Applications of Wine Pomace in the Food Industry: Approaches and Functions

Winemaking generates large amounts ofwine pomace, also called grape pomace. This by-product has attracted the attention of food scientists and the food industry, due to its high content in nutrients and bioactive compounds. This review mainly focuses on the different published approaches to the use of wine pomace and its functions in the food industry. Traditionally, wine pomace has been used to obtain wine alcohol, food colorings, and grape seed oil. More recently, research has focused in the production of other value-added products, such as extracts of bioactive compounds, mainly phenols, recovery of tartaric acid, and the making of flours. The most common functions associated with wine pomace products are their use as antioxidants, followed by their use as fortifying, coloring, and antimicrobial agents. These products have mainly been applied to the preparation of meat and fish products and to, a lesser extent, cereal products.Autonomous Government of Castilla y León, Spain, through the research project BU282U13

Droplet microfluidics for bioprocess engineering

A crucial challenge during the initial stages of bioprocess development is that tools used to screen microorganisms and optimize cultivation conditions do not represent the environment imposed at industrial scale. Inside an industrial-scale bioreactor, microorganisms are often cultivated under fed-batch conditions, where nutrients are supplied during the culture. Additionally, microorganisms continuously keep crossing zones with low and high concentrations of substrate and dissolved oxygen. However, during initial bioprocess development, growth and productivity of microorganisms are evaluated under batch conditions due to the difficulty of dynamically controlling nutrient and dissolved oxygen concentrations in screening equipment such as micotiter plates. This inconsistency in cultivation conditions often leads to selection of strains that fail to perform at industrial scale. The difficulty in continuously supplying minute amounts of nutrients to microorganisms in microtiter plates and imposing dynamic dissolved oxygen levels throughout the cultivation experiment necessitates an alternative approach. Microfluidic technology holds the potential to address this inconsistency with fidelity by offering high-throughput experimentation and excellent control over the culture microenvironment. The central theme of this Ph.D. project is the design and development of droplet-based microfluidic technology, that enable studying microorganisms under such dynamically controlled cultivation conditions. As such, the outcomes from this Ph.D. project form a foundation step towards narrowing the gap between screening and industrial-scale use, with an eye to keeping the technology sufficiently simple to be adopted by the biotechnology and bioengineering community.ChemE/Product and Process Engineerin

Can visualizations complement quantitative process analysis measures? A case study of nurses identifying patients before administering medications

The objective of this study is to demonstrate the effectiveness of visualizations for exploring one error-prone health care process: nurses verifying patients\u27 identities during the medication administration process. We employed three types of process visualizations (i.e., Markov chains, sparklines, and timeline belt visualizations) to explore process execution data from an experiment wherein nurse participants (N = 20) administered medications to three patients in a simulated clinical setting. One patient had an embedded error, with the medication being incorrect for the patient. The visualizations allowed us to view aggregate and individual-level process execution data, providing insights into the orders in which participants completed process steps. Although we used eye tracking videos, the system developed in this study can automatically generate visualizations using large process execution data sets produced from an array of sources, including observations, sensors, and health IT audit trails. In this article, we demonstrate that the visualizations provide insights complementary to quantitative measures regarding what process steps participants likely used to identify errors, with the visualizations requiring less work to produce. Therefore, the visualizations may be an effective means for efficiently comparing sets of process execution data (e.g., different individuals completing a process, pre- and post-technology implementation, pre- and post-quality improvement intervention)

Ellipsometric and electrochemical studies of the surface films on AISI 304 SS in acidic KCNS solution

213-218<span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height: 115%;font-family:" times="" new="" roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";="" color:black;mso-ansi-language:en-in;mso-fareast-language:en-in;mso-bidi-language:="" hi"="" lang="EN-IN">Surface films formed on solution annealed and sensitised AISI 304 SS in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution in the absence and presence of 0.01 M KCNS have been evaluated for their refractive index and thickness using ellipsometry. The results are correlated to the protectiveness of the surface films formed in this environment, as determined by electrochemical potentiokinectic reactivation (EPR) tests. It has been observed that surface films (189-363 Ǻ thick) formed on the sensitised AISI 304 SS in the acidic solution without and with KCNS are non-protective, whereas those formed on the solution annealed SS (123 -134Ǻ) in the same environment are protective in nature.</span

Corrosion inhibition of picolinic acid and ascorbic acid mixture by 5-hexyn-1-ol

292-299Inhibition of carbon steel corrosion in a deaerated solution containing a mixture of picolinic acid (3.5×10-2 M) and ascorbic acid (1.0×10-2M), effective for magnetite film removal, by 5-hexyn-1-ol has been studied between 30 to 70°C by weight loss and electrochemical impedance techniques. The effect of inhibitor concentration and the reaction temperature on the performance of inhibitor has been evaluated. Activation energy for carbon steel corrosion decreased upon the addition of 5-hexyn-1-ol suggesting that the mode of operation is by chemisorption of the inhibitor on the metal surface. The inhibitor efficiency increased with temperature confirming to the chemical nature of adsorption process. The thermodynamic parameters such as free energy, heat and entropy of adsorption of the inhibitor on carbon steel surface have been determined. 5-hexyn-1-ol has been shown to follow Bockris-Swinkels isotherm leading to the replacement of four water molecules per inhibitor molecule adsorbed. Impedance measurements showed that the addition of inhibitor affects the charge transfer process on exposure for longer duration. While the charge transfer resistance increased in presence of 5-hexyn-1-ol, the double layer capacity showed reverse trend

TiN coatings modified by an interlayer of electroplated chromium on mild steel

TiN films on mild steel were deposited by reactive d.c. magnetron sputtering; electroplated chromium was incorporated as an interlayer. Surface hardness, measured by the Knoop indentation method under a load of 25 gf. phase analysis by the X-ray diffraction method and corrosion behaviour by the potentiodynamic measurement technique of these coatings have been evaluated. Surface hardness values were found to increase from about 1000-1100 for TiN coatings on mild steel to about 1800-1900 (HK25) for TiN coatings with chromium as interlayer. Potentiodynamic corrosion tests, performed in 1N H2SO4 solutions, have shown that with chromium interlayer the corrosion resistance increases significantly as compared to TiN only sputtered coatings on mild steel samples. No spalling of TiN coatings was observed during full sweep voltage of -1000 mV to +1000 mV when they were tested with a chromium interlayer