Treatment of Activated Carbon with Potassium Permanganate for Improving the Efficiency of Ethylene Removal Released from Climacteric Fruits

Abstract

The phytohormone ethylene is one of the main causes of postharvest spoilage of fruits and vegetables. The effective management of ethylene concentration is of great importance to reduce postharvest losses of fruits and vegetables. The reduction in ethylene caused by using KMnO4 was found to delay the ripening of many climacteric fruits such as apple, bananas, melons and tomatoes. Interestingly, the general aim of this work is to evaluate the effectiveness of KMnO4 in reducing ethylene concentration during storage of climacteric fruit. For this purpose, ethylene-enriched mixture was passed inside a cylinder with a bed of activated carbon treated with KMnO4 and t gas samples entering and exiting the cylinder were analyzed for ethylene concentration by injecting in gas chromatography (GC-FID) after 15, 30, and 45 minutes and results obtained were compared with a similar set up but with only activated carbon as ethylene adsorber. The results showed that maximal ethylene removal was in the cylinder with activated carbon treated with KMnO4 which removed 91.71% of ethylene 45 min after treatment compared with 61.93% ethylene removal by only using the activated carbon. The results also revealed that the activated carbon with KMnO4 10 days after storage reduced ethylene concentration by 43.94% compared with 28.77% for the activated carbon. Keywords: Ethylene, activated carbon, KMnO4, climacteric fruit, adsorption, GC-FID.