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Cactus-Based Mucilage As A Natural Dispersant For Crude Oil Spills, Fei Guo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oil spills are a critical threat to the marine environment, and the spilled oil as a source of pollution can have long-term adverse effects on the marine ecosystem. Traditional mechanical clean-up operations have apparent advantages for dealing with small and medium-scale oil spills. For large-scale oil spills, dispersants are a practical and minimally influential approach to the environment. As the dispersant components are iteratively updated, dispersants become more efficient and safer. However, the toxicity of the dispersants remains a significant impediment to their application. An efficient and non-toxic dispersant is increasingly becoming a requirement.

The cactus mucilage extracts studied in …

Responsive Coatings And Functional Systems From Pectin Polysaccharides, Zeinab Veisi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pectin polysaccharides provide promising potential as all-natural, non-toxic “green” coatings. Pectin polysaccharides have been drawing growing attention as elements of stimuli-responsive systems and as source materials for functionalized robust coatings. They can be extracted from several natural sources and are intrinsically biocompatible. The majority of the applications of pectin gels require a better understanding of the properties of thin layers of gels at surfaces and interfaces. Despite the prevalence of bulk gels of pectin, coatings of pectin have not been reported. In bulk hydrogels, swelling of polymer networks is controlled by a diffusion limited transport process in which the rate …