Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?One MS candidate in Bioengineering program at University of Hawaii was trained through this project. His research was directed by his mentor, Dr. Soojin Jun, Professor of Food Engineering. He was trained for simulation study of magnetic field effects on nucleation in supercooled bulk water. His research was presented in 2019 IFT meeting (New Orleans, LA). Supercooling research of one PhD candidate in MBBE program at University of Hawaii was directed by Dr. Soojin Jun, a subcontractor of this project. He was trained to explore and simulate fundamental mechanisms of electric and magnetic fields on water molecules. His research was presented in 2018 CoFE (Minneapolis, MN) and 2019 IFT meeting (New Orleans, LA). He published one manuscript in Journal of Food Process Engineering, entitled as "Effects of an oscillating magnetic field on ice nucleation in aqueous iron?oxide nanoparticle dispersions during supercooling and preservation of beef as a food application". He earned his PhD degree in 2019. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?1. Business pitch and presentation to conference meetings (i.e. 2020 TechConnect Virtual Innovation Summits & Expo) 2. Patents and publications U.S. Patent No. 10,111,452, Method of Supercooling Perishable Materials. Awarded on October 30, 2018 Japan Patent No. JP6545171B2 Supercooling method of perishable material, Awarded on July 17, 2019 Korea Patent No. KR102025978B1 Method of supercooling perishable materials, Awarded on September 26, 2019 U.S. Patent No.10,588,336, Method of Supercooling Perishable Materials, Continuation-In-Part application (CIP), Awarded on March 17, 2020. UK patent No. GB2535420, Method of supercooling perishable materials, Awarded on August 4, 2020. 3. The business executive approached potential seed investors and grant decision-makers with the supercooling CVU and the business plan to pitch them for additional financing (i.e. Xerox Parc). 4. The company met and spoke to people in refrigerator manufacturers' product development departments (i.e. LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, and Haier Electronics). The purpose of these meetings was to make connections with potential licensees, learn about their licensing processes, and spread awareness of the supercoiling technology. 5. In 2019, Jun Innovations was one of the finalists at Pacific Business News' inaugural Titans of Technology Awards. https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/event/163325/2019/titans-of-technology What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1: Develop and optimize a scaled up supercooling device Electrical Control Unit (ECU) system's weight and physical dimensions have been reduced from Year 1's ECU system design. A new enclosure was fabricated with an overall 60% volume reduction to achieve portability and address system weight concerns. The ECU's power-board was re-worked to a switching regulator design for better performance efficiency. Working closely with a technical partner, a new power-board based upon switching regulation was created and successfully integrated within our ECU system. The new power-board contains all the functionality of the previous power-board with the added benefit of under/over-voltage protection and fully adjustable voltage and current setting through an SPI digital interface. Thermal performance has greatly been improved with an estimated 100-Watt dissipation at maximum output for OMF and PEF combined. Being tasked with compiling and organizing all test codes into a coherent working control program, the team created a front-end interface for user interaction with ECU. Electrical measurements of the OMF and PEF system through all three phase legs of their respective H-bridge systems is now fully operational with the ability to individually monitor each phase leg's current and voltages with phase information preserved. This provides a significant advantage over previously used third party monitoring solutions thanks to the ability to monitor and calculate electrical power delivered to test samples in real time. It is now possible to monitor for common faults associated with H-bridge operations such as shorts/over-current conditions, over-heating, or under/over voltage conditions. The Large Capacity Chamber (LCC) system, which is comprised of the EM, EM support structure, Chest Freezer, Chamber temperature control system (CTCS) and ECU was developed in tandem with the ECU power-board and software development cycles. The component which dictated much of the ECU's operational parameters and the LCC's physical dimensions was the EM. During Years 1and 2's R&D phase, significant time and resources were spent investigating the best approach to scaling the EM. Heating, EM field strength, EM field uniformity, weight, and viable operational parameters were the primary guides behind its design and outcome. Balancing out each of these required substantial knowledges in the EM design and fabrication process, an EM manufacturer specializing in research applications was determined most appropriate. The EM was able to be spec'd out for continuous operation within a typical commercial chest freezer with no additional insulation to maintain internal chamber temperatures at a user-specified set point. The ECU and the LCC system have been successfully scaled up to accommodate larger food samples and test material. Former test chambers were only able to house a single test sample in volumes ranging between 1 L-3 L. The new LCC has 17 L of total volume with 15 L of the effective treatment area with an improved temperature control system. In addition, the system is now fully incorporated into an existing commercial chest freezer. Objective 2: Test and validate shelf life of perishable food materials Beef: Top round beef steaks were purchased from local meat producers (Honolulu, Hawaii). The samples were cut into 190 × 140 × 35 mm3 and covered with polyethylene film for the prevention of dehydration. A slab of meat was placed in each tray, and a total of four beef steaks within the range of 600 to 750 grams was tested at the same time. OMF and PEF were simultaneously applied to maintain a supercooled state of beef steaks at the ambient temperature of -3.5°C. Specifically, OMF (10 mT at 30 Hz) was applied from the beginning and (1.0×102 V/m at 20 kHz) was triggered when the temperature of a test sample was reached at -0°C, which is above the freezing point of beef. The time/temperature of the test samples was monitored using a data acquisition unit (Agilent 39704A, Agilent Technologies, Inc., Santa Clara, CA). K-type thermocouple wires (TT-K-40-SLE, Omega Engineering, Inc., Stamford, CT) were located underneath the meat samples. Fish: Fresh yellowfin tuna fillets (Thunnus albacares) were purchased at a retail store (Honolulu, Hawaii). The tuna samples were cut to be within 220 g ± 20 g (11×7×3 cm3) and placed in our supercooling chamber developed during the project period. The cut samples were wrapped with polyethylene film to avoid dehydration during experimentation. Samples were stored at the ambient temperature of 4°C (refrigeration), -3.5°C (supercooling), and -18°C (freezing) for up to 10 days, respectively, and the frozen samples were thawed with running water until the core temperature reached 20°C. Quality factor assessments were conducted on Day 0 and Day 10 in triplicate for each treatment. Objective 3: Study quality factor analysis Beef: For quality assessment, beef steaks were stored for 7 days at different cooling conditions such as refrigeration (4°C), freezing (-18°C), and supercooling (-3.5°C). After the preservation period, pictures were taken using a digital SLR camera (Canon, EOS Rebel T3i). The representative temperature profiles of beef steaks preserved in the LCC system indicated that the combination treatment of OMF and PEF enabled to achieve an extension of the supercooled state in larger sized beef steaks at the ambient of -3.5°C for 7 days. Noticeable color degradations were found in the refrigerated samples after 7 days, whereas the supercooling preservation maintained the redness with no external or internal sign of freezing damage. The achieved subzero temperature in the supercooled beef steaks significantly decreased the rate of color degradation without the formation of ice crystals, which damages cellular structures of food materials and cause adverse effects on their overall quality. Our tech demonstration can be found at the following link: https://youtu.be/yjmSR8AjLeU. Fish: The team measured the changes of total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) to determine quality as it negatively correlated with the freshness of fish. The refrigerated tuna samples showed the largest increase in TVB-N values which were considered as spoiled, whereas the supercooled tuna had only a slightly higher TVB-N, which was statistically the same as the frozen/thawed samples. The team observed changes in total viable counts of aerobic bacteria on tuna preserved in refrigeration, freezing, and supercooling. While there was an increase in microbial counts in tuna meat by 4.1 log CFU/g when stored at 4°C for 10 days, only 1.8 log CFU/g increase was observed in the supercooled samples. The frozen/thawed samples also showed an increase in microbial counts; this might be due to the thawing process at 4°C, prior to the microbial examination. The supercooling preservation noticeably extended the shelf life of beef and tuna meats while minimizing the degradation of quality and bacterial growth. Objective 4: Manufacture 10 commercially viable units (CVUs) Jun Innovations and LG Electronics signed the collaborative research and development agreement with one year term exploratory research project funded by LG Electronics. Both companies have entered into the agreement to set out the terms and conditions with respect to the scope of this collaborative research and development project, the deliverables, the time schedules and the companies' undertakings. The proposed deliverables included designing of the scaled-up supercooling chamber in consideration of future home appliance applications. Jun Innovations designed and manufactured three CVUs consisting of ECUs and LCCs with external PID controllers. One of them was already shipped out to LG Electronics for the collaborative project and further potential licensing agreement.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Kang, T. Hoptowit, R., and. Jun, S. 2020. Effects of an oscillating magnetic field on ice nucleation in aqueous iron?oxide nanoparticle dispersions during supercooling and preservation of beef as a food application. Journal of Food Process Engineering https://doi.org/10.1111/jfpe.13525
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Kang, T., Hoptowit, R., You, Y., Chen, J., Francis, S., and Jun, S. 2019. Effect of an external magnetic field on supercooling of water and its application for food preservation. Institute of Food Technologists, June 2-5, New Orleans, LA
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Francis, S. and Jun, S. 2019. Optimization of Magnetic Field in a Solenoid Using â¿¿Electromagnetic Worksâ¿ (EMW) Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Institute of Food Technologists, June 2-5, New Orleans, LA
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Kang, T and Jun, S. 2018. Effect of electric and magnetic field on supercooling of beef steaks with different fat levels. Conference of Food Engineering (CoFE), September 9-12, Minneapolis, MN
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Kang, T. 2019. Electric and magnetic fields engineered for supercooling preservation of fresh foods: from fundamentals to applications. PhD dissertation, Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, University of Hawaii
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