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OBJECTIVES:Seeds are excellent sources of proteinase inhibitors, some of which may have satietogenic and slimming actions. We evaluated the effect of a trypsin inhibitor from Tamarindus indica L. seeds on weight gain, food consumption and cholecystokinin levels in Wistar rats.METHODS:A trypsin inhibitor from Tamarindus was isolated using ammonium sulfate (30–60%) following precipitation with acetone and was further isolated with Trypsin-Sepharose affinity chromatography. Analyses were conducted to assess the in vivo digestibility, food intake, body weight evolution and cholecystokinin levels in Wistar rats. Histological analyses of organs and biochemical analyses of sera were performed.RESULTS:The trypsin inhibitor from Tamarindus reduced food consumption, thereby reducing weight gain. The in vivo true digestibility was not significantly different between the control and Tamarindus trypsin inhibitor-treated groups. The trypsin inhibitor from Tamarindus did not cause alterations in biochemical parameters or liver, stomach, intestine or pancreas histology. Rats treated with the trypsin inhibitor showed significantly elevated cholecystokinin levels compared with animals receiving casein or water.CONCLUSION:The results indicate that the isolated trypsin inhibitor from Tamarindus reduces weight gain by reducing food consumption, an effect that may be mediated by increased cholecystokinin. Thus, the potential use of this trypsin inhibitor in obesity prevention and/or treatment should be evaluated.

In this work, the electrochemical oxidation of synthetic urine by anodic oxidation using boron-doped diamond (BDD) as anode and stainless steel as cathode was investigated. Results show that complete depletion of COD and TOC can be attained regardless of the current density applied in the range 20-100 mA cm-2. Oxalic and oxamic acids, and, in lower concentrations, creatol and guanidine were identified as the main intermediates. Chloride ions play a very important role as mediators and contribute not only to obtain a high efficiency in the removal of the organics but also to obtain an efficient removal of nitrogen by the transformation of the various raw nitrogen species into gaseous nitrogen through chloramine formation. Main drawback of the technology is the formation of chlorates and perchlorates as final chlorine products. The increase of current density from 20 mA cm-2 to 60 mA cm-2 led to an increase in the rate of COD and TOC removals although the process becomes less efficient in terms of energy consumption (removals of COD and TOC after applying 18 Ah dm-3 were 93.94 and 94.94%, respectively at 20 mA cm-2 and 89.17 and 86.72%, respectively, at 60 mA cm-2). The most efficient conditions are low current densities and high temperature reaching total mineralization at an applied charge as low as 20 kAh m-3. This result confirmed that the electrolysis using diamond anodes is a very interesting technology for the treatment of urine.

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In this work, a real effluent discharged by Brazilian textile industry, has been electrochemically treated using boron doped diamond (BDD) anode for removing chemical oxygen demand (COD) and colour. Preliminary experiments were performed under real discharged effluent conditions (pH and conductivity) in order to verify the applicability of this treatment process. However, a partial elimination of COD and colour effluent were achieved, depending on applied current density (20, 40 and 60 mA cm2), respectively. Therefore, different set of experiments were carried out where an amount Na2SO4 was added in the real effluent; then, COD of textile effluent was satisfactorily reduced by employing different operational conditions (current density, temperature, Na2SO4 concentration, flow rate), reducing the time of depuration and consequently, the costs, confirming the potential efficiency of this textile effluent treatmen

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Scale-up of anodic oxidation system is critical to the practical application of electrochemical treatment in bio-refractory organic wastewater treatment. In this study, the scale-up of electrochemical flow system was investigated by treating petrochemical wastewater using platinized titanium (Ti/Pt) and boron-doped diamond (BDD) anodes. It was demonstrated that flow cell was successfully scaled-up because when it was compared with batch mode (Rocha et al. 2012b), higher performances on organic matter removal were achieved. Under the suitable operating conditions and better anode material, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of petrochemical wastewater was reduced from 2,746 to 200 mg L(-1) within 5 h with an energy consumption of only 56.2 kWh m(-3) in the scaled-up BDD anode system. These results demonstrate that anode flow system is very promising in practical bio-refractory organic wastewater treatment.