scholarly journals Solar Drying: A Means of Improving the Quality of Peanuts in Ghana

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Y. Akoto ◽  
Yaa A. K. Klu ◽  
Maxwell Lamptey ◽  
James Y. Asibuo ◽  
Mark Heflin ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT An indirect, passive, wooden dryer, with a galvanized steel panel (4.5 m2) and four wire mesh shelves (2.62 m2 each), was constructed in Kumasi, Ghana. The dryer was evaluated for its capacity in drying of freshly-harvested in-shell peanuts on a single layer (8.5 Kg), and then up-scaled to four layers (4x18 Kg). Equal amounts of peanuts, dried simultaneously on a concrete floor under the open sun, served as comparisons. The moisture content of solar dried peanuts decreased from 35.85-5.25% and 32.00 %-4.25% in the single-layer and four-layer drying, respectively, in 4 days. Faster drying rates were observed when peanuts had relatively higher moisture contents with R2 values ranging from 0.72-0.95. The average daily solar radiation ranged from 360-592.99 W/m2 and daily energies generated were from 42.24-69.16 MJ. The drying efficiency ranged from 1.50-6.47% in the single-layer drying and 23.07-24.93% in the four-layer drying whereas the thermal efficiency was 3.15-21.60% in the single-layer drying and 3.08-24.93% in the four-layer drying. Peanuts from the solar dryer had lower free fatty acid and peroxide values but higher germination percentage compared to open sundried peanuts. The study suggests that solar drying can be used effectively for improving peanut safety and preserving peanut quality in Ghana.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 575
Author(s):  
Ze Zhang ◽  
Shuting Zhang

To improve indirect drying efficiency, the effect of soda residue on the drying characteristics of coking coal were studied using a self-made indirect drying system. A tube furnace was used in the dry distillation of coal samples with soda residue, and the coke properties were analyzed. The results indicated that the soda residue has a significant influence on the increase in the heating rate of coal samples in the temperature distribution range of 90 to 110 °C. With the addition of 2%, 5%, and 10% soda residue, the drying rates increased by 11.5%, 25.3%, and 37.3%, respectively at 110 °C. The results of dry distillation show that addition of 2%, 5% and 10% soda residue decreases the carbon loss quantity by 4.67, 4.99, and 8.82 g, respectively. The mechanical strength of coke samples satisfies the industrial conditions when the soda residue ratio ranges from 2% to 5%. Soda residue can improve the active point of coke dissolution reaction and inhibit coke internal solution. Economically, coking coal samples mixed with soda residue have an obvious energy saving advantage in the drying process. Energy saving analysis found that it can reduce cost input by 20% than that of the normal drying method.


2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sttela Dellyzete Veiga Franco da Rosa ◽  
Delacyr da Silva Brandão Júnior ◽  
Édila Vilela de Resende Von Pinho ◽  
André Delly Veiga ◽  
Luiz Hildebrando de Castro e Silva

Desiccation tolerance in seeds depends on the species, development stage and drying conditions, especially the water removal rate. Coffea seeds are considered of intermediate performance, because they tolerate relative dehydration compared to orthodox seeds and are sensitive to low temperatures. The objective of this study was to verify the effect of different drying rates on the viability and storability of Coffea canephora seeds. A complete randomized experimental design was used, in a factorial 3 x 5 x 2 design, with three drying rates (fast, intermediate and slow), five final mean water contents after drying (51, 42, 33, 22 and 15 %) and two storage temperatures (10 and 20°C). The germination and seed vigor assessments, using radicle protrusion, cotyledon leaf opening, seedling emergence and emergence speed index, were performed shortly after drying and after two and four months storage. It was observed that with reduction in the water content there was reduction in the germination values and seed vigor, for all the drying rates. The greatest reductions in physiological quality occurred when the seeds were dried quickly and the best results were obtained at the intermediate drying rate. There was an effect of drying rate and storage temperature on the physiological quality of the seeds, and lower germination and vigor values were observed in seeds with lower water content stored at 20°C. C. canephora seeds were tolerant to desiccation down to 15 % water content and can be stored for four months at 10°C. A temperature of 20ºC can be used to store C. canephora seeds, as long as the water content is not reduced to values below 22 % water content.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. T. Akonor ◽  
H. Ofori ◽  
N. T. Dziedzoave ◽  
N. K. Kortei

The influence of different drying methods on physical and nutritional properties of shrimp meat was investigated in this study. Peeled shrimps were dried separately using an air-oven dryer and a tunnel solar dryer. The drying profile of shrimp meat was determined in the two drying systems by monitoring moisture loss over the drying period. Changes in color, proximate composition, and rehydration capacity were assessed. The rate of moisture removal during solar drying was faster than the air-oven drying. The development of red color during drying was comparable among the two methods, but solar-dried shrimps appeared darker (L⁎=47.4) than the air-oven-dried (L⁎=49.0). Chemical analysis indicated that protein and fat made up nearly 20% and 2% (wb) of the shrimp meat, respectively. Protein and ash content of shrimp meat dried under the two dryer types were comparable but fat was significantly (p<0.05) higher in oven-dried meat (2.1%), compared to solar-dried meat (1.5%). Although rehydration behavior of shrimp from the two drying systems followed a similar pattern, solar-dried shrimp absorbed moisture more rapidly. The results have demonstrated that different approaches to drying may affect the physical and nutritional quality of shrimp meat differently.


1995 ◽  
Vol 384 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.C. Kautzky ◽  
B.M. Clemens

ABSTRACTIn this paper we report the successful growth of single-phase epitaxial PtMnSb films and multilayers by dc magnetron cosputtering, both in the (001) orientation on MgO(001) and W(001), and in the (111) orientation on Al2O3 (0001). Single-layer films in the thickness range 50Å≤t≤1000Å were grown and characterized using x-ray diffraction (XRD), magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE), and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The in-plane orientation relationships, as determined by asymmetric XRD, were PtMnSb[100]∥MgO[110], PtMnSb[100]∥W[100], and PtMnSb[101∥Al2O3[2110]. The crystalline quality of the films was found to depend strongly upon the substrate, growth temperature, film thickness, and presence of a capping layer, but rocking curve widths of 1° or less were achieved on each substrate. Measurement of the in-plane strain showed that the films were almost entirely relaxed, with strains <1%. In-plane magnetization was observed in all cases, with moments and coercivities in the 400-500 emu/cm3 and 100-200 Oe ranges respectively. Polar Kerr spectra showed large rotations (0.75° - 1.03°), whose peak wavelengths appear to depend on both film structure and optical interference effects.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (8) ◽  
pp. 908-921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weipeng Zhang ◽  
Zhongli Pan ◽  
Hongwei Xiao ◽  
Zhian Zheng ◽  
Chang Chen ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaciara de Souza Bispo ◽  
Danielle Carolina Campos da Costa ◽  
Samara Elizabeth Vieira Gomes ◽  
Gilmara Moreira de Oliveira ◽  
Janete Rodrigues Matias ◽  
...  

Abstract: Angico is a species found in several environments in Brazil, with several applications. It is used in the timber industry and mainly in folk medicine. In order to verify a variation in the biometric characteristics and the quality of seeds from different mother-plants in different harvesting years, the following variables were studied: moisture content, diameter, density, electrical conductivity, fresh and dry matter of seedlings, germination percentage and kinetics, in a completely randomized design with a 2x3 factorial arrangement (lots x size). The obtained results showed that angico seeds from different lots showed different physiological quality, possibly due to the climate variations to which mother-plants were submitted in the different years. Seed size directly interferes with seedling growth under both controlled and greenhouse conditions, and it can be used as a vigor indicator for angico seeds.


Author(s):  
Marcelo Laranjeira Pimentel ◽  
Henara Valéria Miranda Castro ◽  
Mike Kirixi Munduruku ◽  
Larissa Conceição Cunha Ponte ◽  
Deyvielen Maria Ramos Alves ◽  
...  

The use of fungi in seed treatment can improve the plant's physiological characteristics. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of the use of Trichoderma harzianum on the physiological quality of bean seeds. The experiment was set up and conducted in the forest seed laboratory of the Federal University of Western Para, in a randomized design, using 4 procedures on the basis of a colony forming unit (CFU): T1 (0 CFU), T2 (4 x 109 CFU), T3 (8 x 109 CFU) and T4 (12 x 109 CFU), with 5 repetitions. Germination percentage (G%), germination speed index (GSI), hypocotyl length (HL) and radicle length (RL) were evaluated as variables. The data were analyzed by variance analysis and the averages were compared using the Tukey test (p≤0.05), in addition to the regression analysis, using the Minitab© version 18 statistical software. There were differences between the germination percentage tests, in which T2 obtained 100% of germinated seeds, for GSI it was observed that T2 and T3 were equal and superior to the other treatments, while for RL T1 and T2 obtained the best results, however, for HL there were no statistical differences between treatments. T2 was more efficient in the physiological quality of seeds to germination percentage and germination speed index


Author(s):  
Raj Dabre ◽  
Atsushi Fujita

In encoder-decoder based sequence-to-sequence modeling, the most common practice is to stack a number of recurrent, convolutional, or feed-forward layers in the encoder and decoder. While the addition of each new layer improves the sequence generation quality, this also leads to a significant increase in the number of parameters. In this paper, we propose to share parameters across all layers thereby leading to a recurrently stacked sequence-to-sequence model. We report on an extensive case study on neural machine translation (NMT) using our proposed method, experimenting with a variety of datasets. We empirically show that the translation quality of a model that recurrently stacks a single-layer 6 times, despite its significantly fewer parameters, approaches that of a model that stacks 6 different layers. We also show how our method can benefit from a prevalent way for improving NMT, i.e., extending training data with pseudo-parallel corpora generated by back-translation. We then analyze the effects of recurrently stacked layers by visualizing the attentions of models that use recurrently stacked layers and models that do not. Finally, we explore the limits of parameter sharing where we share even the parameters between the encoder and decoder in addition to recurrent stacking of layers.


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