S. R. Boselin Prabhu’s research while affiliated with Surya Engineering College and other places

This study aims to investigate the mechanical, thermal, morphological, and characterization properties of a polymer composite composed of water hyacinth plant fibres. In order to improve the mechanical properties of the composite specimens, a new powder derived from the moringa plant was used for the first time as a filler material in the water hyacinth plant-reinforced polymer composites. In this study, composite specimens were prepared using a hot compression moulding machine. The weight percentage of moringa resin filler powder and hyacinth fibre was varied during the process from 2.5 to 7.5% and 15 to 35%. The resulting tensile strength ranged from 18.24 MPa to 32.14 MPa, flexural strength ranged from 38.64 to 56.32 MPa, impact strength ranged from 1 to 3.75 J, and hardness ranged from 66 to 98 Shore D hardness. The composite sample containing 5% moringa filler powder and 30% WH fibre content achieved high mechanical strength, maximum decomposition temperatures, and high crystallinity percentages. It exhibited 11–13% higher strength compared to the other samples. Absorption studies showed weight gains of 3.42% and 4.45% for water and chemical absorption, respectively. The fracture surfaces of the composite specimens were analysed using the SEM technique. The fabricated composites could be useful for particle board and medium density fibre board applications.

Nanotechnology is a fast-expanding area with a wide range of applications in science, engineering, health, pharmacy, and other fields. Among many techniques that are employed toward the production of nanoparticles, synthesis using green technologies is the simplest and environment friendly. Nanoparticles produced from plant extracts have become a very popular subject of study in recent decades due to their diverse advantages such as low-cost synthesis, product stability, and ecofriendly protocols. These merits have prompted the development of nanoparticles from a variety of sources, including bacteria, fungi, algae, proteins, enzymes, etc., allowing for large-scale production with minimal contamination. However, nanoparticles obtained from plant extracts and phytochemicals exhibit greater reduction and stabilization and hence have proven the diversity of properties, like catalyst/photocatalyst, magnetic, antibacterial, cytotoxicity, circulating tumor deoxy ribo nucleic acid (CT-DNA) binding, gas sensing, etc. In the current scenario, nanoparticles can also play a critical role in cleaning wastewater and making it viable for a variety of operations. Nano-sized photocatalysts have a great scope toward the removal of large pollutants like organic dyes, heavy metals, and pesticides in an eco-friendly and sustainable manner from industrial effluents. Thus, in this review article, we discuss the synthesis of several metal nanoparticles using diverse plant extracts, as well as their characterization via techniques like UV–vis (ultraviolet–visible), XRD (X-ray diffraction), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), TEM (transmission electron microscopy), FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy), etc., and catalytic activity on various hazardous systems.

Herein we summarize the production of silver/copper oxide nanocomposites (Ag/CuO NCs) by a facile solution combustion method with the aid of abio-fuel as reductant. Powder XRD results revealed the formation of Ag/CuO NCs with average crystallite size ranging from 20 to 25 nm. These NCs were tested for their antimycobacterial activity against four mycobacterium species namely Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv ATCC 27294, Mycobacterium abscessus ATCC 19977, Mycobacterium fortuitum ATCC 6841, Mycobacterium chelonae ATCC and anticarcinogenic activity on breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231. Scavenging activity was evaluated by the 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl hydrate (DPPH) method. Results indicated that the Ag/CuO NCs had higher anticancer and slightly better scavenging activities than the undoped CuO nanoparticles.

The present review discusses various alginate hydrogel adsorbents with unique adsorption performance in environmental remediation. Novel alginate composites were developed with, high swelling capacity and capable of adsorbing toxic inorganic and organic pollutants. Alginate hydrogel adsorbents were developed with a single network and double network structure with excellent adsorption ability in removal of toxic inorganic and/or organic pollutants. Alginate with single or double network composite hydrogels were developed when alginate was combined with graphene/chitosan/polymer to get superior adsorbents in removal of toxic pollutants. Acrylic acid/alginate hydrogel in recent studies are efficient in the elimination of inorganic and organic contaminants. This review will generate interest to researchers to develop novel alginate composite hydrogels with unique properties in the adsorption of toxic inorganic, organic contaminants. This work provides a worthy challenge and the future possibility of designing novel alginate materials for various applications.

Water contamination is a global problem today. Water pollution comes from a variety of causes, including the textile, photographic pigment industries, and so on. Majority of industries discharge their waste directly or indirectly into the river. Therefore, water becomes polluted and as a result, human and aquatic life is affected directly or indirectly. Hence, it is important to treat waste before discharging it into the river to ensure the survival of aquatic life and drinking water. Scientists all over the world have been working on recovering drinking water from textile wastewater. There are many ways to purify the wastewater which include making use of inorganic polymers (polymeric complex, polymeric nanocomposition), nanoparticles, complexes, catalysts, ion exchange resins, etc. Researchers are very interested in synthesizing inorganic polymer materials and evaluating their applications in textile wastewater treatment. Thus, it will be necessary to carry out a review on the inorganic polymers used in textile wastewater for the development of this field as well as for the new readers. In this chapter, we discuss inorganic polymers, classification of polymers, synthesis of polymers, and application of inorganic polymers in wastewater treatment.

Smartphones, as well as other mobile or linked devices, have become more prominent in our everyday lives during the last 10 years. Smartphones shall be largely employed for providing routine life suggestions, for following a definite health agenda, as well as for assessing the individual’s level of stress, or merely for providing complete sustenance for adopting lifestyles, since the amount of time the individuals spend engaging with their smartphones increases day by day. In this chapter, a mobile application that allows a seafarer to choose the appropriate activity based on his/her physical characteristics, fitness level, and quality of life is formulated. Seafarers’ typical physical activity and sleep cycles are hampered by long ocean trips. Nevertheless, there occurs a scarcity of data over the physical activities and sleep habits of sailors. Seafarers have complained about their health and the quality of their lives as a result of their continuous work. The purpose of this research is to define the social support and investigate their relationships concerning health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among sailors. Moreover, it oversees the seafarers’ physical activities and sleep patterns in depth. The quality of one’s sleep is a significant indicator of one’s overall health. Many people have begun to use smartphones to monitor their physical activity and sleep in order to assess their everyday lives. The significant association of their routine life adoptions and interaction patterns of smartphones empowers the people in using them for understanding their lifestyles and sleep habits. Improved life practices including sleep could largely uphold the physical strength and performance. Additionally, this study elaborates novel information regarding social support and quality of life (QOL) amid seafarers. The study also aims to determine the relationships between the overall sleeping period, physical performance, and QoL among seafarers.KeywordsSmartphonesQoLHRQoLFitness levelSleep habitsSleep durationSeafarers

In this manuscript, an elitist power flow management (PFM) scheme of PV/FC/battery/SCAP in smart grid (SG) system is proposed. The proposed structure has photovoltaic (PV) generator (Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) and power limitation mode), battery storage, fuel cell (FC), and super capacitor (SCAP). The proposed method is the consolidation of binary adaptation of ant lion optimizer (BALO) and squirrel search optimizer (SSO), and hence it is known BALSO method. Here, BALO is generated the inverter control pulses depends on power transfer an assortments among source and load side. The formulation of multiobjective function in terms of available source power through grid required generated active with reactive power variety. Here, SSO is utilized to obtain that online control pulse using power flow varieties. Moreover, a power flow management method as per the global state of charge (SOC) of energy storage and load demand is proposed. Finally, the BALSO system is performed on MATLAB/Simulink work site. The efficiency of the BALSO system is analyzed through other existing systems. The elapsed time with proposed and existing technique is evaluated.

Here, we report the synthesis of cobalt-doped copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO–NPs) via combustion strategy with lime juice as a reductant at relatively low temperature of 600 °C and at shorter duration of 3 h. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) results revealed that, every compound was in monoclinic structure with space group C12/C1 (No. 15) and average particle size were found to be 18–21 nm. These NPs were used to evaluate the antimycobacterial activity against “Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv ATCC 27294”, “Mycobacterium abscessus ATCC 19977”, “Mycobacterium fortuitum ATCC 6841”, “Mycobacterium chelonae ATCC 35752” and anticancer activity on MDA-MB-231. Antioxidant activity was evaluated by DPPH method. The results showed that, doping CuO with cobalt improved the antimycobacterial, anticancer and scavenging activities of CuO–NPs.

Metal oxide nanocomposites have concerned an obvious agreement of consideration because of their enormous applications in numerous domains like photocatalyst, catalysis, biological and sensors. The conservational purification technology is getting advanced by the development of heterostructured semiconductor photocatalysts. In this paper, we documented a comparative analysis of synthesis process (Solution-based methods, High temperature-based methods and Electrical methods) and characterisation techniques such as Transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and Scanning electron microscopy on various noble Nanocomposites (NCs) of metal (M)-zinc oxide (ZnO/ZO). This review inclines over multiple stat-of-the-art applications like photocatalytic, catalyst, sensor and biological activities. It could be concluded from this study that, the catalytic activity of noble M-ZO nanostructures depends not only on the noble metal species, but on the catalytic material architecture as well. The future research and development challenges together with future prospects are critically presented.