Food Engineering
Ali Saeidan; Mehdi Khojastehpour; Mahmood Reza Golzarian; Marzieh Moeenfard
Abstract
Introduction: Due to the fact that the presence of high doses of aflatoxin in agricultural products such as cocoa beans is unacceptable in terms of national and international standards, appropriate quality control tests should prevent such products to entering in the process of processing cocoa beans. ...
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Introduction: Due to the fact that the presence of high doses of aflatoxin in agricultural products such as cocoa beans is unacceptable in terms of national and international standards, appropriate quality control tests should prevent such products to entering in the process of processing cocoa beans. Conventional methods of detecting aflatoxins such as ELISA and HPLC are very time consuming, expensive and require expertise, so replacing these tests with non-destructive and rapid methods such as near-infrared spectroscopy can increase the detection efficiency. Brado et al. (Berardo et al., 2005) used infrared spectroscopy to evaluate and diagnose Fusarium verticillium, which produces fumonicin toxin in maize. Manvar et al. (Mohammadi Manvar, 2015) used transmission and reflection Infrared spectroscopy to detect aflatoxin levels in Iranian pistachios. Singh et al. (2012) used hyperspectral imaging in the range of 700-1100 nm to detect fungal contamination of Penicillium SPP, Aspergillus Glaucus, and Aspergillus Niger in wheat. Kandpal et al. (Kandpal et al., 2015) in a research work using hyperspectral imaging in the range of 700-1100nm classified grains of maize contaminated with aflatoxin toxin using PLS-DA into five groups. In current study, an attempt was made to detect the amount of aflatoxin in cocoa beans using infrared spectroscopy and to classify healthy and infected beans into groups. Materials and Methods: In this research, 180 cocoa beans, each weighing 1 gram, were selected to do analyses. One mg of aflatoxin B1 powder (A. flavus, A 6636, Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, Mo USA) was prepared from Sigma Aldrich representative in Iran and by dissolving this powder in absolute ethanol and concentrations of 20µg/kg, 500µg/kg was obtained as mentioned. For cocoa bean spectroscopy, a near infrared spectrometer in Shiraz University Central Laboratory (NIRS XDS Rapid Content Analysis) was used, which has the ability to spectroscopy in the range of 400-2500 nm. PLS-DA method was used to classify aflatoxin-infected samples from healthy samples. All 180 experimental samples were divided into two groups of training (120 samples) and test (60 samples) and the constructed model was first calibrated with training values and then evaluated with test data. Due to the fact that some noise is always stored in the spectral data and in order to remove this noise, a series of mathematical pretreatment, including: first and second derivatives was used (Chen et al., 2013; Nicolai et al., 2007). Results and Discussion: Comparing the average amount of infrared reflection spectrum, it is revealed that healthy grains have less reflection intensity than infected grains. Also, there are a number of local maximums and minimums where the difference in reflective intensity is more pronounced than elsewhere, and this phenomenon is due to the different concentrations of toxins in cocoa beans. After applying the second Savitzie Golay derivative pretreatment and performing PLS-DA classification using two latent variables, the distinction between classes can be clearly seen. The separation rate of the samples on the second LV is more specific, however, the second and first class samples in this LV have a closer score to each other. The peaks observed at 1440 nm and 1482 nm according to the first Everton O-H bond can be related to fungal contamination (Berardo et al., 2005; Sirisomboon et al., 2013). Also, the peak at 1838 nm is related to the tensile C-H bond, which can be related to the CH2 groups. According to the results obtained from the calibration, cross-validation and testing sections, it is determined that the degree of calibration error (ER) and the degree of error-free calibration (NER) in the pretreatment mode with the second-order derivative of Savitz Golay are the lowest and highest values, respectively. Also, in this pretreatment for the calibration model and testing, the specificity index for the first-, second- and third-class samples are equal to 1.00, which means that all classes are correctly classified. In the cross-validation model, the value of the specificity index for the third class (samples with 500 ppb contamination) is equal to 97%. This indicates that 97% of infected seeds are correctly classified in the third group and only 3% in the other groups are incorrectly classified. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates the feasibility of near-infrared spectroscopy to identify and classify cocoa beans contaminated with aflatoxin. The results showed that the coefficients of independent variables (spectral wavelengths including 1440, 1482 and 1838 nm) decreased according to increasing in the concentration of toxin. Finally, it can be said that the method of detecting aflatoxin contamination using infrared spectroscopy is an efficient, non-destructive and fast method.
Food Technology
Maryam Zamanian; Hassan Sadrnia; Mehdi Khojastehpour; Fereshteh Hosseini; Jules Thibault
Abstract
Introduction: Among the different types of polymers used for packaging and coating, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), given its very enviable properties, has been used in various industrial applications. It is used for instance as controlled release in pharmaceutical elements, paper, textile and food supplement ...
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Introduction: Among the different types of polymers used for packaging and coating, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), given its very enviable properties, has been used in various industrial applications. It is used for instance as controlled release in pharmaceutical elements, paper, textile and food supplement coating due to its good physical properties, chemical resistance, thermostability, film-forming capability, efficiency and biodegradability. The aim of this work was to examine the combined effect of montmorillonite (MMT) platelets and titanium oxide (TiO2) spherical nanoparticles on the physical and mechanical properties of PVA/ TiO2/MMT nanocomposites, and to determine the optimal combination to provide good properties, using response surface methodology (RSM). Materials & methods: PVA, PVA/TiO2, PVA/MMT and PVA/ TiO2/MMT nanocomposite films were prepared by the solution casting method. For each sample, 1.8 g of PVA was dissolved in 50 mL deionized water and maintained for 24 h at room temperature. The mixture was then heated to 90˚C and stirred using a magnetic stirrer up to 3 h to ensure the complete dissolution of PVA, followed by cooling down the solution to room temperature. Various amounts of TiO2 nanoparticles (1 and 2 w% on a dry basis) were added to deionized water and agitated with a stirrer for 12 h at 500 rpm. This method was also used for MMT (2 and 4 w% on a dry basis). The nanoparticle suspension was subjected to ultrasonic homogenization for 20 min to ensure a good dispersion. The 50 mL nanoparticle suspension was added to the PVA solution drop by drop during a period of 5 min while maintaining intense stirring (1000 rpm). Mixing was continued and glycerol (30 w% based on the polymer) was added. Vacuum with a rotary vacuum pump was applied to remove air bubbles from the solution. The solution was poured into a 15-cm internal diameter Petri dish with a perfectly flat bottom and carefully aligned horizontally. Homogeneous films were peeled off after drying in an air oven at 40˚C for 72 h. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) were performed for characterizing the morphology of nanocomposite films. The effect of these two nanoparticles on physical and mechanical properties, was evaluated by response surface methodology (RSM). A three-level factorial design was used to define the test points for the series of experiments. Among the various design alternatives suggested by theoretical algorithm, the selected design consisted of 13 experiments including five replicate central points used for variance calculation. Furthermore, PVA film data were analyzed using the Design-Expert program (Version 7.0, Stat-Ease Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota) to find the optimum combination of constituents for the best properties. Results and discusions: X-ray diffraction patterns showed that the nanoparticles were well dispersed in the polymer matrix of PVA/ TiO2 and PVA / MMT films with layered microstructure. In addition, the linear effect of MMT nanoparticles and the interaction of TiO2 and MMT on tensile strength were significant. The linear, quadratic and interaction effects of both nanoparticles on Young's modulus were also significant. In general, the optimum values of TiO2 and MMT were 1% and 4% respectively for mechanical properties. The presence of both nanoparticles had a significant effect on transparency and ΔE. Results of nanocomposite films indicated that the film with 2% TiO2 and 4% MMT has higher WI and actually is darker than other samples. By analyzing different results with response surface method, the nanocomposite film with 0.5% TiO2 and 4% MMT was proposed as optimum combination for mechanical and physical properties
Hesam Omrani Fard; Mohammad Hossein Abaspour fard; Mehdi Khojastehpour; Ali Dashti
Abstract
Introduction: One of the new methods for improving the mechanical properties of bioplastics is the production of blending based bioplastics. Recent studies show that proteins, in combination with starch, form a strong network of hydrogen bonds and intermolecular interactions that resulted stable 3-D ...
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Introduction: One of the new methods for improving the mechanical properties of bioplastics is the production of blending based bioplastics. Recent studies show that proteins, in combination with starch, form a strong network of hydrogen bonds and intermolecular interactions that resulted stable 3-D materials. The big problem in the commercialization of blending based bioplastics is the lack of industrial machinery for the continuous production of bioplastics with the direct use of biopolymers. Industrial production of bioplastics is accompanied by increasing heat along with applying the pressure. It is necessary to know the kinetics of thermal degradation of bioplastics to study thermal behavior at different temperatures in order to design bioplastics processing devices and molding machines, software modeling of processes, mass and energy equilibrium, and optimizing energy consumption in the production process along with improving the thermal properties of the bioplastics.
Materials and methods: In this study, the dynamics thermal decomposition of bioplastics prepared from a mixture of potato whole flour-gelatin and glycerol with a control sample consisting of potato whole flour and glycerol was investigated and compared. The gelatin was extracted from chicken feet using chemical methods. In this research, two isoconversional models including Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO) and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) models were considered. Using each of these models, thermal decomposition kinetic parameters were calculated for bioplastic samples.
Result and discussion: The results showed that the maximum activation energy of the mixed bioplastics determined 162 and 150 kJ/mol by FWO method at the conversion ratio of 0.9 and 0.5 respectively, while it was 217 kJ/mol at the ratio of 0.6 for control bioplastics. The amounts of kinetic parameters calculated in this study, were able to determine the thermal behavior at different temperatures and the thermal decomposition process. Also, it can help to redesign and optimize the methods of molding and shaping of potato-gelatin based bioplastics by the use of existing machinery in the industry.
Aliakbar Dadvar; Mehdi Khojastehpour; Hassan Sadrnia
Abstract
External and internal changes in fruits during storage time are affected by the various factors that some of them can by studied by measuring the qualitative parameters (physical and mechanical). The effects of storage time on some physical and mechanical properties of Valencia orange were investigated. ...
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External and internal changes in fruits during storage time are affected by the various factors that some of them can by studied by measuring the qualitative parameters (physical and mechanical). The effects of storage time on some physical and mechanical properties of Valencia orange were investigated. The experiment was performed as factorial based on completely randomized design. Analysis of experimental results showed a significant effect of storage time on all the physical parameters of Valencia orange. With increasing time, the true density of oranges increased while other physical parameters decreased. Rind ratio and moisture content increased and true density decreased with increasing the size of fruit. Also the effect of storage time and fruit size on the rupture force and deformation was significant at the level 0.01. The mean failure load for 2, 32 and 62 days storage were obtained 206.05, 139.64 and 221.07 N, respectively. Rupture force and deformation values were followed by increasing fruit size.
Elham Gharoyi; Mohammad Hossein Abaspour fard; Nasser Shahtahmassebi; Mehdi Khojastehpour
Abstract
In this study, ZnO nanoparicles and polymer nanocomposite were synthesized for film preparing of food packaging. The structural, physical and anti-microbial properties were then studied. ZnO nanoparticles were synthesized by sol- gel method. The Structural analysis by XRD verified the formation of zinc ...
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In this study, ZnO nanoparicles and polymer nanocomposite were synthesized for film preparing of food packaging. The structural, physical and anti-microbial properties were then studied. ZnO nanoparticles were synthesized by sol- gel method. The Structural analysis by XRD verified the formation of zinc oxide phase. TEM images showed that the nanoparticles are spherical shape and their average size between 20 to 25nm. To prepare nanofilm, Zno nanoparticles were added at three concentration levels of 1,3 and 5%wt to the PVA matrix which prepared by solution processing method. SEM images of the film showed that in all samples the nanoparticles were distributed well in the polymer matrix. With using the Fourier Transmission Infrared (FTIR) at a wave length of 558cm- 1 Zn-0 band at all of nanoparticle concentrations were establish. The effect of inserting ZnO on the mechanical and antibacterial properties and moisture content of the PVA were also investigated. The increase of ZnO concentration in PVA from one to three percents causes the increase of tensile strength by 11% .The moisture content reduced up to 20%, when nanoparticles concentration increases from zero to five percents. Furthermore, by adding ZnO on PVA the antibacterial activity of the composite film was further improved.
Hasan Drogar; Mehdi Khojastehpour; Bagher Emadi; Mohammad Hossein Saiedirad
Abstract
In this study, the physical properties (size, mass, volume, density, geometric diameter, sphericity and friction coefficient on galvanized steel and wood surface) and some mechanical properties of flesh and skin tissue (modulus of elasticity, bioyield stress, yield strain and toughness) for small, medium ...
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In this study, the physical properties (size, mass, volume, density, geometric diameter, sphericity and friction coefficient on galvanized steel and wood surface) and some mechanical properties of flesh and skin tissue (modulus of elasticity, bioyield stress, yield strain and toughness) for small, medium and large melons of Ghasri variety were determined. Means comparison was done by Duncan’s method. The results showed that the density, sphericity index and the mechanical properties of melon’s flesh decreased with increasing the size of Ghasri melon, but the mechanical properties of skin increased. The highest values of modulus of elasticity, bioyield stress and toughness of melon skin were obtained for the large size of melon, these values were respectively: 22.4 MPa, 0.93 MPa and 62.18 N.mm. The highest values of density, sphericity, modulus of elasticity, bioyield stress and toughness of flesh were obtained for small size, these values were respectively: 1.11 gr/cm3, 0.624, 156.8KPa, 21.19 KPa, 31.82 N.mm
