ABSTRACT Duguetia furfuracea (Annonaceae) is a shrub found in the Brazilian Cerrado that is used in popular medicine as an antirheumatic, for wound healing, treatment of kidney pain and against pediculosis. The aim of this study was to analyze the extraction of leaves of Duguetia furfuracea, using supercritical CO2, ethanol and hexane as solvents. For the supercritical extraction, an experimental planning 23 with triplicates of the central point was used to evaluate the effects of temperature (313-333 K), pressure (15-23 MPa) and volumetric flow rate (3-6 mL min-1) on the extraction yield, total phenolic content and antioxidant activity compared with extracts obtained by Soxhlet extraction. The effects of the variables on the extraction yield were positive and the pressure had greater influence. However, the highest performances, total phenolic content and antioxidant activities were obtained by the Soxhlet method. The mathematical model based on the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller theory of adsorption correlated satisfactorily the experimental values of the supercritical extraction.

ABSTRACT This study evaluated the potential of macauba pulp oil (MPO) as a feedstock for continuous ester production using ethanol under pressurized conditions. Experiments were performed in order to obtain data for the effect of process variables on ethyl ester (FAEE) and free fatty acid (FFA) conversion in a catalyst-free process. From the results, it appears that the MPO to ethanol mass ratio and the pressure were the variables with more favorable effect on the evaluated response variables. The addition of n-hexane caused an increase in the production of esters; however, this had a negative effect on FFA conversion. The addition of water was unfavorable for oil processing with high acidity. In this process, esterification and transesterification occur simultaneously, and the high FFA content in MPO provides high yields (85 wt% of esters; 93% FFA conversion) at low temperature, since the esterification reaction rate is higher than the transesterification. The decomposition of fatty acids was evaluated and levels <5% were observed under the evaluated experimental conditions.

Abstract In this study the influence of the volumetric flow rate and feed concentration was investigated for the adsorption of the reactive dye Blue 5G. Experiments were carried out in a bed packed with retorted shale, at 30 ºC. The ranges investigated were flow rate 2 -10 mL/min and the feed concentration 13-105 mg/L. Mathematical models were used to represent the dynamic sorption. The double resistance model considers the effects of the axial dispersion and the mass transfer resistance of the external film and inside the particles. As a result, the mass transfer coefficient of the external film and the internal mass transfer coefficient were estimated. The Thomas model was used to simulate the experimental data. In this model the fitted parameter was the adsorption kinetic constant. The first model provided an acceptable representation of the dynamic uptake of the reactive dye Blue 5G.

In this work, the biosorption of Cr3+ and Ni2+ by Sargassum filipendula pre-treated with CaCl2 was studied. Kinetic and equilibrium experiments were carried out for mono- and multi-component solutions in a batch reactor at pH 3.0 and 30 ºC. The results from the kinetic experiments showed that Cr3+ adsorbs slower than Ni2+. This behavior was explained by means of a mechanistic analysis, which showed that Cr3+ uptake presented three adsorption stages, whereas Ni2+ adsorption presents only two. The mono-component equilibrium data, along with binary kinetic data obtained from mono-component experiments, showed that, although the kinetics for Cr3+ removal are slower, the biomass had a stronger affinity for this ion. Almost all Ni2+ is desorbed from the biomass as Cr3+ adsorbs. The binary equilibrium data also presented this behavior. The binary data was also modeled by using modified forms of the Langmuir, Jain and Snoeyink, and Langmuir-Freundlich isotherms. However, the prediction obtained presented low accuracy. An alternative modeling with artificial neural networks was presented and the results showed that this technique could be a promising tool to represent binary equilibrium data. The main contribution of this work was to obtain experimental data for Cr3+/Ni2+ adsorption, which is a system rarely found in the literature and that provides information that could be used in process modeling and simulation.