 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
○During this period we continued the preliminary construction and assembly of the components for the portable cold plasma biodiesel microreactor. The block diagram of our microreactor is presented in Figure 1.
The "Mixture reservoir" contains a homogeneous mixture of vegetable oil and methanol.
The reaction for biodiesel fuel production will take place without the need of a chemical catalyst, thus, the reaction products will require no further neutralization.
 |
|---|
Figure 1. The block diagram for the biodiesel microreactor. |
○ Using the plasma activation-chamber which was designed and built in the first part of the project, we performed a second activation study. We focused on the improvement of the diffusion properties of polymer patches doped with anti-inflammatory substances (designed to be used in the treatment of inflammatory joint problems).
We prepared a set of k-carrageenan polymer sheets, shaped as patches, doped with the following anti-inflammatory compounds: curcumin (polyphenol extract from the root of the plant Curcuma longa) and morin (pentahydroxi-flavone, extracted from plants of the group structure Moraceae).
We studied the amount of the released active substance in the volume of the samples as a function of time, using the transdermal diffusion method. For this, we designed and built in our Institute (INCDTIM Cluj-Napoca), four Franz-type static diffusion cells. We compared the values obtained for cold plasma-treated patches verus standard polymer patches (whose surfaces were not plasma activated). The results of this study will be published in an article entitled:
"Plasma Containing films activated transdermal curcumin and morin in k-carrageenan matrix".