Ethylene removal technology keeps vegetables fresher for longer
Dr. Pham Hong Nam and his colleagues at the Institute of Materials Science, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology are not out of this trend. Looking around the world, he found, "In developed countries, such as the US and Europe, the technology of preserving fresh fruits and vegetables has been researched and applied very widely.
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People are excited about fresh agricultural products. Illustration: Labor Newspaper
However, if 100% of those technologies are brought to Vietnam and applied in Vietnam, the investment and operating costs are very large, and it is difficult to match the current domestic production conditions. This fact is also the reason why in 2019, they decided to engage in the field of preservation technology research, even though they started out as materials researchers without many related projects before to agriculture.
When starting to study the process of preserving vegetables, in addition to the elements constituting a complete preservation technology such as the harvesting process, temperature factors, humidity, microorganisms, and the composition of the preservation atmosphere management (such as the concentration of O2, CO2, ...), the group of Dr. Nam pays attention to ethylene gas - a product of endogenous metabolism in fresh fruits and vegetables after harvesting.
This is a natural hormone that promotes the ripening of fresh fruits and vegetables, so if the concentration of ethylene in the storage environment increases, this gas will accelerate the ripening of fruits and vegetables and thereby reduce the time of roduct preservation. Improve adsorption capacity.
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Schematic diagram of the operating principle of the ethylene gas removal device.
Specifically, the ethylene gas removal equipment model of the group has the main structure including: fluidized bed adsorption - oxidation tower; reconstituted drying tower (to increase the efficiency of the particle material); and the conveying system of the materials is designed to ensure their continuous circulation. In order to facilitate the removal of ethylene gas, the research team selected spherical particles of material with a size suitable for the speed of the fan in the fluidized bed tower as well as with the structure of the air suspension plate.
With this structure, the air in the storage environment will be sucked into the adsorption - oxidation tower by the fan, and then distributed by the gas distribution block. After the ethylene particles are adsorbed, they will be transferred to the reconstitution tower through the particle transport mechanism and separated from the storage medium. These particles will then be dried (reconstituted) and fall to the bottom of the drying tower, from there entering the upper space of the gas distribution block and preparing for the next cycle. At the same time in this drying step, the steam will be swept out by the air outlet.
With those new points, the ethylene gas removal device developed by Dr. Nam and his colleagues developed the patent No. 1-0030332 by the National Office of Intellectual Property (Ministry of Science and Technology) in December 2021. In the future, the team of Dr. Nam will continue to research the integration of temperature, humidity, ethylene gas measurement systems, etc. and apply digital technology to be able to create a complete and convenient device that ordinary people can also use easily.
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