Innovative concepts for improved food processing

申请人的研究计划的总体主题是相同的：使用创新的概念来改善食品加工，以实现更好的质量，延长保质期，提高安全性，提高效率和扩大食品的适销性。创新和新颖的概念出现在食品加工的各个领域，如热加工，微波，射频和欧姆加热，以及过程表征和建模应用。食品和食品系统的流变学和热物理性质的准确数据是有效的过程动力学建模所必需的。行业将不断需要修改或调整其制造实践，以适应消费者不断变化的需求，从而能够在市场上保持竞争力，学术机构在突出最新进展的加工概念方面发挥着重要作用。拟议的研究探讨这些概念，以提高质量保持，最大限度地减少成本/能源消耗。下一个五年的发现基金的主要重点将包括：1）以自由双轴旋转为重点的搅拌热处理; 2）涉及微波研究的新型加热技术，其集中于评估MW对酶的增强作用以用于新型应用，欧姆加热侧重于评估采用不锈钢电极的高频欧姆加热系统，射频加热侧重于连续流动加热以蛋白质为基础的食物3）食品系统流变学将侧重于评估特殊饮食配方，如用于Dyphagic患者和饮料云乳液的配方; 4）ANN建模研究将侧重于渗透干燥，预测微生物学，挤出和收获后技术;以及5）评估食品系统的热物理性质。

The overall theme of the applicant's program of research has been the same: use innovative concepts to improve food processing to achieve better quality, extend shelf-life, enhance safety, improve efficiency and expand marketability of food products. Innovative and novel concepts are emerging in every area of food processing such as thermal processing, microwave, radio frequency and ohmic heating, and in process characterization and modeling applications. Accurate data on rheological and thermo-physical properties of foods and food systems is required for efficient modeling of the process kinetics. Industries will constantly need to revise or adjust their manufacturing practices to the changing needs of the consumers to be able to stay competitive in the marketplace and academic institutions play a major role in highlighting the recent advances processing concepts. The proposed studies explore the these concepts for improving quality retention, minimize cost / energy consumption. The major foci of the next five year Discovery Grant will encompass: 1) Agitation thermal processing with a focus on free bi-axial rotation; 2) Novel heating techniques involving microwave studies focussed on evaluating the enhanced effects of MW on enzymes for novel applications, ohmic heating focussed on the evaluation of a high frequency ohmic heating system with stainless steel electrodes and RF heating focussed on continuous flow heating of protein based foods; 3) Food system rheology will focuss on evlauting specialty diet formulations such as those used for Dysphagic patients and beverage cloud emusions; 4)ANN modeling study will focus on osmotic drying, predictive microbiology, extrusion and post harvest technology; and 5) Evaluation of thermo-physical properties of food systems.