Ozone and hypochlorite are used for the disinfection of water and is essential to monitor these. In this paper, methods based on digital images were developed to determine these analytes in waters using the malachite green dye. The oxidation of the reagent with ozone was very fast and with hypochlorite occurred in 10 min in pseudo-first-order kinetics. New software called ICCA was developed for the capture and processing of red, green and blue (RGB) data, which is planned for digital image analysis. In addition, the recently proposed parameters analytical resolution and N9 were used to define some study conditions. An evaluation of different response functions and white correction of the webcam were done, having thrown some light on the subject to this theme. Their optimization showed a linear range from 0.6 mg L-1 to 5.0/6.0 mg L-1 (O3/Cl, respectively). The figures of merit were similar for both. The methods were validated and the recoveries achieved were between 85.0 and 96.0% (ozone) and 101.0 and 119.0% (hypochlorite).

Quality is an increasingly present concept nowadays, so meeting the customers’ needs, who buy and use products and hire services, becomes essential. For laboratories, the concept is applied to the reliability and traceability of the results produced and presents itself not only to meet the customer’s needs, but also to allow the signing of agreements in the international trade. The concept of Quality in a laboratory can be carried out from the elaboration of a Quality Management System (QMS). To this end, the normative document ISO/IEC 17025, internationally accepted, has been changing over the years aimed at instructing the elaboration of a management system which proves the technical capacity of testing and calibration laboratories and guides the generation of reliable results. The document is in its third version as a standard, the most current one published in 2017, and it presents requirements to achieve the proposed objective and the quality assurance. In the face of the importance of these concepts and the unquestionable need of laboratories to provide reliable and traceable results, this article presents the norm history and its most recent changes. Its intent is support laboratories whose objective is to implement a QMS according to this normative reference.

Nitrate is an abundant ion that is present in many industrialized products and the environment. Various analytical methods have been described using the Griess-Ilosvay reagent for the determination of nitrate in different matrices after its reduction to nitrite, in most cases with metallic cadmium as the reducer. This work proposes a new method using aluminum spheres coated with a copper film for this reduction. To optimize the method, it was important to evaluate the conditions for the deposition of the copper film on the aluminum spheres, using a Doehlert matrix. The optimized method provided an analytical range from 2.0 to 100 µmol L-1, with a coefficient of determination of 0.9996 and a standard deviation of residuals (sres) of 7.59 x 10-4. The Limits of Detection and Quantification were 0.59 and 2.0 µmol L-1 respectively. The method was applied using mineral water samples and was shown to provide repeatability less than 6.98% and accuracy obtained through recovery essays between 81.1 and 104.6% for the determination of nitrate in this type of sample.

The voltammetry is an important analytical technique and also useful for pKa determination. It is a usual procedure of this technique to employ inert electrolyte concentration 100 times higher than redox compound concentration further a pH buffer. However, the ionic strength changes with the solution pH. In this work, we study the consequences of this procedure by using a model system, aniline. A differential pulse voltammetry was used with a glass carbon electrode in 4.0 x 10-3 mol L-1 aniline, 0.04 mol L-1 Britton-Robinson Buffer, NaNO3 as inert electrolyte and pH from 2.0 up to 7.0. The first oxidation peak (0.67V ca.) was used. The pKa determination was performed by using intersection lines at Epeak versus pH. This method was also theoretically discussed for both the oxidant or reducing compound with Brönsted acid-base behavior. For the cited procedure, the ionic strength changed from 0.418 to 0.528 mol L-1, and the experimental pKa (5.691) was far from theoretical one (4.722), still a good fit of lines to experimental data. Using the correct procedure, the experimental pKa (4.938) was near the theoretical one. Therefore, we have proved the need for a more careful adjust of ionic strength in this application.

In this work, alkaline and nickel-metal hydride spent batteries were used as precursors of metals for the synthesis of polymetallic materials. These materials were synthesized via chemical reduction. Materials produced from nickel-metal hydride spent batteries (PM-NiMH) have a nanometric size, whereas the alkaline spent batteries (PM-Alk) have a micrometric size. PM-NiMH consists mainly of Ni, Co, and Cu and the PM-Alk consists mainly of Mn and Zn. The surface areas of PM-NiMH and PM-Alk were 82 m2g-1 and 109 m2 g-1, respectively. The synthesized materials were applied in the removal of reactive blue dye 4 (RB4). Parameters such as initial pH of the system, dose of the materials, and initial concentration of the dye were optimized. For both materials, the removal capacity of RB4 was constant over a wide pH range of (4-10). The removal capacity increases with the decrease of the materials dose and increase of the dye concentration until saturation of the active sites. The RB4 removal by PM-NiMH occurs by adsorption and degradation processes, whereas PM-Alk occurs only by adsorptive processes. The RB4 removal process follows the Langmuir adsorption isotherm model with maximum removal capacities of 331 and 127 mg g-1 for PM-NiMH and PM-Alk, respectively.

Difenoconazole residues in strawberry fruit cultivated in pots were estimated using the solid-liquid extraction with low temperature partition (SLE/LTP) method for sample preparation and gas chromatography with electron capture detection (GC/ECD) for analysis. The optimized method presented excellent recovery values from fortified samples and reproducibility (average recovery values ≥ 98%; CV values < 15%). Linearity of response was demonstrated (r = 0.995) with a detection limit of 9 µg kg-1. The method was successfully applied for the determination of difenoconazole residues in strawberries. Based on these results, the fungicide dissipates quickly, but the residual concentration increases after multiple applications.

TitDrop II, a practice low-cost titrator based on drop counting is proposed. A microcomputer counts drops in an opto-switch and it receives pH values from a commercial pHmeter with RS-232 serial port. The volume of drops must kept constant and the amount of base in each drop is obtained by standardization in the titrator. A linear behavior between height of reservoir of titrant and drop frequency was observed, but there is no influence of low height on drop volume. Acetic acidity in samples of vinager was compared with volumetric titration, and deviation between -2.6 to 3.9% was observed.

The adsorption of ethidium bromide on XAD-7 resin was studied. The Freundlich model was the most representative isotherm model to describe the sorption behavior. A solid-liquid equilibrium model was proposed to explain the resin mass influence on the sorption. The equilibrium constant value estimated was 2.31. The results showed an ethidium bromide ion-pair physical adsorption, with adsorption enthalpy equals to -19.33 kJ/mol. A pK2 value equals to 4.69 ± 0.01 was estimated by two distinct methods. The results will be applied to the ethidium bromide preconcentration aiming its decomposition.

The aim of this paper is to present a simple way of treating the general equation for acid-base titrations based on the concept of degree of dissociation, and to propose a new spreadsheet approach for simulating the titration of mixtures of polyprotic compounds. The general expression, without any approximation, is calculated a simple iteration method, making number manipulation easy and painless. The user-friendly spreadsheet was developed by using MS-Excel and Visual-Basic-for-Excel. Several graphs are drawn for helping visualizing the titration behavior. A Monte Carlo function for error simulation was also implemented. Two examples for titration of alkalinity and McIlvaine buffer are presented.