Interactions of humic acid with pristine poly (lactic acid) microplastics in aqueous solution.

Microplastics and natural organic matter are present in the aquatic environment and their reciprocal interaction plays important roles in the transport and behavior of nutrients and contaminants. Nevertheless, we lack mechanistic understanding on these interactions, especially in the case of biodegradable plastics. Here we investigate the adsorption of a commercial humic acid onto poly (lactic acid) (PLA) microplastics in aqueous solution.

Process modeling and control applied to real-time monitoring of distillation processes by near-infrared spectroscopy.

A distillation device that acquires continuous and synchronized measurements of temperature, percentage of distilled fraction and NIR spectra has been designed for real-time monitoring of distillation processes. As a process model, synthetic commercial gasoline batches produced in Brazil, which contain mixtures of pure gasoline blended with ethanol have been analyzed. The information provided by this device, i.