Widely Targeted Metabolomics Analysis Reveals Great Changes in Nonvolatile Metabolites of Oolong Teas during Long-Term Storage.

As a semifermented tea, oolong is exceedingly popular worldwide for its elegant, flowery aroma and mellow, rich taste. However, recent marketing trends for old oolong teas and their chemical quality largely remain unexplored. In this study, we applied widely targeted metabolomics using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) combined with multivariate analysis to investigate the chemical change of oolong teas in the aging process. With the increasing of store time, most nongalloylated catechins; tannins, including TFs and proanthocyanidins; flavonols and glycosylated flavonols; amino acids and their derivatives; nucleotides and their derivatives; and lots of alkaloids and phospholipids declined, while most fatty acids and organic acids increased, and galloylated catechins, GA, and caffeine were almost stable. The result also suggested that approximately seven years (but not an infinite extension) was a special period for oolong tea storage, which brings about excellent taste.

Data-driven three-dimensional super-resolution imaging of a turbulent jet flame using a generative adversarial network.

Three-dimensional (3D) computed tomography (CT) is becoming a well-established tool for turbulent combustion diagnostics. However, the 3D CT technique suffers from contradictory demands of spatial resolution and domain size. This work therefore reports a data-driven 3D super-resolution approach to enhance the spatial resolution by two times along each spatial direction. The approach, named 3D super-resolution generative adversarial network (3D-SR-GAN), builds a generator and a discriminator network to learn the topographic information and infer high-resolution 3D turbulent flame structure with a given low-resolution counterpart. This work uses numerically simulated 3D turbulent jet flame structures as training data to update model parameters of the GAN network. Extensive performance evaluations are then conducted to show the superiority of the proposed 3D-SR-GAN network, compared with other direct interpolation methods. The results show that a convincing super-resolution (SR) operation with the overall error of ∼4% and the peak signal-to-noise ratio of 37 dB can be reached with an upscaling factor of 2, representing an eight times enhancement of the total voxel number. Moreover, the trained network can predict the SR structure of the jet flame with a different Reynolds number without retraining the network parameters.

Comparison of 2D and 3D flame topography measured by planar laser-induced fluorescence and tomographic chemiluminescence.

The goal of this work was to contrast and compare the 2D and 3D flame topography of a turbulent flame. The 2D measurements were obtained using CH-based (methylidyne radical-based) planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF), and the 3D measurements were obtained through a tomographic chemiluminescence (TC) technique. Both PLIF and TC were performed simultaneously on a turbulent premixed Bunsen flame. The PLIF measurements were then compared to a cross section of the 3D TC measurements, both to provide a validation to the 3D measurements and also to illustrate the differences in flame structures inferred from the 2D and 3D measurements.

Development and validation of a reconstruction algorithm for three-dimensional nonlinear tomography problems.

This work reports the development and experimental validation of a reconstruction algorithm for three-dimensional (3D) nonlinear tomography problems. Many optical tomography problems encountered in practice are nonlinear, for example, due to significant absorption, multiple-scattering, or radiation trapping. Past research efforts have predominately focused on reconstruction algorithms for linear problems, and these algorithms are not readily extendable to nonlinear problems due to several challenges. These challenges include the computational cost caused by the nonlinearity (which was compounded by the large scale of the problems when they are 3D), the limited view angles available in many practical applications, and the measurement uncertainty. A new algorithm was therefore developed to overcome these challenges. The algorithm was validated both numerically and experimentally, and was demonstrated to be able to solve a range of nonlinear tomography problems with significantly enhanced efficiency and accuracy compared to existing algorithms.

3D flame topography obtained by tomographic chemiluminescence with direct comparison to planar Mie scattering measurements.

This work reports the measurements of 3D flame topography using tomographic chemiluminescence and its validation by direct comparison against planar Mie scattering measurements. Tomographic measurements of the 3D topography of various well-controlled laboratory flames were performed using projections measured by seven cameras, and a simultaneous Mie scattering measurement was performed to measure a 2D cross section of the 3D flame topography. The tomographic measurements were based on chemiluminescence emissions from the flame, and the Mie scattering measurements were based on micrometer-size oil droplets seeded into the flow. The flame topography derived from the 3D tomographic and the Mie scattering measurement was then directly compared. The results show that the flame topography obtained from tomographic chemiluminescence and the Mie measurement agreed qualitatively (i.e., both methods yielded the same profile of the flame fronts), but a quantitative difference on the order of millimeters was observed between these two methods. These results are expected to be useful for understanding the capabilities and limitations of the 3D tomographic and Mie scattering techniques in combustion diagnostics.

Single-shot volumetric laser induced fluorescence (VLIF) measurements in turbulent flows seeded with iodine.

This work reports the experimental demonstration of single-shot visualization of turbulent flows in all three spatial dimensions (3D) based on volumetric laser induced fluorescence (VLIF). The measurements were performed based on the LIF signal of iodine (I2) vapor seeded in the flow. In contrast to established planar LIF (PLIF) technique, the VLIF technique excited the seeded I2 vapor volumetrically by a thick laser slab. The volumetric LIF signals emitted were then simultaneously collected by a total of five cameras from five different orientations, based on which a 3D tomographic reconstruction was performed to obtain the 3D distribution of the I2 vapor in the target flow. Single-shot measurements (with a measurement duration of a few ns) were demonstrated in a 50 mm × 50 mm × 50 mm volume with a nominal spatial resolution of 0.42 mm and an actual resolution of ~0.71 mm in all three dimensions (corresponding to a total of 120 × 120 × 120 voxels).