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Aflatoxins are toxic secondary metabolites mainly produced by Aspergillus fungi, posing high carcinogenic potency in humans and animals. Dietary exposure to aflatoxins is a global ...problem in both developed and developing countries especially where there is poor regulation of their levels in food and feed. Thus, academics have been striving over the decades to develop effective strategies for degrading aflatoxins in food and feed. These strategies are technologically diverse and based on physical, chemical, or biological principles. This review summarizes the recent progress on novel aflatoxin degradation strategies including irradiation, cold plasma, ozone, electrolyzed oxidizing water, organic acids, natural plant extracts, microorganisms and enzymes. A clear understanding of the detoxification efficiency, mechanism of action, degradation products, application potential and current limitations of these methods is presented. In addition, the development and future perspective of nanozymes in aflatoxins degradation are introduced.
Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) contamination is a major risk for U.S. consumers from chicken eggs. This study is primarily focused on evaluation of a novel High Voltage Atmospheric Cold Plasma (HVACP) ...technology for inactivation of Salmonella and its effect on the egg quality. Spot inoculated chicken eggs were treated with high voltage cold plasma (85 kV) under direct and indirect mode of exposure in dry air and modified atmospheric gas environment. A reduction of 5.53 log cfu/egg was observed for egg surfaces directly treated under modified atmospheric gas for 15 min. SE reductions was found dependent on treatment times, gas type, and mode of exposure of eggs to the plasma. No significant difference (p > 0.05) in direct and indirect mode of exposure was observed on the egg quality after plasma treatment. These results demonstrate the potential of HVACP to be used as a suitable non-thermal treatment for reducing Salmonella from packaged chicken eggs.
•Achieved significant inactivation of Salmonella Enteritidis on egg by cold plasma.•High oxygen gas was found to be most effective for inactivation.•No significant change in physical quality was observed after plasma treatment.
Over the past decade, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), a near room temperature ionized gas has shown its promising application in cancer therapy. Two CAP devices, namely dielectric barrier discharge ...and plasma jet, show significantly anti-cancer capacity over dozens of cancer cell lines in vitro and several subcutaneous xenograft tumors in vivo. In contrast to conventional anti-cancer approaches and drugs, CAP is a selective anti-cancer treatment modality. Thus far establishing the chemical and molecular mechanism of the anti-cancer capacity of CAP is far from complete. In this review, we provide a comprehensive introduction of the basics of CAP, state of the art research in this field, the primary challenges, and future directions to cancer biologists.
Copper is a mono-metallic catalyst to produce large amounts of hydrocarbons during the CO2 electrochemical reduction reaction (CO2RR). Nevertheless, the high overpotential of the reaction process and ...the low selectivity of currently known catalysts for multi-carbon (or single) products still prevent this process from approaching commercialization. Here, we report the synthesis of different ratios of Cu/Co catalysts with multiple active centers treated with H2 cold plasma. The resultant Cu2Co1 catalyst showed a high current density of 20.7 mA cm−2 and a Faraday efficiency of 70 % for C2H4. This Cu–Co bimetallic multi active center structure is conducive to the generation of *CO and further coupling to form C2 products, thereby improving the selectivity of C2H4. This study provides a new way to design multi-active center tandem catalysts for the efficient production of C2H4 products.
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•The synergistic effect of Cu0, Co0 and Cu2+ affected the adsorption activation of CO2 molecules during the CO2RR process.•The Cu2Co1 electrocatalyst yields C2H4 as major products with a FE of 70 % at −1.0 V vs. RHE and excellent durability (200 h).•This work represents a new method for design and preparation of Cu–Co multi-active centers tandem catalysts to enhance the C2H4 FE in CO2RR.
In this paper, we present a coupling of homotopy perturbation technique and sumudu transform known as homotopy perturbation sumudu transform method (HPSTM). We show applicability of this method by ...solving fractional equal width (EW) equation, fractional modified equal width (MEW) equation and variant of fractional modified equal width (VMEW) equation. The fractional equal width equations play a key role in describing hydro-magnetic waves in cold plasma. Our aim is to study the nonlinear behavior of plasma system and highlight the important points. We examine the ability of HPSTM to study the fractional nonlinear systems and show its supremacy over other available numerical techniques. The other key point of this investigation is to examine two important fractional equations with different nonlinearity. The HPSTM gives excellent accuracy in analogous with the numerical solution. The numerical solutions indicate that the HPSTM is a powerful technique for studying the nonlinear behavior of plasma system very precisely and accurately.
•Fractional model of equal width equations are considered.•The fractional equal width equations describes hydro-magnetic waves in cold plasma.•The numerical simulation is performed with the aid of HPSTM and Maple.•The numerical results are very accurate.
This study was conducted to optimize a process of cold plasma pretreatment for hot‐air drying on corn kernels. Effects of plasma pretreatment time (30, 40, 50 s), plasma pretreatment power (300, 400, ...500 W) and drying temperature (37.5, 45, 52.5 °C) on drying time and drying rate during this process were investigated. Polynomial equations were established through a three‐factor and three‐level Box‐Behnken design and used to evaluate the optimal operational conditions for the drying process. The optimal pretreatment conditions were drying temperature at 52.5 °C, plasma pretreatment time of 50 s and plasma pretreatment power of 500 W, and the corresponding drying rate and drying time were 3.6163 (g/g h−1) and 1.29 hr, respectively. The AFM images showed that cold plasma pretreatment can change the topography of the treated surface with some micro‐holes, which explain how the plasma pretreatment can improve the drying process.
Practical Application
Cold plasma pretreatment can improve the efficiency of corn kernels drying. Furthermore, it has potential application for reducing energy consumption in drying. Cold plasma pretreatment could be potentially applied in grain drying.
The effect of cold plasma pretreatment with different durations 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 s on the mass transfer rate and quality of grape fruit during hot-air drying at 60 °C and 1.5 m/s were ...studied. It was found that cold plasma pretreatment significantly increased effective moisture diffusivity, reducing the drying time and energy consumption by up to 26.27% and 26.30%, respectively. Longer exposure resulted in smaller shrinkage and higher rehydration ratio. Furthermore, plasma pretreatment resulted in improved quality of dried grapes, in particular higher total phenolic content, antioxidant activity, and vitamin C retention by up to 3.06–30.53%, 7.31–62.29%, and 17.87–168.73%, as compared to the untreated ones. Among all pretreatments, 50 s exposure was preferred due to the minimal energy consumption and the least effect on the samples color.
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•Cold plasma application was tested as a pretreatment to hot-air drying of grapes.•Pretreatment markedly reduced the drying time and energy consumption.•Cold plasma treatment resulted in dried samples with better color.•Pre-treated products absorbed more water during rehydration.•The use of cold plasma decreased TPC, AOA and vitamin C losses in dried grapes.
Sunflower seed protein is a protein rich in amino acids, but its structure is more difficult to be applied due to its poor functional properties. The purpose of this study is to investigate the ...effect of cold plasma treatment on the structural and functional properties of sunflower seed protein. The results showed that the energetic particles and active substances generated by cold plasma treatment could improve the spatial structure of the protein by bombardment/etching and oxidation, respectively, which led to the change of its secondary structure: α-helices and random coil were transformed to β-sheet and β-turns, and the tertiary structure: the fluorescence intensity was increased, the roughness was decreased, which finally led to the increase of the zeta-potential, the solubility increased to 7.341, and the emulsion increased to 7.341, which led to the increase of the solubility and the fluorescence intensity. to 7.341, and the emulsion activity index and emulsion stability index increased from 1.842 m2/g, 107.5 min to 3.3887 m2/g, 171.4 min. These changes were attributed to the fact that the cold plasma treatment altered the structure of sunflower proteins from tightly hydrophobic to loosely hydrophilic, with the exposure of the internal hydrophobic groups and the protein aggregation from large to small. This provides a theoretical basis for its application in food.
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•Cold plasma treatment is a new modification method.•The mechanism of modification of sunflower seed protein by cold plasma was discussed.•The solubility of sunflower seed protein increased from 2.65 to 7.341.
This study investigates the effect of atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier pulsed discharge plasma treatment on cooking quality and cellulose modification of brown rice. The results showed that ...15 min of plasma treatment reduced the cooking time, hardness, and chewiness of brown rice by 27.40%, 30.68%, and 40.23%, respectively, compared to the control. The etching of the brown rice skin and the formation of water channels lead to increased water absorption. This led to a significant increase in palatability of the treated brown rice. In addition, the crystallinity and average particle size (Dhkl) of the treated brown rice were reduced to 10.93% and 42.85% of the initial level, respectively, and the cellulose solubility increased from 8.20% to 55.20%. The surface microstructure was also found to fracture and destroy of the cellulose structure. These findings suggest that plasma made the originally dense fiber structure of brown rice epidermis loose through the etching effect, thus improving the cooking quality of brown rice. The present conclusions offer fundamental insights into the interaction between plasma treatment and brown rice, which should be beneficial for applying plasma in whole-grain processing.
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•Plasma treatment significantly changed the bran layer structure of brown rice.•Water molecular channel appeared in the brown rice bran layer after moderate plasma treatment.•The cross-linking structure between parts of cellulose disappeared by plasma etching•Changes in the bran layer structure of brown rice affected the cooking quality.
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