Apple slice grading is useful in post-harvest operations for sorting, grading, packaging, labeling, processing, storage, transportation, and meeting market demand and consumer preferences. Proper grading of apple slices can help ensure the quality, safety, and marketability of the final products, contributing to the post-harvest operations of the overall success of the apple industry. The article aims to create a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to classify images of apple slices after immersing them in atmospheric plasma at two different pressures (1 and 5 atm) and two different immersion times (3 and again 6 min) once and in filtered water based on the hardness of the slices using the k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Tree, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithms. The results showed an inverse relationship between the storage period and the hardness of the apple slices, with the average hardness values gradually decreasing from 4.33 (day 1) to 3.37 (day 5). Treatment with atmospheric plasma at a pressure of 5 atm and an immersion time of 3 min gave the best results for maintaining the hardness of the slices during the storage period, recording values of 4.85 (first day) and 3.68 (fifth day), outperforming other treatments. The average improvement rate was 23.09% over five consecutive days. Regarding the CNN algorithms, the ANN algorithm achieved the highest classification accuracy of 97%, while the Tree algorithm achieved the lowest accuracy of 88.7%. The KNN and SVM algorithms achieved classification accuracies of 94.7% and 95.1%, respectively. The study demonstrated the possibility of using a CNN to classify apple slices based on the degree of hardness. Furthermore, the application of atmospheric plasma at 5 atmospheres with a 3-min immersion improves the firmness of the apple slices by inhibiting degradative enzymes while preserving the cellular structure and tissue quality.
Many approaches of different complexity already exist to edge detection in
color images. Nevertheless, the question remains of how different are the results
when employing computational costly techniques instead of simple ones. This
paper presents a comparative study on two approaches to color edge detection to
reduce noise in image. The approaches are based on the Sobel operator and the
Laplace operator. Furthermore, an efficient algorithm for implementing the two
operators is presented. The operators have been applied to real images. The results
are presented in this paper. It is shown that the quality of the results increases by
using second derivative operator (Laplace operator). And noise reduced in a good
This study investigates the improvement of Iraqi atmospheric gas oil characteristics which contains 1.402 wt. % sulfur content and 16.88 wt. % aromatic content supplied from Al-Dura Refinery by using hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process using Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 prepared catalyst in order to achieve low sulfur and aromatic saturation gas oil. Hydrodearomatization (HDA) occurs simultaneously with hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. The effect of titanium on the conventional catalyst Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 was investigated by physical adsorption and catalytic activity test.Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 catalyst was prepared under vacuum impregnation condition to ensure efficient pr
... Show MoreThis study investigates the improvement of Iraqi atmospheric gas oil characteristics which contains 1.402 wt. % sulfur content and 16.88 wt. % aromatic content supplied from Al-Dura Refinery by using hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process using Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 prepared catalyst in order to achieve low sulfur and aromatic saturation gas oil. Hydrodearomatization (HDA) occurs simultaneously with hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. The effect of titanium on the conventional catalyst Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 was investigated by physical adsorption and catalytic activity test. Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 catalyst was prepared under vacuum impregnation condition to ensure efficient precipitation of metals within the carrier γ-Al2O3. The loading percentage of met
... Show More Aluminum alloys widely use in production of the automobile and the aerospace because
they have low density, attractive mechanical properties with respect to their weight, better
corrosion and wear resistance, low thermal coefficient of expansion comparison with traditional
metals and alloys. Recently, researchers have shifted from single material to composite materials
to reduce weight and cost, improve quality, and high performance in structural materials.
Friction stir processing (FSP) has been successfully researched for manufacturing of metal
matrix composites (MMCs) and functional graded materials (FGMs), find out new possibilities
to chemically change the surfaces. It is shown th
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is the most common process for dealing with primary and secondary wastewater sludge. In the present work, four pre-treatment methods (ultrasonic, chemical, thermal, and thermo-chemical) are investigated in Al-Rustumya Wastewater Treatment plant in order to find their effect on biogas production and volatile solid removal efficiency during anaerobic digestion.
Two frequencies of ultrasonic wave were used 30 KHz and 50 KHz during the pre-treatment. Sodium hydroxide was added in different amounts to give three pH values of 9, 10 and 11 in chemical pre-treating processes. The sludge was heated at 60oC and 80oC through thermal pre-treatment experiment. Also, the sludge was treated thermo-chemically at 80 oC and pH
Currently and under the COVID-19 which is considered as a kind of disaster or even any other natural or manmade disasters, this study was confirmed to be important especially when the society is proceeding to recover and reduce the risks of as possible as injuries. These disasters are leading somehow to paralyze the activities of society as what happened in the period of COVID-19, therefore, more efforts were to be focused for the management of disasters in different ways to reduce their risks such as working from distance or planning solutions digitally and send them to the source of control and hence how most countries overcame this stage of disaster (COVID-19) and collapse. Artificial intelligence should be used when there is no practica
... Show MoreCurrently, one of the topical areas of application of machine learning methods is the prediction of material characteristics. The aim of this work is to develop machine learning models for determining the rheological properties of polymers from experimental stress relaxation curves. The paper presents an overview of the main directions of metaheuristic approaches (local search, evolutionary algorithms) to solving combinatorial optimization problems. Metaheuristic algorithms for solving some important combinatorial optimization problems are described, with special emphasis on the construction of decision trees. A comparative analysis of algorithms for solving the regression problem in CatBoost Regressor has been carried out. The object of
... Show More