Physicochemical Characteristics,Functional Properties,and Nutritional Benefits of Peanut Oil: A Review

The legume Arachis hypogaea, commonly known as peanut or groundnut, is a very important food crop throughout the tropics and subtropics. Peanut is one of the most widely used legumes due to its nutrition and taste, and it occupies a rank of major oilseed crop in the world. It has been recognized as a functional food due to its role in a health promoting effect. Peanut oil contains a well-balanced fatty acid and antioxidant profile that provide protection against harmful substances especially free radicals. This paper gives an overview of scientific literature available on phytochemical and functional properties of peanut oil. Owing to its unique organoleptic properties associated with its cardioprotective and anti-inflammatory properties, peanut oil has found, recently, its place on the highly competitive international edible oil market.     

Classification of Honey According to Geographical and Botanical Origins and Detection of Its Adulteration Using Voltammetric Electronic Tongue

Main possible honey fraud is the addition of various sugar syrups. But, there are also other types of fraud, such as deception on the geographical and/or botanical origin product. Providing a product of the hive with full authenticity is therefore crucial for the preservation of beekeeping. In this pursuit, voltammetric electronic tongue (VE-tongue) was employed to classify honey samples from different geographical and botanical origins. Furthermore, VE-tongue was used to detect adulterants such as glucose syrup (GS) and saccharose syrup (SS) in honey. The data obtained were analyzed by three-pattern recognition techniques: principal component analysis (PCA), support vector machines (SVMs), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). These methods enabled the classification of 18 honeys of different geographical origins and 7 honeys of different botanical origins. Excellent results were obtained also in the detection of adulterated honey. Therefore, this simple method based on VE-tongue could be useful in the honey packaging and commercialization industry.     

Potato Production,Usage, and Nutrition—A Review

Potato is an economically important staple crop prevailing all across the world with successful large-scale production, consumption, and affordability with easy availability in the open market. Potatoes provide basic nutrients such as—carbohydrates, dietary fiber (skin), several vitamins, and minerals (e.g., potassium, magnesium, iron). On occasion exposures to raw and cooked potatoes impart allergic reactions. Dietary intake of potatoes, especially colored potatoes, play an important role in the production of antioxidant defense system by providing essential nutrient antioxidants, such as vitamins, β-carotene, polyphenols, and minerals. This may help lower the incidence of wide range of chronic and acute disease processes (like hypertension, heart diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative, and other diseases). However, retention of nutrients in potatoes is affected by various cooking and processing methods. Cooking at elevated temperature also produces acrylamide—a suspected carcinogen. Independent and/or collaborative studies have been conducted and reported on the various pathways leading to the formation of acrylamide in heat processed foods. This article reviews the latest research on potato production, consumption, nature of phytochemicals and their health benefits, and allergic reactions to children. Also included is the discovery of acrylamide in processed starch-rich foods including potatoes, mechanism of formation, detection methodologies, and mitigation steps to reduce acrylamide content in food.     

Production of bacteriocin‐like inhibitory substances (BLIS) by Bifidobacterium lactis using whey as a substrate

The objective of this work was to evaluate the production of bacteriocin‐like inhibitory substances (BLIS) by Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis in whey supplemented with yeast extract, inulin, Tween‐80 or l ‐cysteine. Cell growth, acidification, glucose and lactose consumption as well as BLIS production were measured during fermentations carried out in shake flasks. The best additive for both cell growth and BLIS production was shown to be yeast extract, which gave the highest concentrations of biomass (9.9 log cfu/mL) and BLIS (800 AU/mL). In a bench‐scale fermentor, B. lactis growth and BLIS production were between 6% and 25% higher than in flasks depending on the conditions assayed.     

Material and method selection for efficient solid oxide fuel cell anode: Recent advancements and reviews

The energy crisis has reached to an alarming situation due to increase in population. To overcome the shortfall of energy, solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) being cheap, clean, and efficient renewable energy source is getting attention for electricity generation. Out of the three main components as anode, electrolyte, and cathode; anode/fuel electrode is an important component of SOFC because it allows the flow of electrons via external circuit to cathode generating the electric current and hence requires high electrical conductivity. In this review, anode materials synthesized until now are reviewed and by careful analysis categorized on the basis of operating temperature, conductivity, electrode polarization resistance, and structure. This comparison and categorization will provide selection criteria for state‐of‐the‐art and highly efficient anode materials for SOFC. In addition, the synthesis methods have been reviewed on the basis of their pros and cons, which will further facilitate the researchers to select the best synthesis method so as to get optimized properties of materials.     

Performance of a hybrid photovoltaic/thermal system utilizing water‐Al2O3 nanofluid and fins

Innovative hybrid solar panels combining photovoltaic cells along with an efficient heat exchanger with attached fins to the parallel plates and water‐Al₂O₃ nanofluid as a working fluid is presented in this work. Twenty‐seven fins at the upper wall and 27 fins at the lower wall in labyrinth arrangement are used in simulations with fin lengths of 0, ¼, ½, and ¾ of the flow path height. Moreover, nanosolid particles dispersed in the base fluid range as 0 ≤ ? ≤ 0.2 . In addition, Reynolds number Re at the inlet was varied such that 10 < Re < 80. Numerical finite element analysis using COMSOL software is utilized to investigate flow and thermal characteristics as well the overall efficiency of the hybrid system. Results show that as the Reynolds number, the length of the fin, and the volume fraction of the nanosolid particles increase, the overall efficiency increases. Moreover, increasing nanoparticle volume fraction and the fin length was found to increase the friction coefficient.     

A review of all‐vanadium redox flow battery durability: Degradation mechanisms and mitigation strategies

The all‐vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) is emerging as a promising technology for large‐scale energy storage systems due to its scalability and flexibility, high round‐trip efficiency, long durability, and little environmental impact. As the degradation rate of the VRFB components is relatively low, less attention has been paid in terms of VRFB durability in comparison with studies on performance improvement and cost reduction. This paper reviews publications on performance degradation mechanisms and mitigation strategies for VRFBs in an attempt to achieve a systematic understanding of VRFB durability. Durability studies of individual VRFB components, including electrolyte, membrane, electrode, and bipolar plate, are introduced. Various degradation mechanisms at both cell and component levels are examined. Following these, applicable strategies for mitigating degradation of each component are compiled. In addition, this paper summarizes various diagnostic tools to evaluate component degradation, followed by accelerated stress tests and models for aging prediction that can help reduce the duration and cost associated with real lifetime tests. Finally, future research areas on the degradation and accelerated lifetime testing for VRFBs are proposed.     

Binary mixtures of fatty alcohols and fatty acid esters as novel solid‐liquid phase change materials

The discovery of new eutectic phase change materials (PCMs) will overcome the current PCM challenges such as nonbiodegradability, super‐cooling, and limited thermal stability. This paper reports on the development of new bio‐based PCMs composed of binary mixtures of fatty acid esters and fatty alcohols at their eutectic compositions, which provide potential solid‐liquid PCMs for building applications. Six binary systems, namely 1‐dodecanol (DD) + methyl stearate (MES), DD + methyl palmitate (MEP), DD + methyl laurate (MEL), 1‐tetradecanol (TD) + MES, TD + MEP, and TD + MEL were prepared and their thermal behaviours were deliberated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), long‐term thermal stability test, and mass loss analysis. Amongst the studied systems, phase change transition temperature and latent heat of fusion of the eutectic mixtures of DD‐MES, DD‐MEP, TD‐MES, and TD‐MEP were found to be suitable for the building application with values of 22.46°C/201.91 J/g, 20.34°C/224.45 J/g, 32.05°C/209.38 J/g, and 26.72°C/210.15 J/g, respectively. The average degree of super‐cooling for all PCMs was below 2°C, and no significant changes in thermophysical properties of the developed PCMs were observed after 1000 thermal cycles.     

Experimental and deep learning artificial neural network approach for evaluating grid‐connected photovoltaic systems

This article evaluates a 1.4‐kW building integrated grid‐connected photovoltaic plant. The PV plant was installed in the Faculty of Engineering solar energy lab, Sohar University, Oman, and the system data have been collected for a year from July 2017 to June 2018. The grid‐connected system was evaluated in terms of power, energy, specific yield, capacity factor, and cost of energy, and payback period. The measured diffuse and global solar irradiations are 3289 and 6182 Wh/m², respectively. Four predictive models (TLRN, FRNN‐1, FRNN‐2, and FRNN‐3) using deep learning approach based on RNN and TLRN were proposed to predict the PV current performance through data input of temperature (T) and solar irradiance (G). The experiment results found that the highest energy production, array, reference, and final yields are 245.8 kWh, 3.43 to 5.65 kWh/kWp‐day, 4.61 to 7.33 kWh/kWp‐day, and 3.24 to 4.82 kWh/kWp‐day, respectively. Meanwhile, CF, CoE, and PBP were found to be 21.7%, 0.045 USD/kWh and 11.17 years, respectively. The highest performance for prediction models were found for FRNN‐2 and FRNN‐3 due to they exhibit lower MSE which means being tightly fitted to experiments.     

Rice Starch Diversity: Effects on Structural,Morphological, Thermal,and Physicochemical Properties—A Review

Abstract: Rice starch is one of the major cereal starches with novel functional properties. Significant progress has been made in recent years on the characterization of rice starches separated from different rice cultivars. Studies have revealed that the molecular structure and functional properties are affected by rice germplasm, isolation procedure, climate, agronomic conditions, and grain development. Morphological studies (microscopy and particle size analysis) have reflected significant differences among rice starch granule shapes (polyhedral, irregular) and in granule size (2 to 7 μm). Nonwaxy and long‐grain rice starches show greater variation in granular size than the waxy starches. Rice starch granules are smaller than other cereal starches with amylose contents varying from virtually amylose‐free in waxy to about 35% in nonwaxy and long‐grain rice starches. Amylose content appears to be the major factor controlling almost all physicochemical properties of rice starch due to its influence on pasting, gelatinization, retrogradation, syneresis, and other functional properties. Waxy rice starches have high swelling and solubility parameters, and larger relative crystallinity values than nonwaxy and long‐grain starches. However, nonwaxy rice starches have a higher gelatinization temperature than the waxy and long‐grain starches. The bland taste, nonallergenicity, and smooth, creamy, and spreadable characteristics of rice starch make it unique and valuable in food and pharmaceutical applications. This review provides recent information on the variation in the molecular structure and functional properties of different rice starches.