A novel method of automatic peeling for Poria cocos based on image processing

Manual peeling of Poria cocos has low efficiency and large loss,and other peeling methods are not suitable for Poria cocos peeling.To solve this problem,this study designed and fabricated a set of automatic peeling equipment for Poria cocos,which combined image processing technology with the structure and function of the vertical milling machine.This paper mainly reports the image detection algorithm of Poria cocos epidermis position for automatic peeling.Firstly,the blue marks were glued to the movable and the immovable parts of clamping parts,and the initial window was determined through them.Then,the grayscale image within the initial window was obtained with the help of the chromatic aberration|2r-g-b|(red(r),green(g),blue(b)of pixels).The processing window was calculated with the aid of the distribution graph of the grayscale accumulation.Next,the grayscale image was taken into the process of the automatic binarization based on the Otsu method and the binary image was restored through dilation,erosion and denoising algorithm.Finally,pixel columns in the processing window were scanned column-by-column from the left to the right and the direction of each pixel column is from the bottom to the top.The first pixel with a value of 0 on each pixel column was set as the epidermis position of the current pixel column.The experiment results implied that,under the set light source,the average detection accuracy was 98.8%,and the average time to detect epidermis position once was 0.024 s.The detection accuracy and real-time performance of this algorithm meets the actual operation requirements of Poria cocos peeling.It lays the foundation for the automatic peeling operation of Poria cocos.

Effects of combined infrared and hot-air drying on ginsenosides and drying characteristics of Panax notoginseng(Araliaceae)roots

Exploring new drying technology can help to deal with the challenge of better preservation of rhizome medicinal materials in the traditional Chinese medicine industry.In current work,combined infrared and hot-air drying(IR-HAD)was employed to Panax notoginseng roots and its effect on drying kinetics,energy efficiency and quality,i.e.,rehydration ratio(RR),color parameters(L^(*),a^(*),b^(*)),total color difference(ΔE),Panax notoginseng saponins(PNS)content,and ginsenosides content(R_(1),R^(g1),R_(e),R_(d),R_(b1))were evaluated.Hot air drying(HAD)was used as the control.Results showed that the increase in drying temperature significantly shortened drying time and reduced energy consumption.The shortest drying time of 43.0 h and lowest specific energy consumption of 15.9 kW·h/(kg-water)were obtained by IR-HAD at 55°C.The decrease of radiation distance and the increase of radiation power led to the shortening of drying time.However,high drying temperature resulted in largeΔE values,large collapse structure,and RR of samples.The drying time of Panax notoginseng roots dried by IR-HAD at a drying temperature of 50°C was shorter(15.5%)than HAD dried at the same drying temperature.The contents of R_(1),R_(g1),R_(e),R_(b1),and PNS were higher when the samples were dried by IR-HAD than those dried by HAD at the same temperature of 50°C.Moreover,the IR-HAD dried samples shortened 15.5%drying time and saved 22.1%energy consumption compared with HAD.Therefore,the optimal process condition was Panax notoginseng roots under IR-HAD at drying temperature of 50°C,radiation distance of 12 cm and radiation power of 1350 W,which can shorten drying time,maintain high ginsenosides contents and satisfactory apparent qualities.