Development and validation of a bioartificial liver device with fluidized bed bioreactors hosting alginate-encapsulated hepatocyte spheroids.

Acute and acute-on-chronic liver failure are associated to high mortality when transplantation is not possible. The lack of donors has resulted in an important demand for liver support devices. This paper describes the design and validation of a new bioartificial liver (BAL) device including fluidized bed bioreactors hosting alginate-encapsulated hepatocytes spheroids. To ensure the efficacy of the BAL and the safety of the patients, a complex extracorporeal circulation was designed to be compatible with a commercial medical device, the Prismaflex(®) monitor, already used in intensive care units. Preclinical studies on large animal show that the treatment was well tolerated in terms of hemodynamics considerations. A method using non adhesive coating in petri dish led to the production of large amount of viable spheroids in vitro that were further encapsulated to follow up bioartificial liver activity during four days.

Adsorption studies of molasse's wastewaters on activated carbon: modelling with a new fractal kinetic equation and evaluation of kinetic models.

Adsorption kinetic of molasses wastewaters after anaerobic digestion (MSWD) and melanoidin respectively on activated carbon was studied at different pH. The kinetic parameters could be determined using classical kinetic equations and a recently published fractal kinetic equation. A linear form of this equation can also be used to fit adsorption data. Even with lower correlation coefficients the fractal kinetic equation gives lower normalized standard deviation values than the pseudo-second order model generally used to fit adsorption kinetic data, indicating that the fractal kinetic model is much more accurate for describing the kinetic adsorption data than the pseudo-second order kinetic model.

Adsorption studies of recalcitrant compounds of molasses spentwash on activated carbons.

Due to high levels of residual chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the effluent of molasses spentwash (MSW) after anaerobic treatment, acceptable COD levels for discharge cannot be achieved without some form of post-treatment. In this study, the particulate composition of molasses spentwash after anaerobic digestion (MSWD), is characterised as to its particle size distribution, using micro- and ultrafiltration and three activated carbons are characterised as to their ability to reduce significantly the COD of MSWD effluent. The activated carbons tested as adsorbent, were characterised by XPS spectroscopy, elemental analysis, surface area, pore size distribution, and acid-base titration using the Boehm's method. Adsorption of phenol, used here as a reference compound, and of some organic compounds contained in MSWD (gallic acid, tannic acid, and melanoidin, respectively), was studied. It was clearly demonstrated that an activated carbon with a significant distribution of both micropores and mesopores and a significant amount of macropores that are assumed to act as conduits providing access to micro- and mesopores, have a good adsorption efficiency for compounds such as tannic acid and melanoidins. It is a good adsorbent for melanoidin and coloured compounds of MSWD, which represents a large source of the aqueous pollution in sugar cane industries.