Study of cooling experiment and simulation for edible oil storage.

This paper proposes a refrigerant cooling method using an inner tube in a storage tank to improve the cooling performance and thermal uniformity during the storing of edible oil. With a prototype of an oil tank in Central Grain Reserve of Zhenjiang, the experimental oil tank was built in a scale of 50:1. Both natural and manual cooling experiments were carried out for the experimental tank. The manual cooling process involved two supplying modes for the refrigerant tube (top and bottom) and four different refrigerant temperatures (10 â„ƒ, 12 â„ƒ, 14 â„ƒ, 16 â„ƒ). The experimental results show that, compared with natural cooling, manual cooling can effectively reduce the temperature difference and thermal stratification between upper and lower layers. The temperature difference is 6.79 â„ƒ, 1.93 â„ƒ, and 3.67 â„ƒ for the natural cooling, manual top supplying, and manual bottom supplying mode, respectively. Furthermore, for the two manual modes, the cooling efficiency of bottom supplying is 21.4% higher than that of the top supplying, and the average oil temperature drops by 0.8-1 â„ƒ. Based on experimental results, different working conditions (20, 40, and 60 ml/s) were simulated to determine the optimal flow rate for bottom supplying mode. The simulation results indicate that the low flow rate (20 ml/s) corresponds to the best thermal uniformity, and the maximum temperature has no obvious change under different flow rate conditions. Therefore, it is not necessary to increase the flow rate to improve cooling efficiency considering the rising energy consumption.

Shikonin alleviates collagen-induced arthritis mice by inhibiting M1 macrophage polarization.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of shikonin (SKN) on M1 and M2 polarization of macrophages both and . METHODS: Collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) in male DBA/1 mice were treated with a dose of 4 mg/kg/day of SKN for 23 d ( = 6/group). The histopathology of inflamed joints in CIA mice was evaluated to test the anti-arthritic effect of SKN. M1/M2 polarization of macrophages induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and interferon (IFN)-γ or interleukin (IL)-4 and IL-13, were used to assess the effect of SKN (0.05, 0.1, and 0.2 µM). The effect of SKN on the protein expression of nitric oxide synthase, arginase, CD68, and CD206 was evaluated using western blot analysis. RESULTS: The results of this study revealed that SKN delayed the arthritis feet symptom score, reduced the incidence rate of arthritis, and relieved the inflammation of joints in CIA mice. SKN inhibited M1 macrophage polarization but did not affect M2 macrophage polarization in the joints of CIA mice. Moreover, SKN inhibited M1 polarization induced by LPS and IFN-γ, but did not affect M2 polarization induced by IL-4 and IL-13. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that SKN alleviated CIA through inhibiting M1 macrophage polarization and has great potential as a new drug for RA treatment.