Dry Fractionation Approach in Concentrating Tocopherols and Tocotrienols from Palm Fatty Acid Distillate: A Green Pretreatment Process for Vitamin E Extraction

Palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) is a rich source of vitamin E. As compared to other vegetable oil, PFAD has higher tocotrienol (70–80%) over tocopherol content, which makes it a valuable source for vitamin E extraction. Current vitamin E extraction methods are not sustainable due to the intensive usage of chemical and high operational cost. Hence, the present study investigated for the first time using dry fractionation process as a green and economical pretreatment method for separating solid fraction (stearin) and liquid fraction (olein) in order to concentrate vitamin E from PFAD in olein fraction. We examined the dry fractionation conditions: crystallization ending temperature (36–44 °C), cooling rate (0.3 and 1.5°C min⁻¹), stirring speed (20–125 rpm), and holding time (0–60 min) on the composition of unsaturated and saturated fatty acids as well as vitamin E content in liquid fraction (olein) and solid fraction (stearin) using gas chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography, respectively. In most of these conditions, vitamin E was ultimately higher in olein fraction as compared to stearin fraction, which is correlated with the high degree of unsaturation. Under a cooling rate of 0.3°C min⁻¹, 90 rpm stirring speed, and ending crystallization of 38 °C, the highest vitamin E rich olein fraction was attained with 1479 ± 10.51 ppm in 50 g olein fraction as compared to 1366 ± 7.94 ppm in 500 g of unfractionated PFAD.     

Effect of heat moisture treatment on resistant starch content among carbohydrate sources: a meta-analysis

Resistant starch (RS) can be generated through heat moisture treatment (HMT). The HMT was conducted by modifying starch using different ratio of moisture content, high temperature and heating time. A number of studies showed that the effects of HMT on RS contents in cereals, pulses, tubers and fruits were inconsistent. This study aimed to analyse the impact of HMT on RS level in various carbohydrate sources through a meta-analysis approach. Study selection was conducted with the PRISMA method. There were 21 relevant studies and 67 data used for meta-analysis. The database was analysed by using Hedges’ d. The results showed that there was a significant impact of HMT on RS level of cereals, especially wheat. The highest increase in RS levels for various carbohydrate sources in starch was influenced by the interaction of treatment between water content at 15 ≤ x < 25%, heating time at 0.25 < x ≤ 6 h and temperature at 120 ≤ x ≤ 130 °C.     

Physical,microstructure and leaching assessments for pavement road base containing mixed steel slag and cathode ray tube glass

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Use of by-product materials, such as steel slag and cathode ray tube glass, as alternative recycled materials in the construction of roads, could...     

Epithelial Layer Estimation Using Curvatures and Textural Features for Dysplastic Tissue Detection

Boundary effect in digital pathology is a phenomenon where the tissue shapes of biopsy samples get distorted during the sampling process. The morphological pattern of an epithelial layer is greatly affected. Theoretically, the shape deformation model can normalise the distortions, but it needs a 2D image. Curvatures theory, on the other hand, is not yet tested on digital pathology images. Therefore, this work proposed a curvature detection to reduce the boundary effects and estimates the epithelial layer. The boundary effect on the tissue surfaces is normalised using the frequency of a curve deviates from being a straight line. The epithelial layer’s depth is estimated from the tissue edges and the connected nucleolus only. Then, the textural and spatial features along the estimated layer are used for dysplastic tissue detection. The proposed method achieved better performance compared to the whole tissue regions in terms of detecting dysplastic tissue. The result shows a leap of kappa points from fair to a substantial agreement with the expert’s ground truth classification. The improved results demonstrate that curvatures have been effective in reducing the boundary effects on the epithelial layer of tissue. Thus, quantifying and classifying the morphological patterns for dysplasia can be automated. The textural and spatial features on the detected epithelial layer can capture the changes in tissue.     

Photofermentative hydrogen production from molasses: Scale-up and outdoor operation at low carbon-to-nitrogen ratio

Photofermentative hydrogen production was carried out under outdoor conditions with a Rhodobacter capsulatus strain on molasses, a renewable and sustainable feedstock. An existing photobioreactor design was scaled-up from 9 L to 20 L. The decreased carbon-to-nitrogen (C/N) ratio of 13.0, compared to our previous work, accelerated growth and resulted in a reduced lag period for hydrogen production as well as higher productivities in the exponential phase. However, the low C/N ratio also promoted a high optical density due to growth, limiting light transmission. Still, the maximum productivity was found as 0.47 mol H₂/(m³·h), significantly higher than our result with the smaller reactor volume. High rates of production could not be maintained presumably due to the combined effects of cloudy periods, the aforementioned C/N ratio and decreasing pH. These results suggest that the scale-up was successful and there is potential for further improvement using optimal C/N ratio and cell concentration values.