It is known that orange rind is often discarded as garbage. This research examines the production of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) from orange rind. Cellulose was extracted from orange rind (2.0 g) through alkalization. The cellulose was extracted using 1.0 M NaOH at 80 ± 5oC for 60 min. The maximum yield of cellulose was obtained under this condition. The extracted cellulose was then alkalized and etherified to CMC using NaOH and chloroacetic acid after bleaching with H2O2. The resulting CMC was characterized through Infrared spectroscopy to determine the functional group of CMC. The presence of carboxyl group (COO-) at a wavenumber of 1586 cm-1 in the IR spectrum confirmed the conversion of cellulose to CMC. The surface morphology was also carried out through the SEM technique and the elemental analysis was performed using an EDX method. In addition the resulting CMC product was coated as a film on banana to observe for various reactions.

Durian has been very popular not only local people but also tourists. As a result there are many durian peels wasted so this research is explored the utilization of durian peels. Durian rind is a biological waste but contains high amount of crude fiber. This research aims to study using durian rind powder to replace wheat flour in butter cakes at 5 10 and 15 % (w/w) (DRB-5 DRB-10 and DRB-15). Physical properties chemical composition and sensory evaluation of the butter cakes were analyzed. The results showed that durian rind powder contained 51.43 % of crude fiber. Increasing of durian rind powder in butter cakes showed significant decreasing of lightness (L*) blue–yellow component (b*) springiness and cohesiveness values while green–red component (a*) hardness and gumminess values were significantly higher than the control sample (BC) (p≤0.05). Dietary fiber content of the products shown significantly increased by 13.98% for DRB-5 48.92 % for DRB-10 and 54.84% for DRB-15 as compared with BC (p≤0.05). The acceptance scores of DRB-5 including appearance odor taste texture and overall liking scores were highest. There are 300.28 kcal for 1 serving of butter cake which contain 1.70 gram of dietary fiber. However durian rind powder can be used as a food ingredient and source of dietary fiber in other food recipes for further studies.

This paper presents the experimental results of the oil extraction process from wild almond seeds by mechanical and chemical methods. The optimum conditions for the biodiesel production from the extracted oil via transesterification reaction using methanol and potassium hydroxide (KOH) are reported. Chemical extraction was found to be an effective technique for wild almond oil extraction. Simple distillation was used as oil extraction unit applying 140 ml of n-hexane as solvent at 70ºC for 20 min. The oil yield was 43.11±0.98%. This extracted oil was used as raw material for biodiesel production with the maximum yield of 83.20±1.11%. The optimum conditions for biodiesel production were the catalyst loading of 0.5 wt% and 9:1 molar ratio of methanol to oil in a controlled reaction temperature of 70ºC for 60 min. Finally the properties of biodiesel were analyzed and most properties met the requirements of the department of energy business standard.

The objectives of this research were to determine the suitable times of pork slices drying using microwave followed by hot air and to find specific energy consumption during drying. The physical characteristic (color and hardness) and the sensory test of dried pork slices were also investigated. Pork slices with the sizes of 50x50x1.3 and 50x50x2.2 millimeters were dried using the microwave at the powers of 160 320 480 640 and 800 watts until the samples did not burn during drying. Then the samples were dried using hot air at a temperature of 110oC until the moistures of the samples were lower than 20% dry basis. Based on the experimental results it was found that the suitable times of the samples drying using microwave were 50-600 seconds which depended on the microwave powers and the pork thicknesses. In hot air drying period drying times of the samples with thicknesses of 1.3 and 2.2 millimeters were 30 and 45 minutes respectively. The microwave powers had no significant effect on the redness (a value) and yellowness (b value) of dried pork the hardness of dried pork and the specific energy consumption (P<0.05). The pork thicknesses had the significant effect on the lightness (L value) and yellowness (b value) of dried pork the hardness of dried pork and the specific energy consumption (P<0.05). Moreover sensory scores of the dried pork obtained from this research were close to those obtained from the local market.

Metaheuristic optimization approach has become the new framework for control synthesis. The main purposed of the control design are input (command) tracking and load (disturbance) regulating. This research proposes an optimal proportional-derivative (PID) controller design for the brushless dc (BLDC) motor speed control system with input tracking and load regulating constrained optimization by using the cuckoo search (CuS) one of the most efficient population-based metaheuristic optimization techniques. The sum-squared error between population-based metaheuristic optimization techniques. The sum-squared error between the referent input and the controlled output is set as the objective function to be minimized. The rise time the maximum overshoot settling time and steady-state error are set as inequality constraints for tracking purpose while the regulating time and the maximum overshoot of load regulation are set as inequality constraints for regulating purpose. Results obtained by the CuS will be compared with those obtained by the particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA). From simulation results it was found that the parameters of CuS were optimal than both PSO and GA for BLDC motor speed control system satisfying the preset input tracking and load regulating constraints. In addition the simulation results are confirmed by the experimental ones from the BLDC motor speed control system developed in the laboratory.