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Emilia Gontarek-Castro
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total: 17
Catalog Publications
Year 2022
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A comprehensive review on current and emerging technologies toward the valorization of bio‐based wastes and by products from foods
PublicationIndustries in the agro-food sector are the largest generators of waste in the world. Agro-food wastes and by products originate from the natural process of senescence, pretreatment, handling, and manufacturing processes of food and beverage products. Notably, most of the wastes are produced with the transformation of raw materials (such as fruits, vegetables, plants, tubers, cereals, and dairy products) into different processed...
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Graphene-Coated PVDF Membranes: Effects of Multi-Scale Rough Structure on Membrane Distillation Performance
PublicationGraphene-coated membranes for membrane distillation have been fabricated by using a wet-filtration approach. Graphene nanoplatelets have been deposited onto PVDF membrane surfaces. Morphology and physicochemical properties have been explored to evaluate the changes in the surface topography and related effects on the membrane performance in water desalination. The membranes have been tested in membrane distillation plants by using...
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Hybrid cross-linked chitosan/protonated-proline:glucose DES membranes with superior pervaporation performance for ethanol dehydration
PublicationThis work explores a protonated L-proline:glucose (molar ratio 5:1) deep eutectic solvent (DES) in fabricating biopolymer membranes utilizing chitosan (CS). Initially, the miscibility of CS and DES to prepare homogeneous dense blend membranes has been investigated. Different techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy, contact angle (CA), atomic force microscopy (AFM), Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and swelling...
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Natural sweeteners: Sources, extraction and current uses in foods and food industries
PublicationFood producers have leaned towards alternative natural and synthetic sweeteners in food formulations to satisfy market demands. Even so, several synthetic sweeteners (e.g., aspartame, saccharin, sucralose) are becoming less popular due to health-related concerns, lower nutritional values, and controversies around their safety. Conversely, natural sweeteners confer favourable customer perceptions due to their association to a healthier...
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New insights of nanomaterials usage toward superhydrophobic membranes for water desalination via membrane distillation: A review
PublicationMembrane distillation (MD) is a promising technology for seawater desalination due to the ability to process high-salinity waters and the ability to be driven by low-grade or waste heat. However, practical applications of MD membranes are limited by the low vapor flux and fouling problem. Recently, there is a growing interest in developing novel MD membrane materials with enhanced hydrophobicity to improve the efficiency of desalination...
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Up-to-date strategies and future trends towards the extraction and purification of Capsaicin: A comprehensive review
PublicationBackground According to the current need of manufacturing healthier products, food companies are seeking specific biomolecules that may offer additional added value (i.e., biological activities) to the new food formulations. Capsaicin, as the pungent ingredient of chili peppers, has become so far one of the target biomolecules explored since the 1950s. There is evidence demonstrating that capsaicin exhibits important biological...
Year 2021
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Biomass-Derived Nitrogen Functionalized Carbon Nanodots and Their Anti-Biofouling Properties
PublicationThe prevalence of the antibiotic resistant bacteria remains a global issue. Cheap, sustainable and multifunctional antibacterial membranes are at the forefront of filtrating materials capable of treating multiple flow streams, such as water cleansing treatments. Carbon nanomaterials are particularly interesting objects shown to enhance antibacterial properties of composite materials. In this article, amino-functionalized, photoluminescent...
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Characterization of PVDF/Graphene Nanocomposite Membranes for Water Desalination with Enhanced Antifungal Activity
PublicationSeawater desalination is a worldwide concern for the sustainable production of drinking water. In this regard, membrane distillation (MD) has shown the potential for effective brine treatment. However, the lack of appropriate MD membranes limits its industrial expansion since they experience fouling and wetting issues. Therefore, hydrophobic membranes are promising candidates to successfully deal with such phenomena that are typical...
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Food Bioactive Ingredients Processing Using Membrane Distillation
PublicationSeparation processes are an important part of today’s food industries, especially in the case of specific bioactive components due to their health benefits. In general, processing of bioactive food ingredients assumes the introduction of integrated system directed to their separation, fractionation, and recovery. Recently, membrane distillation (MD) has been considered as an alternative membrane-based separation and concentration...
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Membrane separation processes for the extraction and purification of steviol glycosides: an overview
PublicationSteviol glycosides (SGs), as natural sweeteners from Stevia rebaudiana, are currently employed for replacing sugar and its derivatives in several food products and formulations. Such compounds play an essential role in human health. Their usage provides a positive effect on preventing diseases related to sugar consumption, including diabetes mellitus, cancer, and lipid metabolism disorders. The traditional extraction of SGs is...
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Reviewing the recent developments of using graphene-based nanosized materials in membrane separations
PublicationAccording to the potentialities of graphene-based materials and their unique physicochemical properties. Such 2D nanomaterials are likely to be the most implemented within the improvement of the selective separations of polymer membranes, together with enhanced physicochemical properties (such as hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, transport of molecules, mechanical and thermal features, among others). Hence, this review compiles and...
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SYNTHETIZED MEMBRANES FOR ULTRASOUND-ASSISTED SOLVENT EXTRACTION OF POROUS MEMBRANE PACKED SOLID SAMPLES.
PublicationMembranes are becoming more and more popular in analytical chemistry, which is why they are used, among others, in extraction processes. Therefore, this work focuses on the process of synthesis PVDF membranes and its optimization. The obtained membranes were used as bags for the phthalate extraction in disposable diapers for babies. Extraction was accomplished by method ultrasound-assisted solvent extraction of porous PVDF membrane...
Year 2020
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Membrane technologies assisting plant-based and agro-food by-products processing: A comprehensive review
PublicationBackground Nowadays, membrane-based technologies (e.g. microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, membrane distillation, and pervaporation) have demonstrated to meet the requirements to be involved in different food and bioproduct processes. Scope and approach Several applications have been developed, including either separation, recovery or concentration of bioactive molecules from agro-food products and by-products,...
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Membranes for toxic- and heavy-metal removal
PublicationSince time ago, membranes have greatly attracted the attention of researchers for different types of water-treatment applications, such as wastewater treatment, water purification, removal of microorganisms, chemical compounds, and heavy metals. Nowadays, one of the current challenges of research community definitely deals with the removal of toxic and heavy metals from water. In this regard, the current chapter provides enough...
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Nanofiltration in the food industry
PublicationNanofiltration (NF), as a pressure-driven membrane process, has been widely demonstrated to have great potential for food processing applications. There are several advantages of this membrane process over traditional methods that makes NF suitable for food processing, such as the low thermal damage to the product, higher aroma retention, lower energy consumption, and low maintenance costs. In this chapter, according to the recent...
Year 2019
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Adsorption-assisted transport of water vapour in super-hydrophobic membranes filled with multilayer graphene platelets
PublicationThe effects of confinement of multilayer graphene platelets in hydrophobic microporous polymeric membranes are here examined. Intermolecular interactions between water vapour molecules and nanocomposite membranes are envisaged to originate assisted transport of water vapour in membrane distillation processes when a suitable filler-polymer ratio is reached. Mass transport coefficients are estimated under different working conditions,...
Year 2018
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Salt melt synthesis of curved nitrogen-doped carbon nanostructures: ORR kinetics boost
PublicationImplementing metal-free electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and revealing crucial chemical or topographical parameters driving their activity are vital for the development of power cells. The carbon-based catalysts are very often synthesized through carbonization of biopolymers, in particular, those one containing nitrogen groups such as chitosan. Unfortunately, the resulting carbonaceous materials usually...
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