated polymers. It was hypothesized that a physically, instead of the conventionally explored biochemically, controlled enzymatic cross-linking process would improve the reproducibility,... 

A key direction toward enhancing the long term and outdoor stability of the perovskite solar cells is encapsulation. As a result, a suitable encapsulation package is required to prevent moisture and oxygen penetration toward the perovskite solar cells. In this work, a low-cost commercially available bilayer structure of poly (methyl methacrylate)/ room-temperature vulcanizing silicone rubber (RTV) encapsulation package for enhancing the long term stability of the perovskite solar cells has been investigated. Encapsulated cells retained more than 80% of the initial efficiency at the environmental condition of 50% moisture, and room temperature after 1000 h, however reference cell efficiency...