Development of a plant for extraction of essential oil from leaves of eucalyptus tree

In this paper, a plant for the extraction of essential oil from leaves of eucalyptus tree was developed. The extraction plant is made up of a steam generation unit (boiler), stripping chamber, condenser (heat exchanger), decanter (settler), cooling water system and a pressurized gas burner as heat source. The condenser, decanter, steam generation unit, stripping chamber, control valves and the cooling water system were sized and selected in such a way that the plant will perform to specification. The steam generation unit was designed to contain 25 litres of water with dimension 0.35m diameter by 0.26m high. The condenser has 24 tubes (i.e. 12 tubes per pass), its size is 1m long by 0.215m shell diameter. The stripping chamber was designed to process a maximum of 10kg of the raw material per batch run and its size is 0.35m diameter by 0.45m high while the cooling water system was specified as 200 litres capacity with O.SHP centrifugal pump to aid circulation of the cooling water. After the construction, the performance of the plant was evaluated and the following result was obtained: 18ml of eucalyptus oil only was realized at the end of the eighty - two (82) minutes batch run trial. The overall cost of producing the plant was One hundred and fifty thousand, three hundred and ten Naira only (N150, 310:00), which is affordable to many small and medium scale investors/entrepreneurs and local fabricators with small capital base considering the importance of the eucalyptus oil in Nigeria

Prevalence and factors associated to gestational diabetes mellitus among pregnant women in Libreville: a cross-sectional study

International audienceIntroduction: mainly occurring in low and middle income countries, gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) represents 84% of hyperglycemia during pregnancy throughout the world. Moreover, being black is a risk factor to develop the disease. Our objective was to determine the prevalence and the associated factors of GDM in Libreville (Gabon).Methods: a cross-sectional study was carried out. Known diabetic women were excluded from the study and we had submitted asymptomatic pregnant women to a 2 steps 75g oral glucose tolerance test (T0-T2H), regardless of the stage of pregnancy at the moment of recruitment. The threshold for positivity was set at blood glucose level ≥ 8.5mmol/L World Health Organization (WHO 2013 threshold) and ≥ 7.8mmol/L (WHO 1999 threshold). Data were analyzed using Statview® for descriptive statistics, for both bivariate and multivariate analysis.Results: among 245 participants, we have found a GDM prevalence of 10.2% according to WHO 1999 threshold and 4.5% according to WHO 2013 threshold. Applying the WHO 1999 threshold, the associated factors were high maternal weight (p= 0.0498), overweight at recruitment (p=0.0246), personal history of GDM (p< 0.0001), age becomes an associated factor only if it is combined with high parity (p=0.0061). ceaserian-section and macrosomia were the two outcomes of GDM.Conclusion: Libreville has a high prevalence of GDM when the WHO 1999 criteria is compared to the WHO 2013 criteria. Discordance is also found with the identified associated factors. Further studies are needed to better appreciate gestational diabetes in Gabon