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The present work deals with the modeling of the kinetics of essential oils extraction from plant materials by water and steam distillation. The experimental data were obtained by studying the hydrodistillation kinetics of essential oil from juniper berries. The literature data on the kinetics of essential oils hydrodistillation from different plant materials were also included into the modeling. A physical model based on simultaneous washing and diffusion of essential oil from plant materials were developed to describe the kinetics of essential oils hydrodistillation, and two other simpler models were derived from this physical model assuming either instantaneous washing followed by diffusion or diffusion with no washing (i.e., first-order kinetics). The main goal was to compare these models and suggest the optimum ones for water and steam distillation and for different plant materials. All three models described well the experimental kinetic data on water distillation irrespective of the type of distillation equipment and its scale, the type of plant materials and the operational conditions. The most applicable model is the one involving simultaneous washing and diffusion of the essential oil. However, this model was generally inapplicable for steam distillation of essential oils, except for juniper berries. For this hydrodistillation technique, the pseudo first-order model was shown to be the best one. In a few cases, a variation of the essential oil yield with time was observed to be sigmoidal and was modeled by the Boltzmann sigmoid function.

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The increased production of biodiesel as an alternative fuel involves the simultaneous growth in production of crude glycerol as its main by-product. Therefore, the feasibility and sustainability of biodiesel production requires the effective utilization of crude glycerol. This review describes various uses of crude glycerol as a potential green solvent for chemical reactions, a starting raw material for chemical and biochemical conversions into value-added chemicals, a substrate or co-substrate in microbial fermentations for synthesis of valuable chemicals and production of biogas and biohydrogen as well as a feedstuff for animal feed. A special attention is paid to various uses of crude glycerol in biodiesel production. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. III 45001]

Processes of bioethanol production currently applied all over the world are reviewed in this paper. Attention is focused on potentially cheap biomass sources, as well as the most important operating factors controlling the progress and result of saccharification and fermentation reactions and affecting the yield of fermentable sugars and ethanol, respectively, such as: the type and concentration of acid, the type of enzyme, the type of working microorganism, operating temperature, duration time and pH. The hydrolysis conditions, namely duration time, temperature and sulfuric acid concentration, were combined in a single parameter, known as the "combined severity" (CS), in order to estimate the efficiency of bioethanol production from biomass. When the CS increases, the yield of fermentable sugars also increases. The decrease in the yield of monosaccharides coincides with the maximum concentrations of by-products, such as furfural and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, which are well-known as yeast inhibitors. The highest ethanol yields has been obtained using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. With low oil prices and political reluctance to implement carbon taxes, fuel-ethanol production will remain uncompetitive unless some other form of cost reduction can be made, such as feedstock preparation costs