Effects of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma on the drying kinetics, color, phenolic compounds, energy consumption and microstructure of lotus pollen

Abstract

This work investigated the influences of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma on the drying characteristics, color, and phenolic acid content of lotus pollen. The microstructure was also evaluated to reveal the mechanism of the changes in the quality of lotus pollen. Results showed that the drying time of lotus pollen was reduced from 28 to 4 h when the drying voltage increased from 0 kV to 40 kV. Further, the DBD plasma-dried sample exhibited better color. Compared with the fresh sample, the vanillic acid content in natural open sun drying decreased by 22.7%, while the vanillic acid content of DBD plasma-dried sample increased by 47.9%. Interestingly, ferulic acid was converted into vanillic acid during DBD plasma drying. Total energy consumption was three to four orders of magnitude higher than net energy consumption. The microstructure observation elucidated the mechanisms of moisture migration and change of phenolic acid during DBD plasma drying.

Keywords:

• Dielectric barrier discharge drying
• color
• phenolic acid
• lotus pollen
• microstructure

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Xue Xiaofeng from Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences for his help in the detection of phenolic profiles. The authors also would like to express their gratitude to the anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jia-Bao Ni: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing original draft. Jia-Shu Zhang: Writing review and editing. Bhesh Bhandari: Writing review and editing. Hong-Wei Xiao: Formal analysis, Writing review and editing. Chang-Jiang Ding: Methodology, Writing review and editing. Wen-Jun Peng: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition. Xiao-Ming Fang: Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision, Writing-review and editing.

Disclosure of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31871861 and 31501548), the National Modern Agriculture (Bee) Industry and Technology System Construction Projects (NYCYTX-43-KXJ17), and the Science and Technology Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS-ASTIP-2015-IAR).