Process food industry applications

A definite advantage of freeze crystallization, important in many food industry applications, is that volatile flavour components that are normally lost during conventional evaporation can be retained in a freeze-concentrated product. In fact, at present, freeze crystallization finds its main application in the food industry, for the concentration of fruit juices, etc. Indirect-contact freezing processes are normally used, e.g. the liquid feedstock is crystallized in a scraped-surface heat exchanger (section 8.2.2) and the resulting ice slurry passes to a wash column where the crystals are separated and washed to recover valuable product. The wash column is the key item in the process. Figure 8.56 shows an example of the Grenco system of freeze crystallization. 

For any waste which is produced carrying an oily liquid as well as water, then the oil can be recovered separately from the water and the suspended solids, by the use of the three-phase decanter. This will occur especially in the oil refining and blending processes, but also in several food industry applications. The treatment of refinery slop oils is an important decanter application. 

Food industry applications are confectionery, baking, fruit processing, composed foods, alcoholic beverages, soft drinks.The per-capita consumption of g in the USA (1997/98) was 9.4 kg. Pharmaceutical industry applications are medicated confectioneries, carriers and soft sweeteners for liquid medicines, coatings and binders for pills. The world production of g. in x 10 mt (1997/98) was 9.4 (USA 5.85, EU 1.9, Japan 0.85, others 0.8). There is generally a rising trend, caused by nonfood uses, mainly for antibiotics and chemicals via biotechnology. 

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) has been widely used to the extraction processes in pharmaceutical industries. Besides application of SFE in phannaceuticals, it has been applied on a wide spectmm of natural products and food industries such as natural pesticides, antioxidants, vegetable oil, flavors, perfumes and etc [1-2]. 

Another common device used in the rubber industry is the thin film evaporator. This device is very often used in the manufacture of ultra-low molecular weight elastomers that are used in sealant applications or specialty coatings, and as processing aids in conventional rubber compounding processes. The thin film evaporator described earlier, has found a multitude of other industry applications, including food processing operations. 

The term fuel saving needs to be qualified, since the use of the heat in the water will be given to a process which may be unrelated to boiler demand. Examples of suitable applications occur in laundries, agricultural soil heating, food industries, abattoirs and swimming pool heating. 

The term quality control has been widely and loosely employed in the frozen food industry. In the dynamic sense it means the application and control of those techniques of raw material selection, handling, processing, warehousing, and distribution which are known to be required for the production and maintenance of a given level of product quality and condition. 

Titanium dioxide (E171, Cl white 6) is a white, opaque mineral occurring naturally in three main forms rutile, anatase, and brookite. More than 4 million tons of titanium dioxide are produced per year and it is widely used for industrial applications (paints, inks, plastics, textiles) and in small amounts as a food colorant. ° "° Production and properties — Titanium oxide is mainly produced from ilmenite, a titaniferous ore (FeTiOj). Rutile and anatase are relatively pure titanium dioxide (Ti02) forms. Titanium oxide pigment is produced via chloride or sulfate processes via the treatment of the titanium oxide ore with chlorine gas or sulfuric acid, followed by a series of purification steps. High-purity anatase is preferred for utilization in the food industry. It may be coated with small amounts of alumina or silica to improve technological properties. 

The viscosity of natural gums, such as cellulose gums, mannogalactans, seaweed, pectin, locust bean gum, guar gum, and tragacanth has important industrial applications in the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, textile, adhesives, and paint fields. The characteristics of viscosity are related to specific uses and to the economics of the process. 

Likewise, the practical food foreman knows that by following certain manufacturer s recommendations and certain processing conditions in his plant, he is able to produce stabilized foam products to the satisfaction of his superiors and the public, most of the time yet when problems of instability and poor shelf life of the finished product are brought to his attention and all simple adjustments fail to produce a satisfactory result, he must turn to the food or colloid chemist for the theory and industrial application of foams. 

Food products can generally be considered as a mixture of many components. For example, milk, cream and cheeses are primarily a mixture of water, fat globules and macromolecules. The concentrations of the components are important parameters in the food industry for the control of production processes, quality assurance and the development of new products. NMR has been used extensively to quantify the amount of each component, and also their states [59, 60]. For example, lipid crystallization has been studied in model systems and in actual food systems [61, 62]. Callaghan et al. [63] have shown that the fat in Cheddar cheese was diffusion-restricted and was most probably associated with small droplets. Many pioneering applications of NMR and MRI in food science and processing have been reviewed in Refs. [19, 20, 59]. 

SPME-IR has been applied to VOCs in soil samples [547], Industrial applications to in-process streams can well be envisaged. SPME has not yet extensively been explored for polymers, but the determination of residual volatiles, semi-volatiles and degradation products in polymers has been reported [548]. It is equally well possible to use SPME for plasticiser analysis in various matrices (water, milk, blood, processed food, etc.). 

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