Yihang Zhang,Jing Guo,Jianbin Sun,Fucheng Guan,Jing Tao,Xuecui Song,Zheng Li
Tea bags have been extensively used in the food industry and daily life as an efficient way to pack tea. However, the large pores of the commercial tea bags not only lead to the inner contents of tea bag susceptible to bacteria and moisture but also result in the faster water infusion which is undesired during tea brewing. In this study, the polylactic acid (PLA)-PLA/sodium alginate (SA)/bromelain (BL) bilayer fiber membrane imitating the asymmetric wetting structure of lotus leaf blades was fabricated to avoid the above disadvantages of commercial tea bag. The PLA/SA/BL skin-core nanofiber membrane which imitating the skin-core structure of lotus leaf stems was first prepared as the hydrophilic and support layer, then a hydrophobic PLA layer was deposited on top via electrospinning. The PLA-PLA/SA/BL bilayer fiber membrane had a breaking strength of 5.5 MPa and started to decompose at 260 °C. Using this bilayer membrane , tea bags were designed with a novel structure where the hydrophobic PLA layer was placed in the same direction. The novel structure endow the those tea bags a slow and directional water transfer property. Therefore, the PLA-PLA/SA/BL bilayer fiber membrane has great potential for applications as tea bags.
The catalytic packing is the core component of the catalytic distillation, and how the catalyst exists in the packing has significant influence on the process. To investigate the effect of catalyst packings on the catalytic distillation process, the classical ethyl acetate reactive distillation system was utilized, and a supported catalytic packing (SCP) was prepared in comparison with the conventional tea-bag catalytic packing (TBP). Laboratory scale experiments showed that the ethyl acetate conversion of the SCP was superior to the TBP at a low catalyst loading. The effects of reaction kinetics, mass transfer performance and actual catalytic efficiency of the packings on this process were regarded as reasons and studied by combining the experiments and numerical simulation. Results suggested that the relatively immediate “ in-situ separation” caused by the rapid reaction kinetics and better mass transfer performance of SCP may be a main reason for the difference of the conversion.
Juan Li,Gan Wang,Xiaoli Gou,Juan Xiang,Qiu-ting Huang,Guokun Liu
Most food packages are made of plastics, nanoplastics released from which can be directly ingested and induce serious damage to organisms. Therefore, it is urgent to develop an effective and convenient method for nanoplastic determinations in food packages. In this work, we present a sandwich-based electrochemical strategy for nanoplastic determination. Positively charged Au nanoparticles were coated onto a Au electrode to selectively capture negatively charged nanoplastics in an aqueous environment. Subsequently, the nanoplastics were recognized by the signal molecule ferrocene via the hydrophobic interaction and determined by differential pulse voltammetry. Our sandwich-type detection depends on both electronegativity and hydrophobicity of nanoplastics, which make the method applicable for the assays of packages made of widely commercialized polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), and polyamide (PA). The method displays different sensitivities to above four nanoplastics but the same dynamic range from 1 to 100 μg·L–1. Based on it, the nanoplastics released from several typical food packages were assayed. Teabags were revealed with significant nanoplastic release, while instant noodle boxes, paper cups, and take-out boxes release slightly. The good recoveries in nanoplastic-spiked samples confirm the accuracy and applicability of this method. This work provides a sensitive, low-cost, and simple method without complicated instruments and pretreatment, which is of great significance for the determination of nanoplastics released from food packages.