Active packaging film with functions of moisture-absorbing and antioxidant activity was developed based on poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) incorporated with green tea extract (GTE). The effects of GTE concentrations of 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2% on the physical, structural, and antioxidant properties of PVA films were investigated. The PVA film containing 2% GTE had lower moisture absorbing efficiency relatively and better antioxidant activity through DPPH radical-scavenging ability experiment. A packaging system of GTE-incorporated PVA films was applied to package dried eel and quality of dried eel was evaluated during storage. The result showed that dried eel packed with GTE-incorporated PVA films showed lower weight change, peroxide value and TBARS value during storage than that packed without PVA films or with PVA films but no GTE. The PVA film containing 2% GTE showed the best quality protective effectiveness to prevent the dried eel from absorbing moisture and oxidizing of lipid.
Practical applicationsPoly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) is a synthetic polymer that is widely used in packaging applications because of its excellent film forming, biodegradability, good mechanical, and gas barrier properties.The present study evidenced that the PVA films incorporated with GTE showed good quality protective effectiveness to prevent the dried eel packed with these films from absorbing moisture and oxidizing of lipid. This active packaging film could be used as inner layer or intermediate layer in the composite packaging film system to improve the storage quality of moisture-sensitive and high-fat food. Based on this concept, the moisture-absorbing agents and antioxidant can be incorporated into the packaging structures to develop an active multifunctional food packaging material potentially to remove or reduce moisture inside the food packaging system instead of desiccants and preservative added in the food.
This paper presents a power management system of a household photovoltaic-battery hybrid power system within demand side management under time of use electricity tariff. This system is easy to implement by employing cheap electrical switches, off-the-shelf chargers and inverters. Control system models combining both power dispatching level and home appliance scheduling level are proposed to minimize the residents' energy cost and energy consumption from the grid with the practical constraints strictly satisfied. In addition, the resident comfort inconvenience level is considered in the control system models. The trade-off among operating cost, energy consumption and inconvenience is considered and a multi-objective optimization problem is formulated. The optimal control strategies are derived by solving a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. Simulation results show that the energy cost and energy consumption from the grid can be largely reduced with the proposed strategies. These results are important for customers to dispel their major uncertainty in determining whether to newly install or update to such photovoltaic-battery hybrid power systems.
As the problem of carbon emissions is becoming increasingly more serious around the world, how to balance carbon emissions reduction and economic growth has become an important issue in the field of environmental economics. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and China's Low-Carbon Pilot (CLCP) policy has significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions and achieved expected benefits. However, is environmental quality improving at the expense of economic growth? This article selects macro panel data of 286 Chinese prefecturelevel cities and micro data of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2001 to 2013, takes the CLCP policy implementation by five provinces and eight cities as a quasi-natural experiment, uses difference-in-differences (DID) method to investigate the causal effect of CLCP policy on regional economic growth and enterprise behavior. The results are as follows. First, the CLCP policy significantly promotes regional economic growth. Moreover, as the implementation time of the policy continues, environmental regulation has a greater effect of promoting economic growth. Second, although the CLCP policy significantly increases various production costs, it also promotes the growth of enterprises' output and benefits. Third, under the pressure of enterprise cost increase caused by environmental regulation, enterprises choose the positive way of strengthening internal management, improving efficiency and increasing innovation instead of choosing the negative way of trans-regional transfer, and finally achieve an improvement in output and benefits.
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