No abstract

This study focused on developing an efficient and cost effective processing technique for Moringa oleifera seeds to produce natural coagulant for use in drinking water treatment. The produced natural coagulant can be used as an alternative to aluminum sulphate and other coagulants and used worldwide for water treatment. This study investigates processing Moringa oleifera seeds to concentrate the bio-active constituents which have coagulation activity. Moringa oleifera seeds were processed for oil extraction using electro thermal soxhlet. Isolation and purification of bio-active constituents using chromatography technique were used to determine the molecular weight of the bio-active constituents. The molecular weight of bio-active constitu-ents found to be in a low molecular weight range of between 1000 – 6500 Dalton. The proposed method to isolate and purify the bio-active constituents was the cross flow filtration method, which produced the natu-ral coagulant with very simple technique (oil extraction; salt extraction; and microfiltration through 0.45 µm). The turbidity removal was up to 96.23 % using 0.4 mg/L of processed Moringa oleifera seeds to treat low initial turbidity river water between 34-36 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) without any additives. The microfiltration method is considered to be a practical method which needs no chemicals to be added com-pared to other researchers proposed methods. The natural coagulant produced was used with low dosages to get high turbidity removal which considered to be a breakthrough in this study and recommended to be scaled up for industry level. The product is commercially valuable at the same time it is minimizing the cost of water treatment

Background and Purpose: Klebsiella pneumoniae and Klebsiella oxytoca are the two most common pathogens causing nosocomial infections in humans and are of great concern for developing multidrug resistance. In the present study, K. pneumoniae and K. oxytoca from clinical samples were evaluated for their antibiotic sensitivity patterns against commonly used antibiotics and production of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL). Ampicillin, Amoxicillin, Ceftriaxone, Ciprofloxacin, Gentamicin, Nalidixic acid, Tetracycline was 100%, 90%, 45%, 40%, 45%, 25%, 50%, 35% respectively. Multidrug resistance was found more common in K. pneumoniae (56%) than in K. oxytoca (50%). Prevalence rate of ESBL producing Klebsiella was found 45% among which K. pneumoniae (50%) were found more prominent than K. oxytoca (25%). All the ESBL producing Klebsiella isolates were found to be multidrug resistant, showing 100% resistance to Ampicillin, Amoxicillin, Ceftriaxone and Ciprofloxacin. Materials and Methods:

Background (Metroxylon spp.) waste is an inexpensive and abundantly available material with the characteristics of a good adsorbent for treating dye from wastewater. We studied the effectiveness of alkali and acid modification in enhancing the adsorption capacity of sago waste. The untreated and treated adsorbent was characterized by FTIR, elemental analysis and BET surface area. The capacity of each adsorbent to adsorb MB was evaluated at different pH values, adsorbent dosage and initial dye concentrations and contact time. Results According to the results obtained, alkali treatment more than doubled the sorption capacity of sago waste by increasing the porosity, surface area and number of adsorption sites. The alkali-treated material also adsorbed significantly more than many known biosorbents. The effects of the initial concentration of methylene blue, solution pH and adsorbent dosage on methylene blue removal are reported. Equilibrium data were best represented by the Langmuir isotherm model with adsorption capacities of 83.5, 212.8 and 36.82 mg/g for untreated, potassium hydroxide-treated and phosphoric acid-treated sago wastes, respectively. The kinetics of adsorption were best described by a pseudo-second-order model (R 2 = 0.999). Conclusions The alkali treatment of sago waste demonstrates the use of a low-cost agricultural waste and a simple modification process to produce an effective adsorbent for removing cationic dye from wastewater.

Gum arabic (GA) is the main product of acacia trees. As a raw and commercial samples, GA was extracted with methanol and analysed to measure the antioxidant activity using five methods: 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), Folin-Ciocalteu indexes (FCI), which indicate total phenolic compounds (TPC), oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC), ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), and cupric reducing antioxidant capacity (CUPRAC). This study used antioxidant assays to detect TPC and selected appropriate and inexpensive methods to determine the antioxidant capacity of GA samples. The results reveal that the FCI, ORAC, and CUPRAC are correlated highly with FRAP. Person's correlation coefficient (r) values are 0.98, 0.93, and 0.99, respectively, based on the sample size of (n = 8). This means that the TPC of GA is highly correlated with their antioxidant activities that are measured by these three methods. Hence the FCI, ORAC, and the CUPRAC methods are more effective and simpler. They had similar predictive power to the FRAP of GA antioxidant activity. Consequently, GA is generally recognized as being slightly acidic which may have been obtained from appropriate methods of the antioxidant capacity detection. This acidity is due to the electronic transfer mechanism based on the selection of the working pH.