Adsorption of pharmaceutical residues on adsorbents prepared from olive stones using mixture design of experiments model.

In this work, inexpensive and easily available olive stone (OS) waste was used as the source material to prepare activated carbons (ACs) by chemical activation with phosphoric acid and zinc chloride. The mixture design of experiments (MDOE) method was applied to study the effect of the composition of the mixture of unmodified olive stones (UOS) and ACs prepared from olive stones activated with ZnCl2 (ACOS ZnCl2) and H3PO4 (ACOS H3PO4) on the absorption of pharmaceutical residues. The adsorbed tetracycline (TC) amounts at equilibrium predicted from the model equation developed using Microsoft Excel were found to be in good agreement with the experimental values (R2 = 0.999). Based on the results of the model, the amount of TC removed increased as the proportion of ACOS H3PO4 in the adsorbent mixture increased and the highest amount of TC adsorbed was obtained with an adsorbent made up entirely of ACOS H3PO4. Separate adsorption tests for sulfamethazine (SMT) and amoxicillin (AMX) on ACOS H3PO4 showed that SMT was adsorbed best (189.81 mg/g), followed by TC (183.11 mg/g) then AMX (155.69 mg/g). However, when these molecules were present together in the same solution, it was TC that adsorbed best, followed by SMT then AMX. In addition to this, the sorption process studied was best described by a pseudo-first-order model and it was the Langmuir model that satisfactorily described the equilibrium data.

Acaricidal activity of flavonoids extract of Borago officinalis L. (Boraginaceae) against brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Latreille, 1806).

Borago officinalis L. (Boraginaceae) is a plant of the Boraginaceae family, used in Algeria for food and medicinal purposes. This study reports the effect of flavonoids extracted from the aerial part of Borago officinalis L. (Boraginaceae) on the larvae and engorged adult females of the brown dog tick Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Latreille, 1806) using adults immersion test (AIT) and larval immersion test (LIT). For this purpose, the larvae and engorged female of Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Latreille, 1806) were exposed to serial dilutions of flavonoids extract (50 mg/ml, 25 mg/ml, 12.5 mg/ml and 6.25 mg/ml) using "dipping method" in vitro. The plant extract was obtained by fractionation using appropriate solvents. The extraction yield is 22% with a flavonoids concentration equal to 129.12 µg equivalent of quercetin/ml of the extract. The chromatographic analysis by high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) reveals the presence of gallic acid, vanillic acid, kaempferol, dihydroxybenzoic and quercetin. The results obtained show that the flavonoids extract of Borago officunalis L. (Boraginaceae) considerably reduces the oviposition and the hatching rate of the eggs of Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Latreille, 1806) and was shown to be toxic against newly hatched larvae of Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Latreille, 1806) (P < 0.05).