Dragon Fruit Foliage: An Agricultural Cellulosic Source to Extract Cellulose Nanomaterials.

In this report, we focus our effort to extract cellulose nanomaterials (CNs) from an agricultural cellulosic waste, Dragon Fruit foliage (DFF). DFF was first pretreated by several mechanical treatments and then bleached by chemical treatment to obtain bleached DFF. CNs were then produced from the hydrolysis of the bleached DFF catalyzed by sulfuric acid. We obtained CNs with a small diameter (50 to 130 nm) and length (100 to 500 nm) and a height of 3 to 10 nm. The CNs have a high crystallinity (crystallinity index 84.8%), high -COOH content (0.74 mmol·g-1), good thermal stability and a good Cu (II) adsorption capacity with an adsorption maximum of ~103 mg·g-1. These findings demonstrated the great potential of converting many agricultural cellulosic wastes into valuable cellulose nanomaterials.

Acrylamide in daily food in the metropolitan area of Hanoi, Vietnam.

Acrylamide, a colourless and odourless crystalline solid, formed via the Maillard reaction in food, has been reported with harmful properties for humans, such as toxicity and carcinogenicity. Three hundred and four processed food samples from 17 product types, collected in Hanoi, Vietnam, were analyzed by LC-MS/MS to measure the acrylamide concentration. The limit of detection (LOD) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) of acrylamide were 1 µg Kg-1 and 3 µg Kg-1, respectively. Effectively, the highest acrylamide content is usually found in processed food, which is one of the primary reasons of increased acrylamide content in food. All French fried samples contained acrylamide above 500 µg kg-1. Acrylamide concentration in non-fried noodle, vermicelli, rice noodle, pho, dried vegetable, and rice cracker is lower than in potato chips, fried potatoes, fried cake, and fried noodles. The results could be helpful to estimate exposure and risk assessment of acrylamide in Vietnam.