Re-use of Agro-industrial Waste: Recovery of Valuable Compounds by Eco-friendly Techniques

The global demographic expansion has determined a voracious demand for edible goods, thus also originating the primary issues about the disposal of waste and by-products with high environmental impact. Waste, by-products and effluents coming from industrial processing and agricultural procedures of vegetables and fruit can be defined as biomass, according to CE directive 2001/77. Those raw materials are currently used as compost, animal feed and biofuel production. In addition, these products can be used as starting substrates for the production of high value-added compounds according to the biorefinery concept. In this review, the biorefinery strategy was applied on waste coming from the industrial processing of lemon and tomato, two of the most abundant vegetables in Italy

XRD RAPID SCREENING SYSTEM FOR COMBINATORIAL CHEMISTRY

ABSTRACT Combinatorial chemistry refers to techniques to fabricate, test, and store the resulting data for a material library containing tens, hundreds or even thousands different materials or compounds. Combinatorial investigations require rapid screening techniques to test and evaluate variations of composition, structure and property within a material library. X-ray diffraction is one of the most suitable screening techniques because abundant information can be revealed from the diffraction pattern and X-ray diffraction is fast and non-destructive. A two-dimensional X-ray diffraction system designed for rapid screening, D8 Discover GADDS for Combinatorial Screening, is introduced by Bruker AXS

Brevibacillus themoruber: a promising microbial cell factory for exopolysaccharide production

Aims: This study aims to identify a high level exopolysaccharide (EPS) producer thermophile that in turn could be used as a model organism to study the biological mechanisms and whole genome organization of EPS-producing thermophilic bacteria. Methods and Results: Thermophilic isolates were screened, and then growth and EPS production of the best producer Brevibacillus thermoruber strain 423 were investigated under different carbon and nitrogen sources, temperature, pH and agitation rates. Rheological characterization revealed that the EPS behaved like a typical Newtonian fluid and viscosity of the EPS solution increased with increasing Ca2+ ion concentration. Chemical characterization by TLC, GC-MS, FT-IR and NMR suggested a heteropolymer structure with glucose as major monomer unit. High biocompatibility of pure EPS fractions suggested their potential use in biomedical applications. Conclusions: This study reports on the comprehensive description of microbial production conditions as well as chemical, rheological and biological characterization of the EPS produced by B. thermoruber strain 423. The bioreactor cultures were found to reach two times higher yields and three times higher productivities when compared with literature. Significance and Impact of the Study: Brevibacillus thermoruber strain 423 combined the advantages of its nonpathogenicity with the advantages of fast productivity and hence proved to be a very promising model organism and cell factory for microbial EPS production

Asbestos

Asbestos indicates a set of minerals of magnesium, calcium and iron silicate, ubiquitous in nature, having a typical microcrystalline fibrous structure. Asbestos fibers, when inhaked, ca cause serious lund diseases; moreover, the fibres possess an extraordinary biopersistance and a high resistence to acidi an alkalis, which allow it to remain in the pulmonary alveoli for a time almost indefinite