In the present study, various blended films from polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and pinto bean starch (PBS) were prepared and the selected film was used to fabricate an antimicrobial packaging film. Different essential oils (EOs) were also exposed to minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) tests to find the most efficient EO against a range of microorganisms. From the primary studies, the PVA:PBS (80:20) and cinnamon essential oil (CEO) were chosen. Afterward, the blend composite film reinforced by 1, 2, and 3% CEO and several, physical, mechanical, structural, and antimicrobial attributes were scrutinized. The results showed a significant modification of the barrier and mechanical properties of the selected blended films as a result of CEO addition. Scanning electron micrographs confirmed the incorporation and distribution of CEO within the film matrix. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra indicated the interaction of CEO and the PVA-PBS composite. The antibacterial of the tested bacteria showed a significant increase by increasing the CEO concentration within the control film. CEO-loaded films were more effective in controlling Gram-positive bacteria compared to Gram-negative bacteria. It can be concluded that PVA-PBS-CEO films are promising candidates to produce biodegradable functional films for food and biomedical applications.

In this work, an artificial neural network (ANN) has been utilized to predict the surface tension of binary mixtures at different temperatures and concentrations and at atmospheric pressure. It has been shown that a multilayer perceptron network (MLP) can be trained better than other types of ANNs, and it can therefore be used as a predictive tool to predict the thermo-physical properties. In the modeling procedure, 60% of the available experimental data has been selected as the training set; the remaining data has been used to test and validate the network. After training and testing, the artificial neural network has been used for the prediction of the surface tension of a number of other systems, for which a minimum imprecision of 1.8% has been obtained. The results obtained from the trained network have also been compared to those obtained from the Sprow and Prausnitz model [Sprow, F.B., Prausnitz, J.M., Surface tensions of simple liquid mixtures. Trans. Faraday Soc. 1966, 62a 1097–1104]. It has been shown that the trained MLP network can predict the experimental data better than the r conventional neural network method while only a minimum number of adjustable parameters have been used, compared to the number of adjustable parameters in the thermodynamics models, such as the Sprow and Prausnitz model.

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Removal of aromatic compounds from fuel is an essential requirement in new environmental policies. In the present study, poly(vinyl alcohol)/graphene oxide (GO) mixed matrix membranes were prepared and applied to the separation of toluene from iso‐octane by pervaporation, considering the similarity and interaction between graphene and aromatics. The effects of crosslinking and GO content on separation efficiency have been investigated in detail. Owing to the high affinity of GO with toluene through s and π bonds, the selectivity of the membranes was increased by incorporating a low amount of GO. The results also indicated that noncrosslinked membranes have higher selectivity and permeation flux due to higher crystallinity and also have lower mechanical properties. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 45853.

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The unique properties of N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) as an effective ligand for palladium catalytic centers have recently found much attention. In this work, Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticle supported palladium(II)–N-heterocyclic carbene catalyst was successfully designed, synthesized and characterized by various methods. The activity of the catalyst was evaluated in the Mizoroki-Heck cross-coupling reaction in which the desired products were obtained in high yield in H 2 O as a green solvent. The reaction was carried out in short reaction times using low amounts of the catalyst. Moreover, the catalyst was easily separated from the reaction media and reused for 5 cycles.