Mohsen Pouya; Babak BEHESHTI; Ali mohamad Borghei; Gholam Hassan Asadi
Abstract
This study evaluated the performance of a thermal dryer with a closed air circulation system equipped with a metal-organic framework (MOF) system. Dryer sections included: product drying chamber, the MOF containing chamber nano-absorbents, measurement and control systems. Dryer yield on mint was compared ...
Read More
This study evaluated the performance of a thermal dryer with a closed air circulation system equipped with a metal-organic framework (MOF) system. Dryer sections included: product drying chamber, the MOF containing chamber nano-absorbents, measurement and control systems. Dryer yield on mint was compared at three temperature levels (40, 50, and 60 °C). Finally, the energy consumption and drying mint leaves was evaluated. The results showed that the closed air circulation system reduces the dry time by 27% to 50%, the penetration coefficient of mint leaves increased with increasing temperature. Its values in cases of not using and using nano-absorbent plates were determined respectively (4.05690×10-11) and (2.8215×10-10) m2/s. The activation energy in two methods of not using and using the nano-absorbents was 45.72 and 51.96 kJ/mol, respectively, which is consistent with the researchers' results. Also, the coefficient of performance, the rate of moisture evaporation, and the rate of specific moisture evaporation showed the effectiveness of using nano-absorbent in the dryer system and reducing energy consumption. The total color index (ΔE) did not change much with increasing temperature from 40 to 50 °C, but from 50 to 60 °C, the increased total color index. There wasn't a clear difference in total color index between the two methods of using and not using nano-adsorbent.
Hadi Hosseini; Saeid Minaei; Babak Beheshti
Abstract
Sesame oil which is one of the most popular and expensive edible oils, is prone to adulteration. High price of Sesame oil has motivated adulterers to mix the high-quality Sesame oil with low-quality, less expensive vegetable oils. In this study, the fatty-acid profiles of sesame, rapeseed, sunflower ...
Read More
Sesame oil which is one of the most popular and expensive edible oils, is prone to adulteration. High price of Sesame oil has motivated adulterers to mix the high-quality Sesame oil with low-quality, less expensive vegetable oils. In this study, the fatty-acid profiles of sesame, rapeseed, sunflower oil samples as well as their mixtures (0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50% levels) were determined using Gas Chromatography. Also, Machine olfaction system containing 10 MOS sensors was utilized for detection experiments. Sensor response patterns were used for analyzing and recognizing pattern of electronic-nose signals using multivariate data analysis, including Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analyses (LDA), Partial Least Squares (PLS), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Results of the SVM with RFB kernel in C-SVM method had the highest classification accuracy. The accuracy of training and validation were 96.34 and 90.56%, respectively, and next were LDA and KNN models with classification accuracies of 92.30% and 89.94%, respectively. In the light of these results, the proposed models along with the measurement system represent excellent tools for the detection of sesame seed oil adulteration with cheaper vegetable oils.
Javad Nemati; Babak BEHESHTI; Ali Mohammad Borghei
Abstract
One of the important processes in agriculture is separating of agricultural products. The use of cyclones is one of the methods that with lower costs, shorter separation time and simpler operation, has a high efficiency compared to other separation methods (Such as separation by hand and so on). The ...
Read More
One of the important processes in agriculture is separating of agricultural products. The use of cyclones is one of the methods that with lower costs, shorter separation time and simpler operation, has a high efficiency compared to other separation methods (Such as separation by hand and so on). The aim of this research is to designing, simulation and construction a cyclone separation device and evaluation it in order to separate the stigma from the saffron petals. In this research, cyclone simulation was performed using ANSYS FLUIN software and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis method and the separation efficiency was obtained. The device was designed using SOLID WORKS software and its prototype was made and evaluated at three levels of 1.5, 2.5 and 3.5 m/s of air speed and at five levels of moisture content (10, 20, 40 and 60)%wb. For this purpose, a factorial experiment with completely randomized design with three replications was used. The evaluation results of the device showed that the highest separation of the device at 20% moisture content and 3.5 m/s air speed was 80% efficiency and the lowest was 11% efficiency for 80% moisture content and 1.5 m/s air speed which was very close to the best result of simulating the device in ANSYS FLUINT software which it was 89% efficiency at 3.5 m/s air speed.
Neda Raeisi; Babak BEHESHTI; Hooman Sharifnasab
Abstract
Safflower, a plant compatible with dry and semi-arid regions, is cultivated for its seeds and petals. In this study, a harvesting machine was designed and constructed for harvesting safflower (Goldasht cultivar) petals. The harvesting machine had cutting blade, vacuum motor, flexible tube, motor holder ...
Read More
Safflower, a plant compatible with dry and semi-arid regions, is cultivated for its seeds and petals. In this study, a harvesting machine was designed and constructed for harvesting safflower (Goldasht cultivar) petals. The harvesting machine had cutting blade, vacuum motor, flexible tube, motor holder box and bag, an electric motor and a chassis for moving in the field. In order to evaluate the machine, from the point of harvesting time and the rate of losses, a field experiment was conducted using completely randomized block design with three replications. Experimental levels included air vacuum rate at low, medium, and high levels: 19 m/s (air velocity) and 3500 rpm (engine rotational speed); 25 m/s (air velocity) and 4000 rpm (engine rotational speed); and 36 m/s (air velocity) and 4800 rpm (engine rotational speed) respectivly; and manual harvesting by the labors (control). The results showed that harvesting time had a significant difference at 1% level at three levels of vacuum rate. The lowest time for harvesting was recorded in third level, the maximum time for harvesting safflower was recorded in manual harvesting method. The loss of safflower, comparing with manual harvesting, was reduced up to 79.1%, 93.09%, and 94.9% when level 1, 2, and 3 were used, respectivly. This machine could harvest 3 to 4 kilograms of safflower petals in 8 hours
