Enaam Ahmad  Al Saty^*(1)

(1). Ph.D. in Food Engineering, working at the College of pharmacy, Tartous University, Syria.(*Email: enaam83@hotmail.com)

Received: 8/10/2024                    Accepted: 9/2/2025

Abstract: 

the growth hormone ethylene is considered the main cause of spoilage of vegetables and fruits during storage. therefore, controlling the level of this hormone in vegetable and fruit stores is of great importance in reducing their deterioration during storage. the use of zeolite to get rid of ethylene is considered an important method in delaying the spoilage of fruits, especially climactic fruits such as apples. combining zeolite with some materials such as permanganate, palladium, and some cations such as berries, copper, and silver has also given effective results in increasing the efficiency of ethylene adsorption. the main goal of this research is to study the treatment of zeolite with silver ion to improve its ability to adsorb ethylene. to this end, we passed a mixture of ethylene gas inside a cylindrical filter containing zeolite saturated with agno3 placed on a layer of glass wool, and measured the ethylene concentration at the inlet of the filter cylinder and at the outlet after closing the system at the outlet, after closing the system to allow the ethylene to come into contact with the treated layer, measurements were made after 15, 30, and 45 minutes using a gas chromatograph (GC-FID), and the reduction efficiency was compared with the results of another study conducted under the same conditions and using zeolite not treated with agno3. the results showed that the most effective treatment in reducing the ethylene concentration was using zeolite saturated with agno3, which removed 91.71% of the total ethylene concentration after 45 minutes of contact, while the removal percentage using untreated zeolite was about 61.93%. we also applied this treatment to apple fruits, as one of the climacteric fruits, and stored them for 15 days. the results showed that after 10 days of storage, the reduction in ethylene concentration was approximately 47.433% for fruits stored with the presence of zeolite treated with agno3, while it did not exceed 4.347% after 15 days of storage. storage requires renewal of the zeolite layer treated with agno3 at that time.

Keywords: Ethylene, Zeolite, Climacteric Fruits, Adsorption, GC-FID.

Full paper in Arabic: PDF