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The Vicia faba membranes are an abundant and a low cost product. In the present research paper, the extracted Vicia faba mucilage was tested as an eco-friendly flocculant for textile wastewater treatment. Its performance as flocculant, in decolorization, chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal and the concentration of total suspended solids was checked. The natural extracted product was characterized using infrared spectroscopy. The total sugars were determined in the extracted product. The effect study, followed by an optimization and modeling analysis, of some experimental parameters on the coagulation-flocculation performance, using Vicia faba mucilage (as a flocculant), combined with aluminum sulfate (as a coagulant), showed that the best conditions for the flocculation process were pH of the effluent about 7, flocculant dose about 6.75 mg/L, flocculation mixing time about 3 min and flocculation mixing speed about 30 rpm, leading to a decolorization equal to 92.32%, COD removal of about 97.52% and total suspended solids of about 15.3 mg/L. A comparison study between the flocculation performance of commercial reagents and the bio-agent showed that the natural product presented a good flocculation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the use of an available agricultural Tunisian vine stem waste as a filler material. Composites of green materials were prepared using vine stems as filler and low density polyethylene (LDPE) as a matrix. A series of composite films was prepared by different loadings of the vine stem waste with 10-50% of the filler in 10% intervals. The ensuing materials were characterized by several techniques. The morphology of the composites was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The thermal and mechanical properties were studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), respectively. The results indicated that vine-stem based particles enhanced the thermo-mechanical properties of the thermoplastic matrix and demonstrated that this available lignocellulosic biomass of vine stems can be considered to be a promising filler material. However, the obtained result of water absorption indicated that the maximum limit of the filler content should not exceed 30% of vine stems. POLYM. COMPOS., 36:817-824, 2015. © 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vitis vinifera L.is a traditional Asian herb widely used for different health problems. In the present research, the ethanolic and the aqueous extracts of Vitis vinifera L. leaves collected from shrub, grown in Tunisia, were prepared and evaluated for the antileishmanial activity against Leishmani ainfantum promastigotes. The inhibitory concentration 50 (IC50) was determined and the results showed that the etahnolic extract is more active than the aqueous one (IC50= 0.108 mg/mL). Microscopic observations showed that the ethanolic extract promoted the destruction of cytoplasmic and nuclear membranes of Leishmani ainfantum promastigotes and altered the overall shape of the cell. In order to explain the difference of antileishmanial activity between ethanolic and aqueous extracts, anthocyanins amount was determined by spectrophotometry. It was found that the ethanolic extract is richer in anthocyanins than the aqueous one which can explain the higher antileishmanial activity of the ethanolic extract.