Building Research Capacity at Canada's Smartest Kitchen in Fortified Beverages and Emulsions with a Two-Phased Homogenization Unit

最近的历史表明，北美和欧洲的消费者越来越意识到健康饮食的好处。在过去几年中，对健康、方便食品和饮料的需求稳步上升，产品推出的数量每年翻一番。功能性乳制品、蔬菜和水果、运动饮料和功能饮料都出现了令人印象深刻的增长，没有放缓的迹象。功能性饮料的可能性是无穷无尽的，从添加益生元的强化，到使用副产品和功能性成分，以及使用纳米乳液等新技术。大西洋加拿大公司意识到了这些趋势，并热衷于在功能性饮料研究方面进行合作。加拿大最聪明的厨房（CSK），食品研发中心（和NSERC技术访问中心），与加拿大烹饪研究所共同位于爱德华王子岛的荷兰学院，越来越多地与中小企业合作开发创新，增值饮料。在其开发的1400种食品和饮料产品中，有40种是强化饮料和乳化酱料。迄今为止，CSK仅限于这些饮料和酱汁的概念验证，基于缺乏能力不均质化，均匀混合两种不溶性液体的过程。为了更好地服务行业和培养学生，CSK需要一台PandaPLUS 2000实验规模的两相均质机。该设备将允许CSK超越概念验证并进入完整的产品开发。PandaPLUS 2000的选择基于直接可扩展性，以试点和工业规模的处理，允许无缝的实验室到设施的产品开发。CSK已经确定了这方面的培训和行业准入方面的重大差距，并希望填补这一空白。

Recent history has demonstrated that consumers in North America and Europe have become increasing awareof the benefits of healthy eating. The demand for healthy, convenient foods and beverages has steadily risenover the past several years, doubling the number of product launches, year over year. Functional dairy,vegetable and fruit, sports drinks and energy drinks have all seen impressive growth with no sign of slowdown. The possibilities of functional beverages are endless, ranging from fortification with prebiotics, to theuse of by-products and functional ingredients, and use of novel technologies like nanoemulsions. AtlanticCanadian companies are aware of these trends and are keen to collaborate in functional beverage research.Canada's Smartest Kitchen (CSK), the food product research and development center (and NSERC TechnologyAccess Center), co-located with The Culinary Institute of Canada at Holland College in Prince Edward Islandhas been working increasingly with SMEs to develop innovative, value added beverages. Of the 1,400 food andbeverage products developed in its existence, 40 have been fortified beverages and emulsified sauces. To date,CSK has been restricted only to concept validation of these beverages and sauces based on lack of capacity inhomogenization, the process of mixing two non-soluble liquids uniformly.To better serve industry and train students, CSK is requesting a PandaPLUS 2000 bench scale two-phasehomogenizer. This equipment will allow CSK to move beyond concept validation and into full productdevelopment. The PandaPLUS 2000 has been selected based on direct scalability to pilot and industrial sizedprocessing, allowing for seamless bench-to-facility product development. CSK has identified a significant gapin training and industry access to this bench scale capability and is hoping to fill this void.