Study of a new energy efficient process for French fries production

A new, energy efficient production process for French fries was developed and evaluated. Superheated steam (SHS) was used for evaporation of water instead of pre-drying with air and par-frying with oil. The product was frozen by vacuum cooling. Unfortunately, with this process it was not possible to reach the quality of conventional French fries. Sensory analysis indicated that the main quality defect was a tough crust with a fatty appearance. Confocal Scanning Laser Microscopy showed that this was caused by skin formation on the surface during both SHS drying and vacuum cooling. A frying step was necessary to obtain a porous crust. A satisfactory product quality was feasible after drying with SHS instead of air. Due to the concessions made for the product quality, the final energy reduction was limited. Nevertheless, this study has gained more insight into how processing affects potato tissue on micro-scale and it has shown that a porous structure is essential for good quality French fries.     

Interactions of single-walled carbon nanotubes with monosaccharides

Closed-end single-walled carbon nanotubes were wetted in aqueous solutions of monosaccharides, forming weak surface complexes, as proven by the estimation of the content of monosaccharides in complexes isolated from aqueous solutions. The complexation was confirmed by micro-Raman spectroscopy. The Gaussian 03 (Molecular Mechanics UFF method) computations of total energy of the single-walled carbon nanotube-monosaccharides inclusion and surface complexes showed that inclusion complexes should be more stable than corresponding surface complexes. Computed total energies for particular complexes pointed to a lack of preferences for the formation of complexes with either alpha- or beta-tautomers and either pyranoses or furanoses. The forms preferred in the formation of the surface complexes usually differ from these favored in the formation of the inclusion complexes.     

Analytical study of the additives system in polyethylene

On the basis of standards of identification of substances in the additive system of polyethylene has been performed. Different methods for separation such as adsorption thin-layer chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography with chemically bounded phases, and gas chromatography have been used. The fir al identification has been made with mass spectrometry. The substances have been extracted from polyethylene with hexane and chloroform.     

Unravelling the kinetics of the formation of acrylamide in the Maillard reaction of fructose and asparagine by multiresponse modelling

A kinetic model for the formation of acrylamide in a fructose–asparagine reaction system at initial pH 5.5 is proposed, based on an approach called multiresponse kinetic modelling. The formation of acetic acid and formic acid from the degradation of fructose and its isomer glucose was included in the proposed kinetic model. The kinetic model suggests that the effect of temperature on acrylamide formation with fructose is more due to the preceding steps with the formation of the Schiff base. The use of fructose and lower pH resulted in a higher yield of acrylamide (3%), suggesting that both can play an important role in acrylamide mitigation. Furthermore, these models have shown that, at high temperatures (120–200 °C), the Maillard reaction rapidly goes into the advanced stages, forming high amounts of organic acids and high molecular weight melanoidins. Overall, these mechanistic models provide more insight of the formation of acrylamide in a quantitative way.     

Detection of lead in Zea mays by dual‐energy X‐ray microtomography at the SYRMEP beamline of the ELETTRA synchrotron and by atomic absorption spectroscopy

This study is related to the application of the X‐ray dual‐energy microradiography technique together with the atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) for the detection of lead on Zea mays stem, ear, root, and leaf samples. To highlight the places with lead intake, the planar radiographs taken with monochromatic X‐ray radiation in absorption regime with photon energy below and above the absorption edge of a given chemical element, respectively, are analyzed and processed. To recognize the biological structures involved in the intake, the dual‐energy images with the lead signal have been compared with the optical images of the same Z. mays stem. The ear, stem, root, and leaf samples have also been analyzed with the AAS technique to measure the exact amount of the hyperaccumulated lead. The AAS measurement revealed that the highest intake occurred in the roots while the lowest in the maize ears and in the leaf. It seems there is a particular mechanism that protects the seeds and the leaves in the intake process. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. This article was published online on 1 December 2009. An error was subsequently identified. This notice is included in the online and print version to indicate that both have been corrected 19 February 2010.     

Processing of AlSi9Cu3 alloy by selective laser melting

ABSTRACT

Additive manufacturing of Al-alloys allows the production of components with a complicated structured shape, geometry composed by lattice structures, internal cooling, etc. The portfolio of Al-alloys for metal additive manufacturing is still under development and is strongly limited, compared to the conventional technology. The alloy AlSi9Cu3 is used in many applications, but its processing details are still missing. The main aim of this paper is to describe the laser process parameters for AlSi9Cu3, processed by SLM technology and manufactured from two powders of different shapes and particle sizes. The tested process parameters were laser power, laser speed, and hatch distance in the range of 100–400?W, 200–1500?mm?·?s^?1 and 90–150?µm. These were tested using a single-track and cube test. Microstructure, mechanical properties and the fatigue of SLM samples were analysed and compared with as-casted material.     

Hierarchical Rasterization of Curved Primitives for Vector Graphics Rendering on the GPU

In this paper, we introduce the CPatch, a curved primitive that can be used to construct arbitrary vector graphics. A CPatch is a generalization of a 2D polygon: Any number of curves up to a cubic degree bound a primitive. We show that a CPatch can be rasterized efficiently in a hierarchical manner on the GPU, locally discarding irrelevant portions of the curves. Our rasterizer is fast and scalable, works on all patches in parallel, and does not require any approximations. We show a parallel implementation of our rasterizer, which naturally supports all kinds of color spaces, blending and super‐sampling. Additionally, we show how vector graphics input can efficiently be converted to a CPatch representation, solving challenges like patch self intersections and false inside‐outside classification. Results indicate that our approach is faster than the state‐of‐the‐art, more flexible and could potentially be implemented in hardware.