Portugaliae
Electrochimica Acta

Cathodic stripping voltammetric determination of losartan using hanging mercury drop electrode HMDE was described. The method was based on adsorptive accumulation of the species at HMDE and at pH 7, followed by alternating current AC sweep. The behavior of adsorptive stripping response was studied under various experimental conditions, e.g. type of supporting electrolyte, pH, accumulation time, scan rate and mode of sweep (direct current DC, differential pulse DP, square wave SW and AC). In Britton-Robinson buffer solution, pH 7, a quasi-reversible reaction took place. The reduction response was more sensitive than the oxidation one and it was linear over the concentration range of 0.16-1.2 microg/mL. The determination of the cited compound in oral dosages was achieved using the standard addition method. The average of determinations obtained by square wave adsorptive voltammetric method with its standard deviation was 100.1±3%.

A voltammetric procedure optimized by experimental design for glyphosate determination in soil, water and vegetable samples is described. The voltammetry experiments were performed using a hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE). The DPV variables involved in the optimization process were: voltage step, pulse amplitude, pulse interval, voltage step time and concentration of the supporting electrolyte. A full 25 factorial design was chosen to evaluate these effects. From the results obtained by the factorial design the three most important factors were determined. These variables were evaluated with a central composite design. Under the optimized conditions, the operational range was from 0.050 to 100.0 mg dm-3 and the detection and quantification limits were 14 and 48 µg dm-3, respectively. The optimized method was successfully applied to glyphosate determination in soil, water and vegetables after purifying with an ion exchange resin and derivation.

The influence of phosphate of aluminum (PA) on the corrosion inhibition of mild steel in phosphoric acid solution was studied using the weight-loss method. The electrochemical performance of the inhibitors was also investigated through potentiodynamic polarisation and EIS measurements. The inhibition efficiency of inhibitor increases with concentration to attain 84 % at 10-2M of PA in 0.33 M H3PO4. Polarization studies show that PA is a mixed-type inhibitor and acts both on the cathodic and anodic reactions without changing the mechanism of the hydrogen evolution reaction. The inhibition efficiency of PA is temperature-dependent in the range 298 - 363 K, the associated activation energy has been determined. PA adsorbs on the steel surface according to a Langmuir isotherm adsorption model.

The computational simulation of the Bray-Liebhafsky (BL) oscillating chemical reaction by differential kinetic methodology is carried out in this work. According to the mechanism of Treindl and Noyes involving 10 reaction steps, the changes of the concentrations of I2 and O2 in solution are simulated. When the control parameters are alpha = 0.55, beta = 0.2882 and delta ＜ 0.6, the differential equations present periodic solution, and the oscillations can be observed in 150 min. If , alpha and beta are taken as the control parameters, respectively, the bifurcation points would be observed in the processes of control parameters, changing successively with the critical values of alpha = 0.55，beta = 0.2882，and delta = 0.6. The acidity of solution on the nonlinear phenomena is also investigated in detail.

Nickel-diamond composite coatings are produced by electro deposition using sedimentation techniques on mild steel substrate at various cathode current density, pH and temperature. Electro deposition was carried out from a conventional Watts bath. Natural diamond powder of 6-12 m size was used in the study. The volume percent incorporation of diamond on the coated specimens was measured gravimetrically. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and regression models (a mathematical model) were used to predict the volume percent incorporation of diamond in the Ni-diamond metal matrix. In this work, Volume fraction of diamond deposition (Vfd) was taken as response variable (output variable) and current density, pH and temperature were taken as input variables. The prediction of response variable was obtained with the help of empirical relation between the response variable and input variables using ANN and also through DOE. The predicted values of the responses by ANN and regression models were compared with the experimental values and their closeness with the experimental values was determined.

The calculation with rotational elliptic coordinates of the streaming potential in the vicinity of a disk-shaped sample rotating in an electrolytic solution is presented. The measurement of this streaming potential is used to determine the zeta potential of planar surfaces. Rotational elliptic coordinates are favored in relation to integral transform methods because only simple mathematical methods are employed to explain the theory of this technique.