Key Variables Screening of Near-Infrared Models for Simultaneous Determination of Quality Parameters in Traditional Chinese Food “Fuzhu”

The traditional Chinese food Fuzhu is a dried soy protein-lipid film formed during the heating of soymilk. This study investigates whether a simple and accurate model can nondestructively determine the quality parameters of intact Fuzhu. The diffused reflectance spectra (1000–2499 nm) of intact Fuzhu were collected by a commercial near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer. Among various preprocessing methods, the derivative by wavelet transform method optimally enhanced the characteristic signals of Fuzhu spectra. Uninformative variable elimination based on Monte Carlo (MC-UVE), random frog (RF), and competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) were proposed to select key variables for partial least squares (PLS) calculation. The strong performance of the developed models is attributed to the high ratios of prediction to deviation values (3.32–3.51 for protein, 3.62–3.89 for lipid, and 4.27–4.55 for moisture). The prediction set was used to assess the performances of the best models of protein (CARS-PLS), lipid (RF-PLS), and moisture (CARS-PLS), which resulted in greater coefficients of determination of 0.958, 0.966, and 0.976, respectively, and lower root mean square errors of prediction of 0.656%, 0.442%, and 0.123%, respectively. Combined with chemometrics methods, the NIR technique is promising for simultaneous testing of quality parameters of intact Fuzhu

Determination and Visualization of pH Values in Anaerobic Digestion of Water Hyacinth and Rice Straw Mixtures Using Hyperspectral Imaging with Wavelet Transform Denoising and Variable Selection

Biomass energy represents a huge supplement for meeting current energy demands. A hyperspectral imaging system covering the spectral range of 874–1734 nm was used to determine the pH value of anaerobic digestion liquid produced by water hyacinth and rice straw mixtures used for methane production. Wavelet transform (WT) was used to reduce noises of the spectral data. Successive projections algorithm (SPA), random frog (RF) and variable importance in projection (VIP) were used to select 8, 15 and 20 optimal wavelengths for the pH value prediction, respectively. Partial least squares (PLS) and a back propagation neural network (BPNN) were used to build the calibration models on the full spectra and the optimal wavelengths. As a result, BPNN models performed better than the corresponding PLS models, and SPA-BPNN model gave the best performance with a correlation coefficient of prediction (rp) of 0.911 and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of 0.0516. The results indicated the feasibility of using hyperspectral imaging to determine pH values during anaerobic digestion. Furthermore, a distribution map of the pH values was achieved by applying the SPA-BPNN model. The results in this study would help to develop an on-line monitoring system for biomass energy producing process by hyperspectral imaging