Food Processing Technology
How do chemical engineers contribute to a safe, nutritious
and delicious food supply? What are the current critical issues in the
food industry? Speakers from industry and government will discuss how we
are designing food plants to be sanitary, how we are modeling the dynamics
of food contamination incidents, and other ways in which chemical engineers
and chemical engineering principles are applied.
Abstracts:
Emerging Food Preservation Processes
Evan J. Turek, Senior Kraft Foods Fellow, Kraft Foods Global, Inc., Glenview, IL 60025
Consumer interest in fresher, less processed and safer food is driving
academic and industrial research into new processes for food preservation. These
processes are characterized by their ability to better retain the natural color,
texture, nutrition and flavor of food by using alternate sources of energy -- and
less heat -- to effect the inactivation of spoilage microorganisms and pathogens.
This presentation will review the principles behind several emerging
preservation processes; e.g., Pulsed Electric Fields, High Pressure Preservation,
Irradiation, RF / microwave retorting, etc. The state of development of these
technologies will be discussed as well as their benefits, potential product
applications and technology limitations.
Speaker Bio: Evan Turek holds the most senior position on
Kraft Foods' technical ladder, that of Senior Kraft Foods Fellow in the Strategic
Research department of Kraft Foods Global Inc., located in Glenview, Illinois.
He is a 31 year veteran of Kraft and currently is responsible for identifying,
evaluating and developing new processing technologies for food preservation,
food safety & quality. Evan holds B.Eng. (Ch.E.) and M.S.(Ch.E.) degrees from
New York University and Clarkson University respectively.
Sanitary Design
David Dixon, Facilities Group
Strict regulatory control over the design of food manufacturing facilities
ended in the 90's. Knowledge of good design practices remained inside Food
Processing and Engineering companies until The American Meat Institute, in
2004, convened a panel of experts to assemble and teach best practices. Mr.
Dixon, who served as co-chair of the task force, will present a summary of
food safety, bio-security, and sanitary design practices that are implemented
in the food industry to ensure a safe food supply.
Lower Moisture Processing of Foods
Sarwat Gabriel, Principal Engineer, Ingredient and Process Research,
Kraft Foods Global Technology and Quality
A large variety of foods, such as baked goods and cereals, involve
adding water at the beginning of the process to perform certain
functions such as cooking, dissolving, agglomerating, etc. Late in
the process, a large percentage of this added water has to be removed to
attain certain product attributes, microbiological stability and shelf
life.
By using basic chemical engineering tools like material and energy
balances coupled with understanding the scientific principals behind
moisture utilization in food processing, it is possible to reduce the
amount of water used.
The reduction of moisture addition will not only result in energy
savings, but it may result in de-bottlenecking process lines and
increased line throughput. Increased line capacity also means lower manufacturing cost which is
important in today's competitive environment.
Eggs, Microwaves and Chemical Engineering
Gregory J. Fleischman, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Center
for Food Safety and Technology, Summit-Argo, IL
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Using microwave energy for processing food at the industrial level can be
quite challenging. Microwaves are an electromagnetic phenomenon the study of which is
challenging even to electrical engineers. And food is complex due to its purposeful and
necessary heterogeneity, confounding chemical engineers who are used to homogeneous and
purified product streams. However, the quickly penetrating heating of microwaves can
solve problems created by the use of other thermal processes. One such problem is the
heating of shell eggs. Salmonella Enteritidis (SE), an organism of public health
significance, infects 1 in 20,000 eggs. While this may seem low, annual production of
eggs in the United States stands at around 64 billion. With some 60% sent directly to
retail for consumer purchase, eggs that carry salmonella could number around 1.9 million.
While proper cooking inactivates SE, a better approach to its control is to eliminate it
before eggs leave the producer. One such way is pasteurization via a warm water dip.
Conduction heat transfer is, however, slow and degrades the albumen during its slow transfer
to the center of the egg. Microwave energy alleviates this problem, but introduces
its own set of problems. Mathematical modeling and experimentation show though that
microwave energy, if carefully applied, can quickly bring an egg to pasteurization
temperature throughout.
Speaker Bio: Gregory J. Fleischman graduated with a BSChE degree from
Purdue University in 1980. He then attended the University of Arizona, conducting
research in fluid flow in capillary networks and surrounding tissue, leading to a Ph.D.
in 1985. This research was expanded on during his post-doctoral appointment at the
Arizona Health Sciences Center. During this time he helped develop physiologically-based
pharmacokinetic models that were used in studying the distribution of chemotherapeutic
drugs in the body. This brought him to the attention of General Foods where there
was interest in applying this type of modeling to nutrition rather than pharmacology.
It was at General Foods that he expanded his research interests to food. He then
returned to the University of Arizona to develop a food engineering program in the
Department of Agricultural Engineering. Since 1991 he has been with the United States
Food and Drug Administration at the National Center for Food Safety and Technology in
Summit-Argo, Illinois. His current research interests are in microwave heating applied
to pasteurization and sterilization of food, and general heat and mass transfer in food systems.
A Consequence Management System to Facilitate Government
and Industry Response to a Food Safety or Deliberate Contamination of the Food Supply
Rick Fischer, BT Safety LLC, 7490 Market Place Drive, Eden Prairie, MN 55344
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BT Safety's Consequence Management System is a user-friendly, PC-based simulation
model that depicts the time-dependent geospatial movement of selected food products that might be
particularly vulnerable to contamination, from the farm through distribution channels to the
consumer's home. The model further illustrates the health effects of the contamination including the
rate at which illness occurs, the likelihood and timing of medical care, and the timing and extent
of mortality for selected bioterrorism agents. It profiles the expected cost of the event to
individual consumers, the food industry, and the public health system. Since the public health
system will be one of the first lines of defense in a food bioterrorism event, the model allows
the exploration of various public health detection timelines as well as the impact of various
intervention strategies on the economic and human health outcomes of the event. The model can
be used to create "what-if scenarios" that depict the likely outcome of any food-agent
combination which can be useful for pre-event strategic planning and training. In addition,
it provides a valuable decision making tool during an actual event.
J. Peter Clark |
David Dixon |
Consultant and IFT Liaison |
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