Energy consumption is a great challenge during fruit drying. New techniques such as cold plasma are used as pretreatment or the main treatment for food drying. In this work, apple drying with cold plasma was investigated with COMSOL simulation. Two treatments were designed: (a) traditional air drying at 60 C and 0.5 m/s airflow, and (b) cold plasma treatment at 100 W, and 60 Hz with laminar airflow at 60 C and 0.5 m/s. The samples were two apple slices with a 6 cm diameter and 0.3 cm thickness. Results show that plasma technology without airflow does not have an effective role in drying. But the combination of plasma and airflow drying reduced the drying time from the 9,600 s to 3,600 s. The plasma-treated samples reached a constant moisture content faster than the air-dried samples. The energy consumption of drying with plasma was 85-fold lower than a traditional air-drying method. The shrinkage of plasma-treated samples was low and the total shrinkage was near the undried sample (0.008). Cold plasma probably can reduce the energy consumption, drying time, and final drying costs of fresh food drying.
Practical applicationDrying with a combination of methods can reduce the processing time. In this work, the plasma technology was combined with air drying and the results show lower process time, lower shrinkage, and lower energy consumption. Plasma technology in combination with traditional air drying can reduce the drying time of food material from 9,600 s to 3,600s. The energy consumption of plasma drying was significantly lower than air drying. It can be concluded from these results that this drying method can be applied to study the drying of different types of food material.
An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of using a concrete sandwich panel as an infill wall on the in-plane behaviour of steel frames. Three large-scale, single-storey and single-bay steel frame specimens with an aspect ratio of 1·0 (two infilled frames with and without separation at the frame-to-panel interface and one bare frame) were constructed and tested under in-plane cyclic lateral loading. Based on the results, it was found that the infilled frame with full connection between the infill and frame (specimen IFM) behaved quite differently to the specimen with a discrete interface connection (specimen FSI). While specimen FSI behaved almost like a bare frame in terms of lateral stiffness and strength, the interaction between the concrete sandwich panel and the steel frame in specimen IFM led to a considerable increase in the initial stiffness, lateral strength, energy dissipation and the equivalent viscous damping ratio of the system compared with the bare frame. Moreover, by separating the infill panel from the bounding frame, the results showed increased energy dissipation capability compared with the bare frame and higher drift capacity compared with specimen IFM.
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