RESUMO
Banana has been a main agricultural product in the French West Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique) since the 1960s. This crop requires the intensive use of pesticides to prevent attacks by insect pests. Chlorinated pesticides, such as hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH), chlordecone and dieldrin, were used until the beginning of the 1990s, resulting in a generalized diffuse contamination of the soil and water in the areas of banana production, hence the need to develop solutions for cleanup of the polluted sites. The aims of this work were (i) to assess lindane degradation in soil slurry microcosms treated with lindane at 10 mg/L and (ii) to detect the catabolic genes involved in the HCH degradation pathway. The soil slurry microcosm system showed a 40% lindane degradation efficiency at the end of a 30-day experiment. Lower lindane removal was also detected in the abiotic controls, probably caused by pesticide adsorption to soil particles. Indeed, the lindane concentration decreased from 6000 to 1330 ng/mL and from 800 to 340 ng/mL for the biotic and abiotic soils, respectively. Nevertheless, some of the genes involved in the HCH degradation pathway were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from crude deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extracted from the Guadeloupe agricultural soil, suggesting that HCH degradation is probably mediated by bacteria closely related to the family Sphingomonadaceae.
Assuntos
Hexaclorocicloexano/metabolismo , Inseticidas/metabolismo , Microbiologia do Solo , Agricultura , Biodegradação Ambiental , Guadalupe , Redes e Vias Metabólicas , Poluentes do Solo/metabolismo , Sphingomonadaceae/metabolismoRESUMO
Adsorption kinetic of molasses wastewaters after anaerobic digestion (MSWD) and melanoidin respectively on activated carbon was studied at different pH. The kinetic parameters could be determined using classical kinetic equations and a recently published fractal kinetic equation. A linear form of this equation can also be used to fit adsorption data. Even with lower correlation coefficients the fractal kinetic equation gives lower normalized standard deviation values than the pseudo-second order model generally used to fit adsorption kinetic data, indicating that the fractal kinetic model is much more accurate for describing the kinetic adsorption data than the pseudo-second order kinetic model.
Assuntos
Carbono/química , Resíduos Industriais , Adsorção , Fractais , Concentração de Íons de Hidrogênio , Cinética , Modelos Químicos , Modelos Estatísticos , Modelos Teóricos , Melaço , Movimento (Física) , Pós , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Propriedades de Superfície , TemperaturaRESUMO
Large quantities of lignocellulosic residues result from the industrial production of essential oil from vetiver grass (Vetiveria zizanioides) roots. These residues could be used for the production of activated carbon. The yield of char obtained after vetiver roots pyrolysis follows an equation recently developed [A. Ouensanga, L. Largitte, M.A. Arsene, The dependence of char yield on the amounts of components in precursors for pyrolysed tropical fruit stones and seeds, Micropor. Mesopor. Mater. 59 (2003) 85-91]. The N(2) adsorption isotherm follows either the Freundlich law K(F)P(alpha) which is the small alpha equation limit of a Weibull shaped isotherm or the classical BET isotherm. The surface area of the activated carbons are determined using the BET method. The K(F) value is proportional to the BET surface area. The alpha value increases slightly when the burn-off increases and also when there is a clear increase in the micropore distribution width.