Chemical and Natural Resources Engineering Journal
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Effect of Curcumin Dose, Treatment Duration and Intervention Type on Tumor Inhibition in Animal Models: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
No full textCurcuma longa L. has been used as a traditional medicine in India and China for the treatment of diabetic wounds, inflammatory, hepatic, and digestive disorders. These effects lead to the research of this plant for the treatment of chronic diseases. To assess the tumor inhibition effect of curcumin in animal models by integrating various studies into a systematic review and meta-analysis. Studies of curcumin treatment in tumor-induced animal models were searched in electronic databases. The assessment of the quality of the studies included and the tumor inhibition effect was conducted by using SYRCLE’s Risk of Bias tool and Review Manager (The Cochrane Collaboration) software. Among the 732 articles identified, 11 studies that met the selection criteria were included in the analysis. Curcumin significantly inhibited the tumor volume in the animal models in overall, and the subgroup analyses revealed that high dose, long duration curcumin treatment, and intervention by injection have a more significant effect compared to the opposite group. Curcumin was effective in inhibiting tumor volume in animal models. The study quality and heterogeneity of the meta-analysis can probably be improved if a larger-scale of animal models and a well-designed study were available
PRODUCTION OF CITRIC ACID FROM SUGARCANE MOLASSES BY ASPERGILLUS NIGER USING SUBMERGED FERMENTATION: CITRIC ACID FROM MOLASSES USING SUBMERGED FERMENTATION
No full textCitric acid (CA) has a high demand due to its various uses in the food and pharmaceutical industries. However, the natural supply of citric acid is very limited as compared to its growing industrial demand. The increasing demand for CA can be fulfilled by using biotechnological processes. This study was conducted on liquid state bioconversion by Aspergillus niger for the production of citric acid using sugarcane molasses as the main substrate. As sugarcane, molasses considered as a waste, which consists of a big proportion of the organic matter such as lipids and carbohydrates. It makes sugarcane molasses a potential and alternative source of producing citric acid for a lower cost. Aspergillus niger was cultured in potato dextrose agar. Then, spores inoculum introduced into the fermentation media for a specific duration according to the Design Expert 6.0 software. In this study, sequential optimization strategy, based on statistical designs, applied to improve CA production using submerged fermentation. Three parameters examined to determine the best process optimization conducted in shaking flasks. Response surface methodology (RSM) was adopted to obtain the best conditions for the process, where two-level factorial designs with three parameters were employed for the fermentation. It was carried out at room temperature (32â°C), agitation was set at three different values which are 160, 180 and 200 rpm. Another parameter was substrate concentration where 47%, 60%, 73% introduced. The fermentation carried out for the duration of one to five days. Initial pH was set at (5) five. Three quantitative and qualitative tests were conducted in order to assure its identity and measure CA yield, which was Titration, HPLC and FTIR spectroscopy. Qualitative estimation of CA in the cultivation media obtained using FTIR analyses. The optimization study showed that the media incubated for 72 hours with a substrate concentration of 60% and an agitation speed of 180 rpm produced the highest CA yield using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) method. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) also showed that the HPLC optimization model was significant with p < 0.0104 and R2 = 0.8964
ADSORPTION STUDIES OF GRAPHENE OXIDE FOR LEAD REMOVAL FROM SYNTHETIC WASTEWATER
Get PDFLead contamination present in wastewater is one of the major problems due to its toxicity and persistence. This issue increased dramatically and led to environmental and health concern worldwide. Therefore, this study aims to remove lead from synthetic wastewater effluent by adsorption process. In this study, nanomaterial called graphene oxide is used as an adsorbent due to its mechanical strength and high surface area. The parameters were optimized using Fractional factorial design under response surface method. Graphene oxide demonstrates high adsorption capacity, qmax = 500 mg/g at 100 mg/L of initial lead concentration and at optimum pH 9. Adsorption isotherm of lead was also investigated to evaluate the adsorption capacity. The equilibrium data of graphene oxide adsorption was better represented by the Langmuir isotherm and was achieved within 60 minutes. The results showed that GO is potential to be an important adsorbent for lead removal. In the future, GO might be imbedded as an adsorbent in the membrane fabrication for wastewater treatmen
Anaerobic co-digestion of sewage sludge and food waste as a promising alternative for waste management and energy production
No full textBiogas is an economical and environmentally friendly renewable energy which can be produced by anaerobic digestion (AD). This biochemical method converts organic compounds (mainly from wastes) into a sustainable source of energy. Anaerobic co-digestion (AcoD) is a method combining more than one substrate to resolve the difficulties faced in a single substrate AD system. Solid wastes increases as the population increase so do the urbanization and industrial industries. Food waste and sewage sludge are examples of one of the solid wastes. Co-digesting of both substrates may improve process stabilization to increase biogas production and overcome the nutrients imbalance. Thus, anaerobic co-digestion has been recognized as a technology that could provide a clean renewable energy source and helps reduce the landfill problem. The objective of this paper is to investigate the recent achievements and perspectives on the interaction of co-digestion between food waste and sewage sludge to improve biogas production. This may provide valuable information on the optimization of combinations of substrates: food waste and sewage sludge and prediction of bioreactor performance
PHYSICO-CHEMICAL ASSESSMENT ON QUALITY PARAMETER IN SUNGAI PAPAR, SABAH VIA STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Get PDFSg. Papar is one of the rivers in Kota Kinabalu which is mainly used for water supply especially in Papar district. For the past years, many pollution cases concerning Sg. Papar have been reported; the pollutions originated from various sources including pig farm, agricultural run-off and deforestation. These resulted in a frequent shutdown of the water treatment plants in Papar district which leads to water supply disturbance and water supply deficiency in the affected area. The data utilized in this study were obtained from water quality tests performed on river water samples taken from Limbahau water treatment plant recorded from September 2013 to September 2016. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used in this study to analyze and correlate the physicochemical parameters with the water treatment plant shutdown. The results revealed that eight parameters (pH, alum, nitrate, TDS, DO, conductivity, colour and chloride) analysed in this study correlate with each other and the parameter that mostly caused the drastic change in the river water and caused pollution in the river is turbidity. This study is critical for understanding the relationship between the water quality paramters and environmental issues
SULPHUR AS ELEMENT AND ITS BEHAVIOR IN COLLOIDAL SYSTEM: A REVIEW
No full textSulfur element has been highly sought by many industries everywhere around the world for various applications. This exceptionally useful element has been largely manufactured especially in its powder form each year by different countries and regions with a tremendously increasing manner – reflecting its increase in demand in line with technological advancement and uses for various product applications. The manufacturing processes include mining as well as chemical reactions in Claus Process. Rubber industries normally use abundance of sulfur in their latex compound to introduce vulcanization. Often issues associated with rubber vulcanization specifically includes its dispersibility in the rubber matrix due to improper optimization of its preparation process prior to latex compounding. Another crucial issue is crystallization of soluble sulfur from its insoluble origin, either during or post-rubber vulcanization that constitutes to formation of sulfur bloom that grows on the surface of the rubber articles. It is know that both issues are related to the process conditions and compounding recipe that not impossible to be solved. Various studies have been conducted to at least minimize such occurences – from process optimization to sulfur chemistry itself – and of continuous improvement and innovation to solve various threats in sulfur applications
TREATMENT OF SG. PUSU USING NOVEL COAGULANT: MGO COATED WITH CHITOSAN
No full textEffective treatment of wastewater is important in order to achieve the sustainable development. High efficiency and low capital requirement are the major prerequisite for the implementation of advanced wastewater treatment. Among various treatments, coagulation-flocculation process using chitosan can be considered as low operational cost and effective in wastewater treatment. Recently, advanced processes in nano-adsorbent by using magnesium oxide (MgO) has been also attracting the attention in water remediation in increasing removal organic dyes and heavy metals. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the efficiency of coagulation-flocculation process for removing of turbidity, suspended solids and BOD from Sg. Pusu. Chitosan, MgO coated with chitosan and MgO as a coagulants in treatment of river water were studied using standard jar test apparatus. For optimization study, a set of experiment was designed using response surface methodology (RSM) to optimize the adsorption of MgO coated with chitosan. The result shows that chitosan-MgO showed a good removal of turbidity, suspended solids and COD with respectively 92 %, 98 % and 91 % from the optimization of adsorption of chitosan-MgO. The effect of coagulant dosages; chitosan on turbidity removal was found to be superior was observed at reasonable lower amount of coagulant of 0.25 mg/L with 95 % removal of turbidity in 30 minutes of settling time. The results showed that coagulation-flocculation is effective as a treatment for treating river water
BIODEGRADABLE COMPOSITE FOR COSMETIC PATCH
No full textPatches has recently emerged and attracting more attention for its versatility in many areas such as cosmetic, pharmaceutical and medical. Patches can either be used to administer selected drug to skin or deliver some beneficial ingredients for cosmetic purposes. With that, as polymer is used as the matrix for patches, the polymer selected must be non-toxic, have adhesive property and non-irritative to the skin. Currently, synthetic polymer had been used as the matrix. However, as time passes, people are more concern with the environment, therefore biopolymer is chosen over synthetic polymer as they are degradable and also safe to use. Nowadays, as consumers are demanding for a more effective product that is not only good for appearance but also the health of the skin, studies had been done on many kinds of active ingredient that will give the best effect to the skin. Thus in this paper, patches made up of different combinations of polymer and active ingredients will be discussed
TREATMENT OF WASTE ENGINE OIL USING OPTIMIZED ACID/CLAY REFINING METHOD
Get PDFThis paper addresses treatment of waste engine oils (WEO) treated by acid/clay refining method using glacial acetic acid. An optimization of the process parameters in terms of settling time, stirring speed and mixing temperature of method was developed to improve the process efficiency and oil recovery. The quality of the treated WEO was evaluated in terms of viscosity index and flash point value. The comparable properties of the treated oil to that fresh engine oil were achieved with 95% similarity at process conditions of setting time of 24 hours, temperature of 50 °C and mixing speed of 150 rpm respectively. The optimization study found that settling time plays the most significant parameters of the process followed by mixing temperature. Compared to previous study with the same method, this study improved the efficiency of the process by 84% in terms of viscosity index and flash point of treated oil. Four brands of WEO (Liqui Moly, Castrol, Shell and Pennzoil) were further compared at optimized conditions. It is found that the method is generally suitable to treat most of the WEO. The sludge collected at optimum treatment conditions which were analyzed using EDS and FESEM, showing the identified rough heteregenous shaped particles as carbon (97%), calcium (1.12%), zinc (0.74%), sulphur (0.73%) and phosphorus (0.29%). The finding from this study provide the information on the best process condition for treating WEO as well as to provide knowledge on particles presence in WEO
Functional Diversity of Biocatalysts: Whether to Bioprospect or Bioengineer?
Get PDFBiocatalyst should have sufficient and efficient activity for the intended biotechnological application. In the quest for novel biocatalyst, there is a need to have a genetic diversity either by finding it within the astronomically large number of possible candidates or to obtain it by bioengineering an existing gene supported by various bioinformatic and molecular engineering tools. Nowadays, it is well-known that huge number of microorganisms is unculturable and poses great challenges to access biocatalysts from these microbes. Metagenomics is one of the methods widely applied to reach out maximum possible variants to “bioprospect†biocatalysts. On the other hand, other approaches are available to bioengineer enzymes by modifying the DNA sequence precisely based on the structure and the function information of the protein in the case of rational design, or by a brave creation of anarchic mutations of the DNA sequence with directed evolution method. In this regard, both approaches, whether to bioprospect or to bioengineer biocatalysts have advantages and disadvantages which will be discussed in this paper