Use of carbon from the agricultural industry for the synthesis of catalysts destined to oxyanions removal from water.

Remediation of water contaminated with oxyanions is of great importance due to the toxicity and environmental persistence of these chemical species. The present work describes the elimination of different oxyanions in water using catalysts supported on active carbon obtained from an agricultural residue (peanut shells, C) and active commercial carbon (C) in order to compare their structural and catalytic properties. The synthesized C and C were fully characterized by surface analysis, TGA, TPR, SEM-EDX, FT-IR, and TEM.

Promoting Effect of Palladium on ZnAlO-Supported Catalysts Based on Cobalt or Copper Oxide on the Activity for the Total Propene Oxidation.

Palladium-modified Co-ZnAland Cu-ZnAl materials were used and found active for the catalytic oxidation of propene and propane. According to the results obtained by XRD, TPR and XPS, the zinc aluminate-supported phases are oxide phases, CoO, CuO and PdO for Co-ZnAl, Cu-ZnAl and Pd-ZnAl catalysts, respectively. These reducible oxide species present good catalytic activity for the oxidation reactions.

QSAR analysis on Spodoptera litura antifeedant activities for flavone derivatives.

We establish useful models that relate experimentally measured biological activities of compounds to their molecular structure. The pED(50) feeding inhibition on Spodoptera litura species exhibited by aurones, chromones, 3-coumarones and flavones is analyzed in this work through the hypothesis encompassed in the Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) Theory. This constitutes a first necessary computationally based step during the design of more bio-friendly repellents that could lead to insights for improving the insecticidal activities of the investigated compounds.