The use of hand antiseptics became widespread as a routine in the fight against COVID-19. In the market, the availability and purchase of substandard antiseptics create a permanent concern with safety, even after a pandemic. Therefore, the development of easy-to-deploy analytical methods for the quality control of alcohol-based hand antiseptics is needed. In this work, to determine the ethanol content in alcohol gel the use of refractometry and alcohol oxidation method by dichromate accompanied by UV-Vis spectroscopy were applied. The results indicated that 19 brands (out of the 70 evaluated) (27.1%) had levels of ethyl alcohol below the recommended level (68.25%), therefore, they are ineffective for hand asepsis. For the quality control of hand antiseptics, refractometry and the oxidation-reduction reaction are complementary analytical methodologies. As a quick, inexpensive screening method, refractometry provides a more suitable technique. However, the interference of emollients may affect the accuracy of the ethanol content determination. Therefore, applying the ethanol oxidation method coupled with electronic spectroscopy offers a simple and broadly accessible method to confirm the ethanol content in alcohol-based hand antiseptics. In addition to developing quality control protocols, is also described the 3.5-ton production of alcohol gel at the Federal University of Bahia.

Taking into account the relevance of polyethylene for modern society and the role of catalysts for the production of this material, in the present work, we carried out a review of the main catalytic systems used in industry and academia. Most systems consist of coordination compounds, whose structural versatility allows the tuning of the characteristics of polyethylene for different applications. The structural aspects and chemical reactivity of such systems are discussed based on the existing literature and experimental data.

In this work we studied the reactivity of isopropylphenylcyclopropenone towards some nitrogen nucleophiles whose reactions with methylphenylcyclopropenone and diphenylcyclopropenone were previously studied. The electrochemical behavior of these cyclopropenones was evaluated for the first time, and a correlation between electrochemical parameters and reactivity of this class of compounds was done.