From daytime irrigation to selling surplus energy: solutions to optimize the use of solar energy in irrigation communities

Hydraulics and Irrigation researchers present strategies for the use of energy in the Lower Guadalquivir Valley, which boasts the largest photovoltaic plant for self-provisioning

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA

 

IMAGE: 

RESEARCHERS JUAN ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ, MAAIKE VAN DE LOO AND EMILIO CAMACHO FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CORDOBA

view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CORDOBA

Irrigation faces the challenge of making its activity more sustainable, both environmentally and economically. In this context, energy self-sufficiency is proposed as a path to follow for the agriculture of the future. The Lower Guadalquivir Valley Irrigation Community, covering almost 19,000 hectares and with more than 2,000 irrigators, began self-supplying through solar energy in 2019 through the installation of a 6-megawatt photovoltaic plant, the largest of all irrigation systems in Spain. This has made it a trailblazer and testing ground available to the scientific community as efforts are being made to shift towards an environmentally and economically sustainable irrigation model.

The most recent example is its close collaboration with the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence's Hydraulics and Irrigation research group, in association with the University of Cordoba's Department of Agronomy (DAUCO), which has proposed different strategies to maximize the use of the solar energy it produces, prevent the surplus from being lost, and reduce dependence on external energy sources.

The researchers responsible for the study, Maaike van de Loo, Emilio Camacho and Juan Antonio Rodríguez, explain that more solar energy is currently produced than is used, generating a surplus of around 50%, while a secondary source is necessary to meet energy needs when solar energy is not being produced; at night, for example. To resolve this situation, two possible solutions have been studied that would contribute to reducing the volume of energy lost and optimizing its use, ideas having been published in the journal Renewable Energy.

The first one proposes a change in growers' habits, adjusting irrigation schedules to coincide with the daytime hours when solar energy is produced, and avoiding nighttime irrigation. This approach, the research team explains, represents a paradigm shift since traditionally the Lower Valley Community had opted for irrigation at night due to the advantages it entailed: cheaper energy rates and milder temperatures, which reduce water evaporation levels. However, the drop in energy costs thanks to the construction of the photovoltaic plant, and the expansion of drip irrigation, which reduces water consumption by up to 60% compared to other conventional methods (by allowing for more precise application, thereby minimizing losses) means that irrigators have reason to change their routines.

The strategy that the research group proposes is to abandon on-demand irrigation (24 hours of water availability) and concentrate its use in a space 8 to 12 hours, when there is sunshine, which would significantly increase the ready supply of photovoltaic energy, above 90%. The researchers clarify that, even if this model is implemented, it would always be necessary to have an additional energy source to supplement solar due to its dependence on weather and environmental conditions. However, in a region like Andalusia, with more than 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, the strategy would significantly reduce dependence on external sources and contribute to a more sustainable irrigation model, both economically and environmentally.

The second scenario is economic and consists of selling surplus energy, something that the Lower Valley Community has been doing since the plant's installation. An increase in solar energy production at the national and European levels, however, has led to lower prices, which reduces its profitability.

The study concludes that, thus far, there is no solution that guarantees 100% exploitation of solar energy, though it constitutes a valuable resource. Nevertheless, the researchers are confident that research like this, together with the experience of the Lower Valley Irrigation Community, can pave the way for the irrigation of the future, one capable of combining environmental protection with economic profitability by taking full advantage of the territory's potential.

 

---

JOURNAL

Renewable Energy

DOI

10.1016/j.renene.2024.120610 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Defining the optimization strategy for solar energy use in large water distribution networks: A case study from the Valle Inferior irrigation system, Spain

How to avoid wasting huge amounts of energy

Surplus heat from industry is a underused resource that can be used to purify some types of industry wastewater while providing heat to homes and businesses

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: 

KIM KRISTIANSEN HAS JUST RECEIVED HIS DOCTORATE FROM THE NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ON A TECHNOLOGY THAT CAN PUT TO WORK SOME OF THE WASTE HEAT THAT TODAY IS SIMPLY WASTED. 

view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO: ALEKSANDER STOKKE BÅTNES, NTNU

Norway wastes huge amounts of energy. Surplus heat produced by industry is hardly exploited at all.

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have been looking at the possibilities for doing something about this.

“Surplus heat from industrial processes is a huge resource,” says Kim Kristiansen.

He has just completed his PhD on a technology that can harness some of the surplus heat that currently goes to waste. Almost all the heat generated by industrial processes is currently released directly into the air or the ocean, and we are not talking about small amounts. In Norway alone, industry produces around 20 TWh of waste heat each year.

That number might not mean much to you, but according to the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), this amount of energy corresponds to half of the electricity consumption of all Norwegian households combined. In other words, approximately the entire heating demand.

Kristiansen is part of the thermodynamics research group at PoreLab in the Department of Chemistry. Academic supervisor Signe Kjelstrup and research group manager Øivind Wilhelmsen are co-authors of the articles in question.

Drinking water as an added bonus

The technology also has another effect that may not be as relevant in Norway, but which might be a game changer in countries with limited drinking water.

“The technology doesn’t just recycle the waste heat energy, it can also purify the waste water produced by industry,” says Kristiansen.

In many parts of the world, drinking water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource.

“According to UNICEF, four billion people are already experiencing severe drinking water shortages for at least one month of the year, and there is a high demand for technology that can meet these challenges,” says Kristiansen.

A lack of drinking water is therefore a problem for approximately half of the world’s eight billion people.

Producing clean water

So what is this new technology?

“The waste water produced by industry is often contaminated. If we evaporate this impure water through small pores in a water-repellent membrane, the condensed water that emerges on the other side is drinkable,” says Kristiansen.

This method is best suited for purifying water with so-called non-volatile impurities, such as salt. This is in contrast to alcohols and a number of other organic substances that can evaporate along with the water through the membrane.

“The most important area of application for this technology is therefore desalination of seawater. The treatment of process water is not being ruled out, but it involves additional challenges depending on its content,” says Kristiansen.

So, the technology can produce drinking water, but what about exploiting the waste energy?

Exploiting temperature differences to pump up water

When water is heated on one side of the membrane, it evaporates and releases heat on the other side through condensation. A pressure difference may then arise between the two sides of the membrane

“The temperature difference is used to pump the water up, and the pressure difference represents mechanical energy that can be used to power a turbine,” says Kristiansen. The phenomenon is called thermal osmosis.

Seemingly simple, but ingenious.

“We have investigated the interactions between water and the pores in the membrane, and what happens when the water evaporates, is transported through the pores, and condenses,” says Kristiansen about the doctoral research.

He has designed theories on membrane properties and the effect they have on the entire process. He has also systematically measured this effect in the laboratory.

“The conclusion is that the technology has great potential. Through modification of the membranes, we can help address both the increasing challenges associated with energy efficiency requirements and the lack of clean drinking water,” says Kristiansen.

A Dutch idea

Kristin Syverud at the RISE PFI research institute is interested in improving the membranes used in this technology.

“The starting point for the work was an idea that TNO in the Netherlands gets the credit for,” says Kristiansen’s academic supervisor Signe Kjelstrup.

She is Professor Emerita and former Head Researcher at PoreLab – Centre of Excellence. TNO is an independent institute that works to translate research findings into real-life applications.

TNO experimented with the concept called ‘MemPower’ (simultaneous production of water and power) and the prototype was made at their facilities. The researchers wanted to collaborate but had no funding. The solution was to continue the project as open research at NTNU.

“Leen van der Ham from TU Delft got in touch with me and I introduced the idea to the group I then had at the Department of Chemistry, and later at PoreLab.”

Van der Ham took his PhD in Chemistry at NTNU a few years ago, which shows just how important it is to have contacts. They worked with Luuk Keulen, a student at TU Delft, and the research was continued by Kristiansen and Michael Rauter from PoreLab.

Practical challenges

“Industry is showing interest in the concept of membrane distillation, but so far, there are only a few pilot plants worldwide,” says Kristiansen.

The main reason industry is lagging behind academia is related to practical challenges associated with membrane technology, he explains. For example, this applies to the lifespan of membranes under harsh industrial conditions.

“A lot of work is being done internationally in both academia and industry to meet these challenges and commercialise the technology,” says Kristiansen.

The MemPower concept involves converting waste heat into mechanical energy based on differences in temperature.

“My impression is that industry is not yet fully aware of this concept and the opportunity it offers,” says Kristiansen.

One of the conclusions in the latest article is that the potential for energy production is competitive in relation to more established membrane-based energy processes. He believes this could help increase commercial interest.

Reference: Kristiansen, Kim and Wilhelmsen, Oivind and Kjelstrup, Signe, Thermo-Osmotic Coefficients in Membrane Distillation experiments and Theory for Three Types of Membranes. Desalination, Volume 586, 2024, 117785, ISSN 0011-9164, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2024.117785

Kim Roger Kristiansen at the lab in the Natural Science Building at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Gløshaugen campus. Kristiansen studied membrane technology that can recover the energy in waste heat, and at the same time purify water. 

CREDIT

Photo: Aleksander Båtnes/NTNU

USAGE RESTRICTIONS

---

JOURNAL

Desalination

DOI

10.1016/j.desal.2024.117785 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Thermo-osmotic coefficients in membrane distillation: Experiments and theory for three types of membranes

 

Learning to act in the face of uncertainty

Our brain learns and remembers actions differently based on the level of decision uncertainty

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY (NICT)

 

IMAGE: 

SETUP OF THE EXPERIMENT

view more 

CREDIT: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY

[Abstract]

A study published online in the journal Nature Human Behaviour challenges the belief that identical physical actions are governed by the same motor memory, regardless of the decision-making process involved. Researchers from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.) and HONDA R&D Co., Ltd. have discovered that the brain differentiates and stores motor memories based on the level of uncertainty experienced during decision-making.

In a football (soccer) penalty shootout, a player may decide to confidently kick the ball to the right corner upon observing the goalkeeper moving in the opposite direction. Alternatively, the player might make the same kick while being unsure about the goalkeeper’s movement. Although the physical action—kicking the ball to the right—is identical in both scenarios, this new study reveals that the brain tags these actions differently based on the decision uncertainty involved. This discovery suggests that motor memories are not simply repetitions of the same action but are influenced by the cognitive processes leading up to them.

“This was a very surprising finding. This tells us that we cannot treat actions as something totally independent from the cognitive process. Both are combined to make the representation of action,” says HAGURA Nobuhiro, a senior author of the paper.

This research opens up new avenues for developing novel training methods in sports. By associating skill training with various decision-making situations, athletes can enhance their performance by refining their motor memories in context-specific scenarios.

For more information about this study, please visit the Nature Human Behaviour website (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01911-x).

[Achievements]

In the study, human volunteers decided whether a cloud of dots presented on a screen was moving to the left or to the right. They held a robotic handle in their right hand and moved the handle towards the target in the direction of their decision (see Figure 1, Figure 2A). The uncertainty of the decision was modulated by changing the coherence level of the dots' motion. When all the dots were moving to the left or to the right (100% coherent motion), the certainty of the decision was high. When only a small proportion of the dots were coherently moving and the other dots were moving in random directions, the situation was uncertain. Participants' hand movement to express the decision was pushed by the robotic handle to deviate from the straight path (see Figure 2B), and under this perturbation, participants were instructed to make a straight movement by resisting the force.

In one of the experiments, participants were divided into two groups: the Certain Decision group and the Uncertain Decision group. The Certain Decision group learned to make a straight movement only after deciding on a high dot coherence level motion (100%). The Uncertain Decision group learned the same action, but only after deciding on a low coherence level motion (3%). Although both groups of participants successfully learned to make a straight movement in their respective decision contexts (certain or uncertain) (see Figure 3A), their performance level dropped when they were asked to perform the same movement after decisions with different uncertainty levels (different motion coherence levels) (see Figure 3B). Participants in the Certain group could resist perturbation at the same level as during their practice after a certain decision, but not after an uncertain decision (see Figure 3B; red line). Similarly, participants in the Uncertain group could perform well after an uncertain decision, but not after a certain decision (see Figure 3B; blue line). This indicates that decision and action are not independent; action is learned in association with the decision that led to the action.

In the other experiment, different types of perturbation (clockwise (CW) direction and counterclockwise (CCW) direction) were each associated with a different decision uncertainty level (see Figure 4B). If the decision uncertainty level does not differentiate the actions that follow the decision, participants should not be able to learn the two perturbations at the same time, since they would interfere with each other. However, if the decision uncertainty level 'tags' the action, participants should be able to learn the two perturbations simultaneously. Participants were indeed able to learn the two perturbations at the same time (see Figure 4A), demonstrating that the actions following certain and uncertain decisions are treated as different things in the brain.

[Future prospects]

The researchers believe that this finding may open up new avenues for developing novel training methods in sports. By associating skill training with various decision-making situations, athletes can enhance their performance by refining their motor memories in context-specific scenarios.

Figure 2 A: Screen of the experiment, B: perturbation pattern

Figure 3 A: The amount of force produced to resist the perturbation for both Certain and Uncertain conditions
             B: The amount of force produced for different uncertainty levels in both Certain and Uncertain conditions

Figure 4 A: The amount of force produced to resist the perturbation from the opposite direction, each associated with either Certain or Uncertain condition.
            B: The pattern of perturbation for each Certain and Uncertain condition.

CREDIT

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology

JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-024-01911-x 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Decision uncertainty as a context for motor memory

 

Bath student wins national award for computer game that explores mental health

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

 

IMAGE: 

'GUILT FOR DREAMING' WAS CREATED IN JUST EIGHT WEEKS BY FINAL YEAR UNIVERSITY OF BATH COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENT, SALMAAN ZHANG.

view more 

CREDIT: SALMAAN ZHANG

A final year computer science undergraduate from the University of Bath has been named amongst the UK’s best student game developers, having won an award in the “Games with purpose” category at the Games Innovation Challenge 2024.

Salmaan Zhang competed against university and college students from across the country to win one of seven categories in the competition, which is sponsored by UNiDAYS and delivered by NSE (National Student Esports).

The challenge asked students in the UK to create the most innovative game in just eight weeks. Submitted entries were shortlisted and then judged by industry experts in several categories and against a number of criteria, including technical quality, look and feel, entertainment, innovation, social impact and marketability.

NSE invited a collection of leading esports and gaming professionals to judge the games in person at NSE’s office. The winners are awarded a prize of £500.

Salmaan won the ‘Games With Purpose’ category with his game, Guilt For Dreaming.

The game is an abstract adventure that delves into the dreams and nightmares of the protagonist's mind as they meet faces from their past and rekindle lost passions they once had.

The gameplay varies between different types as the protagonist reconnects with hobbies such as music, drawing and photography.

The game stood out to the judges as it allowed players to embark on an inner journey through the dreams and nightmares of the past, reclaiming lost passions and saving themselves from a bleak future.

Salmaan, who has just completed his final year studying a BSc in Computer Science, said: “Guilt for Dreaming is a mostly nonviolent video game that explores themes of mental health, friendship and identity.

“I wanted to make a game that explored mental health in a more PG-friendly way as most games often approach it as a fairly heavy and dark subject matter.

“Balancing my time between studying, working on my dissertation and making the game was tricky, but it was great being able to use my programming skills to do something I really enjoy.”

Alex Coulson, Managing Director at NSE said: “It was incredible seeing the quality of games submitted to the Games Innovation Challenge and it wouldn’t have been possible without the crucial support from UNiDAYS.

“This is just the start of helping UNiDAYS form deeper relationships with the NSE community through bringing value to their time at university.”

William Avery, Account Manager, Gaming, Tech & Entertainment at UNiDAYS said: “I had a great time playing the games the students made during the judging session and seeing first-hand some of the immense talent the NSE community has to offer, especially within the game development space.

“We are thoroughly excited to see what the partnership holds for the future and how we can enrich students’ day-to-day lives.”

Salmaan is now planning to begin another much larger game project and hopes to turn his skill for game development into a career.

He said: “Game design is one of my lifelong passions and was one of the reasons I chose to study computer science. This prize has spurred me on to make my dream of becoming a professional games developer a reality.”

 

New study adds to mystery of Cahokia exodus

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

 

IMAGE: 

THE REMAINS OF THE MOST SOPHISTICATED PREHISTORIC NATIVE CIVILIZATION NORTH OF MEXICO ARE PRESERVED AT CAHOKIA MOUNDS STATE HISTORIC SITE IN ILLINOIS. ARCHAEOLOGIST NATALIE MUELLER'S NEW STUDY CASTS DOUBT ON A POPULAR THEORY ABOUT WHY THE ANCIENT CITY WAS ABANDONED.

view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO: JOE ANGELES / WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Nine hundred years ago, the Cahokia Mounds settlement just across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis bustled with roughly 50,000 people in the metropolitan area, making it one of the largest communities in the world. By 1400, however, the once-popular site was practically deserted, a mass departure that remains shrouded in mystery.

One popular theory is that the Cahokia residents abandoned the settlement after a massive crop failure brought on by a prolonged drought. But a new study in the journal The Holocene by Natalie Mueller, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Caitlin Rankin, PhD ’20, suggests the Cahokians likely had other reasons to leave town.

Rankin dug deep into the soil at the historic Cahokia site to collect isotopes of carbon, atoms left behind by the plants growing when the human population collapsed and drought was common across the Midwest.

All plants use one of two types of carbon, Carbon 12 and Carbon 13, for photosynthesis, but not all plants do photosynthesis the same way. Plants adapted to dry climates — including prairie grasses and maize, an important new crop during the Cahokia period — incorporate carbon into their bodies at rates that leave behind a tell-tale signature when the plants die and decay.

Most of the other plants that the Cahokians would have harvested for food — including squash, goosefoot and sumpweed — will leave a different signature, one they share with plants from wetlands and native forests.

Rankin’s samples showed that ratios of Carbon 12 and Carbon 13 stayed relatively consistent during that crucial period — a sign there was no radical shift in the types of plants growing in the area. “We saw no evidence that prairie grasses were taking over, which we would expect in a scenario where widespread crop failure was occurring,” Mueller said.

The Cahokians are known for their ingenuity, and Rankin said they may have had the engineering and irrigation skills to keep crops flourishing under difficult conditions. “It’s possible that they weren’t really feeling the impacts of the drought,” said Rankin, now an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada.

Mueller added that the sophisticated society that blossomed at Cahokia almost certainly included a storage system for grains and other foods. Residents also enjoyed a varied and diverse diet — including fish, birds, deer, bear and forest fruits and nuts — that would have kept them nourished even if a few food sources disappeared.

To get a better grasp of the diets and agricultural practices of Indigenous people of the Midwest, Mueller hopes to build a database that collects paleo-botanical evidence from across the region. “Gathering that information would help us see if people switched to different crops in response to climate change,” she said. She’s also planning to grow certain food crops in controlled conditions on campus to understand how they might have responded to ancient droughts and other challenges.

So, why did the Cahokians leave their land of plenty? Mueller suspects it was a gradual process. “I don’t envision a scene where thousands of people were suddenly streaming out of town,” she said. “People probably just spread out to be near kin or to find different opportunities.”

“They put a lot of effort into building these mounds, but there were probably external pressures that caused them to leave,” Rankin said. “The picture is likely complicated.”

---

This story was originally published on the Ampersand website.

---

JOURNAL

The Holocene

DOI

10.1177/09596836241254488 

ARTICLE TITLE

Correlating Late-Holocene climate change and population dynamics at Cahokia Mounds (American Bottom, USA)

 

Designing our meals with 3D printing

SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN

 

IMAGE: OVERVIEW OF MULTI-MATERIAL DIW 3D FOOD PRINTING. A) THE PRINTED LINE WITH TWO NOZZLES REQUIRED SWITCHING OF THE NOZZLE POSITIONS, AND THE PRINTED LINE WAS NOT COLLINEAR DUE TO MISALIGNMENT. THIS SPECIALLY DESIGNED NOZZLE PRODUCED PRINTS WITH NO BROKEN LINES. B) IMAGE OF THE FABRICATED Y-SHAPED NOZZLE. C) 3D PRINTED EDIBLE QR CODE PRINTED USING THE Y-SHAPED NOZZLE. view more 

CREDIT: SUTD

It’s raining meatballs from the sky!

Like a scene from the movies, a team of researchers from Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) has developed new ways to freely produce and customise the food that we eat.

Their findings have been published in the journal Future Foods as “Multi-material direct ink writing 3D food printing using multi-channel nozzle”.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing using food ingredients is currently the favoured approach to shaping foods with unique structures, textures, and nutritional compositions.

“Printing food in 3D enables the customisation of nutrients, the creation of aesthetically pleasing meals, and the modification of food texture to suit individual dietary needs,” explains principal investigator Michinao Hashimoto, an associate professor at SUTD looking into combining the use of design and technology in research.

Some repurposed food sources, such as okara (soybean dregs), orange peels, and insect protein, tend to ward off appetites by their appearances and origins. By adjusting the printing parameters, researchers can incorporate edible and nutrient-rich ingredients from these unusual sources, and construct an aesthetically pleasing meal. For the everyday person, this brings to the table a personalised and sustainable means to get the daily grub. At the same time, individuals with eating disorders or who have difficulty swallowing (dysphagic) can customise their mealtime experience and improve their eating habits.

Researchers have successfully printed foods using chocolate, milk, gelatin, and vegetable inks, but these constructs are largely confined to single ingredients. Existing methods struggle with seamless transitions between materials, leading to fragmented prints and increased complexity in the machine printing process, according to Dr Lee Cheng Pau, the lead researcher of the current study.  

One common approach uses multiple nozzles to hold and eject different food constituents, like having a box of colour pencils to work with. Requiring careful machine design and nozzle alignment when printing, this approach has discontinuous interfaces, where different materials overlap, and long printing times. Associate Prof Hashimoto and the team favour a different approach, taking inspiration from microfluidics. With dual inlets and a single outlet, this approach mitigates the intricacies of switching between multiple nozzles by combining the food pipelines before the printing stage.

Combining different food inks by intersecting junctions is not trivial, however. Backflows into the ingredient inlets tend to happen with fluids of different rheological properties—such as flow and viscosity. For example, squeezing out a dab of toothpaste requires more strength than pouring out water. If the two were to feed into a single outlet, pushing out toothpaste would likely send some paste up into the water inlet.

To overcome this challenge, the researchers had to carefully engineer the design of the food printer. The first step was to widen the exit outlet of the Y-junction in the printer to accommodate food ingredient inks that are high-yield-stress, which require more force to extrude. This change offers a lower resistance for the flow, preventing the ink from going up the wrong channel in the printer. In addition, it is necessary to account for the delay in the food ink transition. As the location for the switching between inks no longer happens at the printing nozzle, the researchers implemented an offset for the printing algorithm.

With their clever design, the team was able to demonstrate seamless and continuous printing between inks with vastly different rheological properties, with minimal backflow. To demonstrate the prowess of their system, they printed the SUTD institutional logo and a fully functional QR code using different milk inks.

Following up on their innovation, the team hopes to optimise the design and technology further to accommodate more inlets and progress toward commercial scalability.

“Our technology can be used to 3D-print foods consisting of multiple materials without compromising the printed structures and appearance,” said Dr Lee Cheng Pau. “It can be applied in creating meals tailored to individual dietary needs, aesthetically pleasing dishes, and interactive food experiences such as edible QR codes.”

---

JOURNAL

Future Foods

DOI

10.1016/j.fufo.2024.100376 

ARTICLE TITLE

Multi-material direct ink writing 3D food printing using multi-channel nozzle