Volume 11, Issue 1 -

This study investigates the distribution of residual fouling in used spiral wound ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) membrane cartridges. Residual fouling on four full-scale production UF membrane cartridges and two full-scale MF membrane cartridges were investigated with infrared spectroscopy inspecting fat and protein deposits. A non-homogenous distribution of residual fouling was observed with concentrations highest at the center tube decreasing away from the feed side. Analysis of variance was used to evaluate significant factors affecting the model. The observed tendencies can be explained by flow and pressure differences caused by design aspects of spirally wound membrane cartridge and the steel housing. Variations between individual sheets from the same cartridges were observed, suggesting a role from manufacturing variability in residual fouling after cleaning-in-place. This paper describes a new method for mapping fouling proposing a semi-quantifiable description. This description might guide membrane developers and users to optimize cleaning methods in the future.

Effective diffusion coefficient ( D -value) is an important parameter for the extraction process. In this study, a cylindrical model to estimate the D -value of betanin extraction from red beet roots was developed. The influence of extraction temperature, pH, cylindrical thickness and type of acids on the D -value was also investigated. The optimal parameters of betanin extraction were 30°C, pH 4.0 adjusted with sulfurous acid or acetic acid. D -values under the above conditions were 18.95×10 −11 m 2 /s and 17.87×10 −11 m 2 /s, respectively. The result showed that D -value elevated with the increase of cylindrical thickness, which was consistent with earlier conclusion from spherical model. The modeling may be useful for the investigation into extraction process and practical application.

Discrimination of apple varieties plays an important role in apple post-harvest commercial processing. A fast allied fuzzy c-means (FAFCM) clustering algorithm was proposed to classify the apple varieties using near-infrared reflectance (NIR) spectroscopy technology and orthogonal linear discriminant analysis (OLDA) which was used as feature extraction and dimensionality reduction method. Our classification method: the high-dimensional NIR data were reduced to three-dimensional data by OLDA at first, and the FAFCM clustering algorithm was implemented to classify the reduced data. Furthermore, the principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) combined with k-nearest neighbor classifier (KNNC), fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering and unsupervised possibilistic clustering algorithm (UPCA), formed the other four classification methods to classify apple samples in comparison with our proposed method. The experimental results showed that FAFCM achieved the best performance of classification.

Multilayered fish oil (FO) emulsions were manufactured by using the layer-by-layer electrostatic deposition method to improve the physical or oxidation stability. Trans -cinnamaldehyde (cinnamon oil) was added into the emulsion system because it can mask fishy flavors and functions as an antioxidant. To develop the FO emulsion formulation, the composition of emulsifier and biopolymer for stable FO emulsions was determined by using the modified critical micelle concentration principle. In our study, the selected concentrations of coating materials were 1.25% Tween 20 (primary layer), 0.1% chitosan (secondary layer), and 0.2% low methoxyl pectin (tertiary layer). All FO emulsions were physically stable resulting in small particles below 300 nm with a narrow size distribution. Furthermore, the oxidation stability of multilayered FO emulsions decreased with decreasing number of membrane layers because FO was released from layered emulsions. However, trans -cinnamaldehyde had no antioxidant effect on FO emulsions. These data suggest that although cinnamon oil has no effect on the oxidation stability, the physical and oxidation stability of FO can be improved by using multilayered emulsions containing Tween 20, chitosan, and low methoxyl pectin.

The presence of practically non-dissolvable small particles in sugar solutions can cause haze during application and has to be minimal. Intermediate storage of thick sugar juice becomes increasingly common practice. In particular juices treated with anti-scale agents appear to be prone to turbidity development. This work on turbidity mitigation reports results on both laboratory and industrial level experiments. Different filter aids were tested and led to reduced turbidity levels. At industrial and lab scale reductions in the order of 30–54% and 50–70% were achieved respectively, which however remains insufficient to resolve the problem. The chemical mitigation by reduction of the hardness of the juice either by sodium carbonate or by ion exchanger treatment was investigated. While the reduction of the calcium concentration by dosing of sodium carbonate turned out to be basically possible, this remains less practical than the utilization of cation exchangers. Furthermore, it was found that application of anti-scale agents causes a reduction on the particle sizes that are found in thick juice samples after 2 months storage. Turbidity values of these samples were, independent of dosage and type of anti-scale agent, twice as high as in reference samples.

Plantaricin ZJ217 was continually purified by XAD 1180, cation exchange chromatography, gel chromatography, and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system. The peptide functioned as bactericidal, but did not lead to lysis of cells. Considering the potassium efflux experiment, pores may be formed in the surface of cell membrane. Fifteen of twenty amino acids identified by Edman degradation indicated that it may be a novel bacteriocin as no bacteriocin shared similar sequences. This bacteriocin exhibited strong heat stability (121°C, 30 min) and pH stability (pH 2.0–6.0). It was sensitive to proteinase K, trypsin, papain, and pepsin. This bacteriocin inhibited growth of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other bacteria.

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of the different wall material combinations on the microencapsulation of virgin coconut oil (VCO) by spray drying. Maltodextrin (MD) and sodium caseinate (SC) were used as the basic wall materials and mixed with gum Arabic (GA), whey protein concentrate (WPC) and gelatin (G). The stability, viscosity and droplet size of the feed emulsions were measured. MD:SC showed the best encapsulation efficiency (80.51%) and oxidative stability while MD:SC:GA presented the lowest encapsulation efficiency (62.93%) but better oxidative stability than the other two combinations. Microcapsules produced were sphere in shape with no apparent fissures and cracks, low moisture content (2.35–2.85%) and high bulk density (0.23–0.29 g/cm 3 ). All the particles showed relatively low peroxide value (0.34–0.82 meq peroxide/kg of oil) and good oxidative stability during storage. MD:SC:GA microencapsulated VCO had the highest antioxidant activity in both of the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) (0.22 mmol butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)/kg of oil) and 2,2-azinobis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) assays (1.35 mmol trolox/kg of oil).

This work presents a Computational Fluid Dynamics approach to evaluate the effects of feed diameter on the pressure drop and magnitude velocity in an aerocyclone utilized in feed processing machinery. Traditionally cyclone separators have been used in agro-industry as pre-screening devices to separate coarse suspended particles (diameter>10 µm) from a gas stream, which is subsequently cleaned of fine particles using some other techniques. Hence particle diameter plays a major role in the quality of separation. Study includes five levels of particle diameters (10, 15, 25, 50 and 100 µm) and their impact on the performance of the cyclone. Pressure drop values were estimated to be 601, 668, 787, 840 and 894 Pa for diameters of 10, 15, 25, 50 and 100 µm, respectively. Also magnitude velocity values were estimated to be 19.4, 19.6, 20.3, 20.6 and 20.9 ms −1 for diameters of 10, 15, 25, 50 and 100 µm.

Electrolyzed water offers several advantages over other sanitizers for sanitation of both food contact and non-contact surfaces. However, current electrolyzed water-generating process has low fluid output. To overcome such limitations, a circulating electrolyzed water-generating system has been developed in this study. The effects of NaCl/HCl concentration and electrolysis time were investigated. The free chlorine form (HClO and ClO – ) of circulating electrolyzed water, and NaClO with the available chlorine concentrations of 50, 100, 200 mg/L were analyzed by using an ultraviolet spectrophotometer. The results show that the main chlorine form was HClO when the pH of solution was 6.44–6.53. The only ClO – in NaClO solutions when the pH of solution is 11.90. With the dilution of circulating electrolyzed water, the HClO concentration decreased while its proportion account for total available chlorine concentration increased (from 56.99% to 74.29%). The results indicated the potential application of diluted circulating electrolyzed water with high available chlorine concentration. The developed circulating electrolyzed water system in this study could be considered as a potential sanitizer due to its high stability, strong antimicrobial activity with high concentration of HClO and minimized equipment requirements for production.

Chinese aromatic sunflower seeds (ASS) are a traditional snack food of China. During the production process, raw sunflower seeds were boiled by adding several traditional Chinese spices and then roasted to dryness, which lead to the formation of typical aroma, taste and healthful properties of ASS. In this study, volatile compounds from ASS were isolated by static headspace (HS) as well as simultaneous distillation and extraction (SDE) and determined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The results show that the boiling process is necessary to obtain the typical aroma of ASS. A total of 82 compounds were identified, with phenols being the most abundant followed by spice components such as E -anethole and so on. Additionally, an SDE-GC/FID method was established to analyze the quantities of five main volatile compounds with eugenol being the most (16.06–29.30 µg/g). The levels of these five compounds could be used to adjust parameters during production and processing.

A rotational viscometer was used to investigate the effect of different sugars (sucrose, glucose, fructose and lactose, 1–4% w/w) and salts (NaCl and CaCl 2 , 0.1–1% w/w), on rheological properties of Basil seed gum (BSG). The viscosity was dependent on type of sugar and salt addition. Interactions between BSG gum and sugars improved the viscosity of solutions, whereas the viscosity of the BSG solutions decreased in the presence of salts. Power law model well-described non-Newtonian shear thinning behavior of BSG. The consistency index was influenced by the sugars and salts content. Addition of sucrose, glucose, lactose and salts to BSG led to increases in flow behavior index (less shear thinning solutions), whereas fructose increased shear thinning of solutions. Flow behavior index values of the power law model vary as follows: 0.43–0.49, 0.53–0.64, 0.21–0.26, and 0.57–0.67 for sucrose, glucose, fructose and lactose, respectively. The consistency coefficient (k) of BSG was affected by sugars and salts. It decreased from 0.14 to 0.09 Pa.s n with increasing CaCl 2 from 0 to 4% w/w (20°C, 0.2% w/w BSG). The consistency coefficient values vary as follows: 0.094–0.119, 0.075–0.098, 0.257–0.484, and 0.056–0.074 for sucrose, glucose, fructose and lactose, respectively.

In this study, Bioconversion process of glucose to fructose from date syrup using Escherichia coli K12 is modeled using a commercial computational fluids dynamics (CFD) code fluent FLUENT 6.3.23 [8] which we implemented a user-defined functions (UDF) to simulate the interrelationships at play between various phases. A two phases CFD model was developed using an Eulerian – Eulerian approach to calculate the fructose volume fraction produced during time. The bioconversion process was studied as function of three initial concentration of glucose (0.14, 0.242 and 0.463gL –1 ), three induction time (60, 120 and 180 mn) and three inoculum volume (100, 120 and 150mL). The numerical results are compared with experimental data for bioconversion rate and show good agreement (R 2 = 0.894). The optimal condition of diffusion was obtained by applying an initial concentration of glucose less than 0.2gL –1 and induction time great than 100 minutes.

In this study, the effects of some processing parameters on moisture content, drying yield, bulk density, solubility and particle size of peppermint tea powders obtained from a hot bed spray dryer were investigated. In this method of drying, a heated bed is used instead of heated air to simplify spouted bed drying method and lower the cost of drying. A wheel rotary atomizer was employed for spraying of material and a frustum-shaped bed heated by thermal elements was applied around the atomizer. Independent variables were bed temperature (130, 140 and 150°C), feed flow rate (10, 20 and 30 L/h) and rotary speed of atomizer (7,000, 12,000 and 16,000 rpm). The moisture content of dried tea powders ranged from 3.13 to 4.87%. The highest drying yield (87.23%) and solubility (89.6%) were obtained at the bed temperature of 130°C and feed flow rate of 10 L/h.

The Box–Behnken design of experiments under response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the foaming process for the development of foam mat-dried muskmelon powder. The independent variables were the concentration of egg albumen (EA), carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and whipping time (WT). The responses were foam density, foam drainage volume and foam expansion. The optimum conditions for foaming process were EA (11.59% w/w), CMC (0.59% w/w) and WT (3.97 min). The unfoamed muskmelon pulp took longer time to dry to the final moisture content of 2% d.b than foamed pulp. The effective diffusivity for the foamed muskmelon pulp was found to be higher than the unfoamed pulp. The unfoamed pulp resulted in a sticky and dark colored powder, whereas the foamed pulp had a free-flowing and light colored powder. The flaky and porous foam-dried product can be used as an ingredient in broad range of food products.

The paper presents a new framework for carrying out simulations of continuous-time stochastic processes by exploiting a discrete event approach. The application scope of this work mainly refers to industrial production processes executed on a continuous flow of material (e.g. food and beverage industry) as well as production processes working on discrete units but characterized by a high speed flow (e.g. automated packaging lines). The proposed model, developed adopting the Discrete EVent system Specification (DEVS) formalism, defines a single generalized base unit able to represent, by means of an event scheme generated by state changes, the base behaviors needed for the modeling of a generic manufacturing unit, that is, (i) breakdowns and repairs, (ii) speed and accumulation, and (iii) throughput time. Moreover, the possibility to keep trace of additional measures of parameters related to the process and the flowing material (i.e. temperature, concentration of pollutant, and so on) is also considered. Since these parameters can change over time in a continuous manner, a specific discretization approach has been introduced to avoid the need to integrate parameter variation functions over time.

The water absorption of soybeans ( Glycine max (L.) Merr.) during soaking is directly related to their textural characteristics and grinding properties during processing. In this study, we determined the effects of vacuum soaking on the absorption of water and salt solutions by soybeans. We also analyzed the textural characteristics and grinding properties of soybeans soaked under atmospheric and vacuum pressures (0.02–0.08 MPa) for 8 and 16 h. The results showed that vacuum soaking promoted the absorption of water and NaHCO 3 solution. Vacuum soaking also decreased the hardness of soybeans. Soaking under vacuum significantly shortened the soaking time required for soybeans. Additionally, the protein content was higher in soymilk made from vacuum-soaked soybeans than in soymilk made from soybeans soaked under atmospheric pressure.