Ultrasound assisted extraction (USAE) is an interesting process to obtain high valuable compounds and could contribute to the increase the value of some food by-products when used as sources of natural compounds. The main benefits will be a more effective extraction, thus saving energy, and also to the use of moderate temperatures, which is beneficial for heat sensitive compounds. For a successful application of the USAE, it is necessary to consider the influence of several process variables, the main ones being the applied ultrasonic power, the frequency, the extraction temperature, the reactor characteristics and the solvent-sample interaction. The highest extraction rate is usually achieved in the first few minutes, which is the most profitable period. To optimize the process, rate equations and unambiguous process characterization are needed, aspects that have often been lacking.

As one of several types of pollutants in water, chlorinated compounds have been routinely subjected to sonochemical analysis to check the environmental applications of this technology. In this review, an extensive study of the influence of the initial concentration, ultrasonic intensity and frequency on the kinetics, degradation efficiency and mechanism has been analyzed. The sonochemical degradation follows a radical mechanism which yields a very wide range of chlorinated compounds in very low concentrations. Special attention has been paid to the mass balance comparing the results from several analytical techniques. As a conclusion, sonochemical degradation alone is not an efficient treatment to reduce the organic pollutant level in waste water.

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Please cite this article as: I. Tudela, V. Sáez, M.D. Esclapez, M.I. Díez-García, P. Bonete, J. González-García, Simulation of the spatial distribution of the acoustic pressure in sonochemical reactors with numerical methods: A review, Ultrasonics Sonochemistry (2013), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10. 1016/j.ultsonch.2013.11.012 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. AbstractNumerical methods for the calculation of the acoustic field inside sonoreactors have rapidly emerged in the last 15 years. This paper summarizes some of the most important works on this topic presented in the past, along with the diverse numerical works that have been published since then, reviewing the state of the art from a qualitative point of view. In this sense, we illustrate and discuss some of the models recently developed by the scientific community to deal with some of the complex events that take place in a sonochemical reactor such as the vibration of the reactor walls and the nonlinear phenomena inherent to the presence of ultrasonic cavitation. In addition, we point out some of the upcoming challenges that must be addressed in order to develop a reliable tool for the proper designing of efficient sonoreactors and the scale-up of sonochemical processes.

The sonoelectrochemical treatment of aqueous solutions of trichloroacetic acid (TCAA) has been scaled-up from the voltammetric analysis to pre-pilot stage. The degradation in absence of ultrasound field has yield to a poor performance which has been improved in presence of ultrasound. The sonovoltametry study has provided the range of potentials and/or current densities to be used with the lowest current efficiency penalty. Sonoelectrolyses at batch scale (carried out with a horn-transducer 24 kHz positioned at about 3 cm from the surface of the electrode) achieved little improvement in the degradation. However, when a specifically designed sonoelectrochemical reactor (not optimized) was used during the scale-up, the presence of ultrasound field provided better results (fractional conversion 97%, degradation efficiency 26%, selectivity 0.92 and current efficiency 8%) at lower ultrasonic intensities and volumetric flow.

In this paper we report the successful use of a non-metallic electrode material, boron-doped diamond (BDD), for the anodic electro-oxidative modification of hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL). Platinum electrodes can give rise to loss of activity of HEWL in electrosynthetic studies, whereas activity is retained on boron-doped diamond which is proposed as an effective substitute material for this purpose. We also compare literature methods of electrode pre-treatment to determine the most effective in electrosynthesis. Our findings show a decrease in total nitroprotein yield with decreasing nitrite concentration and an increase with increasing solution pH, confirming that, at a BDD electrode, the controlling factor remains the concentration of tyrosine phenolate anion. Purification of mono- and bis-nitrated HEWL and assay of enzymic activity showed better retention of activity at BDD electrode surfaces when compared to platinum. The products from electro-oxidation of HEWL at BDD were confirmed by electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (ESI-FT-ICR) mass spectrometry, which revealed unique mass increases of +45 and +90 Da for the mono- and bis-nitrated lysozyme, respectively, corresponding to nitration at tyrosine residues. The nitration sites were confirmed as Tyr23 and Tyr20.

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