Issue: The moisture content of a fill material will affect its compaction characteristics and needs to be evaluated during quality control of the fill operation. When the fill is drier than its optimum moisture content, any moisture in the fill serves as a lubricant and helps the relative movement of the particles when densifying under vibratory compaction. When the fill is wetter than its opti...

We investigated the temperature and moisture conditions that allow Phytophthora ramorum to infect Rhododendron 'Cunningham's White'. Most experiments were performed with a single P. ramorum isolate from the NA1 clonal lineage. For whole plants incubated in dew chambers at 10 to 31 degrees C, the greatest proportion of diseased leaves, 77.5%, occurred at the optimum temperature of 20.5 degrees C...

In this study, an air heated solar collector (AHSC) dryer was designed to determine the drying characteristics of the pear. Flat pear slices of 10 mm thickness were used in the experiments. The pears were dried both in the AHSC dryer and under the sun. Panel glass temperature, panel floor temperature, panel inlet temperature, panel outlet temperature, drying cabinet inlet temperature, drying ca...

Background and Objectives: The extruded snacks with high content of calorie and fat and low content of protein, fiber is considered as a deleterious and harmful foodstuff for most of the consumers. Today, various techniques have been proposed to improve the quality of snacks. The use of fruits processing by-products to extruded snacks is one of the most important technologies that is proposed. ...

In this study, the effect of drying temperature, from 50 °C to 90 °C, on the drying characteristics of powdered peanut shell was investigated, and an isothermal procedure was used to determine the moisture diffusivity and the activation energy. All the experiments were performed using a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) for rapidly achieving the isothermal condition and accurately recording the ...