Wastewater treatment and re-use of industrial process water are critical issue for the development of human activities and environment conservation. Catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) is an attractive and useful technique for treatment of effluents where the concentrations of organic pollutants are too low, for the incineration and other pollution control techniques to be economically feasible and when biological treatments are ineffective, e.g. in the case of toxic effluents. In CWAO, combustion takes place on a Pt/Al2O3 catalysts usually at temperatures several degrees below those required for thermal incineration. In CWAO process, the organic contaminants dissolved in water are either partially degraded by means of an oxidizing agent into biodegradable intermediates or mineralized into innocuous inorganic compounds such as CO2, H2O and inorganic salts, which remain in the aqueous phase. In contrast to other thermal processes CWAO produces no NOx, SO2, HCl, dioxins, furans, fly ash, etc. This review paper presents the application of platinum catalysts in bubble column reactor for CWAO of oxalic acid.

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The underlying molecular mechanisms of the antihepatotoxic activity of Trianthema portulacastrum by monitoring its effect on mouse liver DNA-chain break, sugar-base damage and chromosomal aberrations, during chronic or acute treatment with carbon tetrachloride (CCl(4)) have been studied. Daily oral feeding with the ethanolic extract (150 mg/kg basal diet, per os) was given 2 weeks before CCl(4)treatment and continued until the end of the experiment (13 weeks). T. portulacastrum extract offer unique protection (P< 0.05-0. 001) against the induction of liver-specific structural-type chromosomal anomalies 15, 30 or 45 days after the last CCl(4)insult, compared to control mice. This was further evidenced by extract-mediated protection (15 days prior feeding following a single necrogenic dose of CCl(4)) of the generation of DNA chain-break and Fe-sugar-base damage assays. The observed hepatoprotective mechanism could be due to its ability to counteract oxidative injury to DNA in the liver of mouse.

Lignocellulose dissolution and fractionation into highly amorphous cellulose (and lignin) using ammonia-salt solvents under ambient conditions facilitates efficient biorefining.