ABSTRACT: Sapodilla is an original fruit from Central America that is well adapted in all regions of the Brazilian territory. Despite its wide adaptation and acceptance in fruit markets, it is rare to find it outside tropical regions, partially because of its high perishability. The development of alternative, simple, and inexpensive methods to extend the conservation and marketing of these fruits is important, and osmotic dehydration is one of these methods. The main objective of this study was to determine the water and sucrose diffusion coefficients during the osmotic dehydration of sapodilla. This process was performed in short duration (up to 6h) to evaluate detailed information on water loss and solids gain kinetics at the beginning of the process and in long duration (up to 60h) to determine the equilibrium concentrations in sapodilla. The immersion time had greater influence on the water and sucrose diffusion coefficients (P<0.05); the maximum water loss (WL) and solute gain (SG) occurred in the osmotic solution at the highest concentration. Water and sucrose diffusion coefficients ranged from 0.00 x 10-10 m2/s to 1.858 x 10-10 m2/s, and from 0.00 x 10-10to 2.304 x 10-10 m2/s, respectively. Thus, understanding the WL and SG kinetics during the process of sapodilla osmotic dehydration could significantly contribute to new alternatives of preservation and commercialization of this fruit.

ABSTRACT Oregano essential oil (OEO) exhibits antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. The bioactive compounds of OEO are volatile. Thus, encapsulation helps in protecting the activity of the compound when exposed to harmful conditions such as high (or low) temperature, light, and oxygen. Encapsulation also helps to improve the dispersibility of the compound in an aqueous medium, facilitating its application in formulated food products. We studied the release kinetics of OEO microencapsulated by gelatin/gum. Arabic complex coacervation was assessed, focusing on the influence of the physicochemical properties of the aqueous release medium (temperature (4, 25, and 30 ºC), ionic strength (0, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 M), and pH (3.8, 4.2, and 4.8)). Their capacity to act as release triggers was also investigated. High OEO release rates were recorded in the media with high ionic strengths (74% release in 5 h), high pH (78% release in 7 h), and low temperature (71% release in 7 h). In media at a temperature above 30 ºC and pH 3.8, the coacervated structure was disintegrated. A centered face experimental design (CFD) based on 17 samples was constructed, and an empirical model was developed to predict the maximum release conditions. The highest percentage of oil (reaching up to approximately 85%) is released over longer periods of time (7 h on an average) without damaging the integrity of the microcapsule. Peppas’ model showed the best fitting for all release profiles, with R² > 0.86 and relative average residual error < 6%, indicating the domain of Fickian diffusion during OEO release.

This work simulated numerically the n-pentane separation of a mixture of iso-pentane, n-pentane and nitrogen, using an adsorption column with zeolite 5A. The mathematical model equations of the mass and heat transfer in the adsorption column are presented, as well as the boundary and initials conditions, beyond some hypotheses and considerations. The Volume Finite Method was used in the discretization of the equations to get the system of algebraic equations and posterior development of the computational algorithm. The numerical results using the Differencing Central (CDS) and Upwind (UDS) interpolations were compared with experimental results found in the literature. The influence of the partial pressure in the adsorption column performance was also analyzed.

The aim of this study was to explain in detail the mathematical methods used to deal with diffusion equations, mainly for students and researchers interested in electrochemistry and related areas. Emphasis was placed on the deduction and resolution of diffusion equations, as well as addressing cartesian, spherical and cylindrical coordinates. Different aspects of mass transfer processes were discussed including the importance of the resolution of Fick's laws equations to understand and derive parameters of the electroactive species (e.g., diffusion coefficients, formal electrode potentials) from the electrochemical techniques. As an example, the resolution of diffusion equations for a reversible reduction process of soluble oxidized species was presented for the chronopotentiometry technique. This study is envisaged to broaden the understanding of these frequently used methods, in which mathematical deductions are not always completely understood.

The NaCl and KCl diffusion in the film formed on the cheese surface during salting was simulated by the finite element method. The time and salts concentration values on the cheese surface were determined, tabulated, and presented to the multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP) for the regression modeling. The samples were divided into 70, 15 and 15% for training, testing, and validation, respectively. The networks with the best performance showed 5 to 12 hidden layers. The Tukey’s test showed that there was no significant difference, at the 5% level, between the time value used and the mean value modeled for training, testing, and validation for the NaCl. For the KCl, a significant difference was observed only for 2 training samples and 1 test sample. Sensitivity analysis showed that the discrete variable Z, which represents the static and dynamic systems, was the most important in the models’ construction.

The influence of the film formed during the salting of champignon mushrooms with brine containing NaCl and KCl was modeled using the finite elements method (FEM). It was verified that the film formed on the mushroom surface had a greater influence in the static salting since the diffusion of the ions was 7.5-fold smaller in this system than in the stirred salting. The application of self-organizing maps showed that the ions diffusion along the surface of the solid presented a heterogeneous occurrence and depended on the region for both static and stirred salting. A direct relation was observed among the mushroom surface morphology, the salts diffusion behavior, and the film formation. In addition, the film was not completely extinguished in the stirred system, although it has a minimal influence as the film formation is also dependent on the biosolid surface.

The application of electrochemical technology for the degradation of organic pollutants often faces two main problems, related to the anode material and mass transport limitations. Although PbO2 electrode is inexpensive and provides satisfactory electrooxidation kinetics, in the form of plane electrodes it is unable to resolve the mass transfer problem that arises at low concentrations of organics. In this work, an electrochemical flow reactor was developed for the preparation of three-dimensional electrodes consisting of PbO2 films electrodeposited onto reticulated vitreous carbon. The electrodes were characterized in terms of the substrate coating, morphology, structure, and electrocatalytic activity in the decoloration reaction of Reactive Blue 19 dye. The results showed that it was possible to deposit a uniform film of PbO2 on the surface of the substrate after optimization of the current density and deposition time (0.7 mA cm-2 for 30 min). Comparison of the plane and three-dimensional electrodes revealed that the turbulence generated by the porous matrix significantly accelerated the dye decoloration kinetics, increasing 3.3-fold the first order kinetic constant (from 0.010 min-1 for VC/PbO2 to 0.033 min-1 for RVC/PbO2).

The objective this study was to evaluated the influence of silica modified with protic ionic liquid (PIL) on an immobilized biocatalyst by covalent binding of Burkholderia cepacia lipase (BCL) in a PBR and in the transesterification reaction, by characterization and mass transfer of the system studied. The results showed that maximum conversion of ethyl esters was 39 ± 1.73% at 96 h (IB on control silica) and 47 ± 2.0% in 72 h (IB on modified silica). The PIL also influenced the analysis of residence time distribution (RTD) with the mean time ranging from 14.94 (control silica) to 25 min (modified silica). Variation of the reaction parameters (temperature, flow rate and molar ratio) positively influenced the mass transfer coefficient (kc) which varied from 0.95 × 10−4 to 2.39 × 10−4 m s−1 (IB on control silica) and from 1.22 × 10−4 to 3.06 × 10−4 m s−1 (IB on modified silica).

The pollutant transference among reservoirs atmosphere-hydrosphere, relevant to the atmospheric chemistry, depends upon scavenging coefficient (Λ) calculus, which depends on the raindrop size distribution as well as on the rainfall systems, both different to each locality. In this work, the Λ calculus will be evaluated to gas SO2 and particulate matter fine and coarse among five sites in Germany and two in Brazil. The results show three possible classifications in function of Λ, comparable to literature, however with a greater range due to the differences of rainfall system sites. This preliminary study supports future researches

Abstract The influence of film coefficient formed during the diffusion of inorganic salts (NaCl and KCl) in biosolids was studied using a 3D computer modeling by Finite Elements Method (FEM) in COMSOL Multiphysics® software combined with SOM-type Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Such tools have shown that the influence of the film formed in the biosolid/solution interface occurs in a heterogeneous manner and is due to the matrix geometry, the type of system (agitated or static) and the ion size (Na+ or K+). The influence of film coefficient was more pronounced for K+ ion, and for a static system. Comparing the geometry of biosolids, ion diffusion was more pronounced in the (Y±) axis in relation to other axes, X (±) and Z (±), as well as in between the poles (±) of this axis. FEM simulation associated with SOM-type ANN were efficient tools to evaluate this complex and unknown biophysical phenomenon.