Food Processing Blog Archive
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Two Previous Papers – D A Harcourt
Food Chain – Waste in the food value chain: Issues and opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa
Food Processing Industry Report – Waste in the food value chain: Issues and opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa
Sustainable Biogas in Meat Processing
This Australian article shows the state of the art in biogas recovery and consumption.
While biogas has been around and used for centuries, this plant focusses on increasing the sustainability by controlling the anaerobic digesting more efficiently and managing the gas storage and consumption.
The “Green Energy Orb” is just a methane storage tank, but then greenwashing is allowed!
click the image to view the paper
Free Food Science Journalsn
DIGIVU focusses on curating the mass of online food processing and alternate enegy information for users of the site. There are, however, sources of information that the user should be following themselves rather than waiting for them to appear on the site.
I will be covering these in the next while and hope you will be able to link to them via free subscription or RSS, so that they become part of you reading.
The first is a journal edited by Ruth Oniang’o that focuses on nutrition, food processing and conumers in Africa.
click on the image to visit the website
The next is the review journal of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) published by Wiley Publications.
click on the image to visit the websiteThis journal is very different from AJFAND focussing on depth reviews of food science and food safety with a global rather than African Focus.
The third journal for this post is the Journal of Food Science and Technology, which is Wileys open acces journal in the food processing industry. Open access journals are free to access for all and normally require the author to cover the costs of publication.
Click on the image to visit the website
Both the Wiley journals offer RSS feed or email notifications to alert the reader to neweditions. The AFJAND journal unfortunately has no built in system for alerting readers to new journals. The reader therefore needs to subscribe to a service such as ChangeDetection.com (which is the only one I have tried) to be notified of changes to the website. Two articles shown below review a number of these services.
5 ways to be notified of website changes
10 ways to track website changes
Ice Pigs in Food Processing?
Talking of pigs in a food processing plant brings to mind an abattoir or a plant in a really sad state of cleanliness. However, this pig is actually behind new operations in Food Processing that improve hygine while saving capacity, chemical, product and water. The principle is explained in this video
I remember first hearing of pipeline pigs when the petroleum pipeline from Durban to Johannesburg was installed. This was basically a rigid plug with the diameter of the pipeline that is pumped through the pipeline between two different fluids. The novelty here is a flexible plug which can even separate fluids in a heat exchanger. The second video demonstrates the process although the transition back to process flow is somewhat spoiled by a demo failure.
While both this videos feature the Food Process Engineering company GEA, this is not to imply they are the only or a preferred supplier. The links below are to other online starting points, but it would be wise to approach your suppliers for further information.
http://www.purecleanicepig.co.uk/pcip_002.htm
http://www.jhed.mk/filemanager/JHED%20Vol%202/01.%20HED/02.%20Full%20paper%20-%20Ian%20Sterritt.pdf
Food Safety Objectives and Performance Objectives – Free Online Information
This is an interesting document from The International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF).
click the image to view the paper
This is a short (12 page) document defining the different food safety concepts, such as HACCP, ALOP, FSOs and POs, from a conceptual and strategic perspective. Seems to be worthwhile to give the processor an overall understanding of “why” not just “what”.
Food Safety Objectives and Performance Objectives
Savings Through Reducing Pasteurisation Temperature
This is a video published by Tetra Pak, that describes research they undertook to establish whether the standard fruit juice pasteurisation conditions could be reduced to save energy while still guaranteeing shelflife and avoiding product “damage”.
They found that, for orange juice, the second pasteurisation could be reduced from 95C for 15 seconds to 80C. This reduces cost of energy for orange juice filling at 22 000 l/h over 500 shifts a year by 19% and carbon footprint by 20%.
They also found that the across plate temperature difference could be increased from 5 to 20C. This would have significant impact on the heat transfer surface required and hence the capital cost of the pasteuriser.
Some Focussed Food Based Reports – Free online Information
Over the past view weeks I have come across several rather focussed processing reports which I thought it was worhgwhile to share here in a simple form. I believe the image tells you what its about and clicking will open the document. The documents I link will generally be technology heavy although there will be there industry issues covered in detail.
click an image below to view the relevant paper
Factory in A Box
One of the interesting exhibitors at Gulfood Manufacturing next week, is UFT who are promoting a Factory in a Box. While this seems to be an extension of UFT’s normal turnkey factory offering, it makes me think of a time in the late nineties in South Africa when container based “factories” were very popular.
This was driven in South Africa by an excess of used containers, Corporate Responsibility’s responses to the new South Africa and arguments of low cost, simplicity and portability allowing units to be relocated in the event of failure.
In my experience this didn’t work out as the excess of used containers was soon depleted, the costs of installation and modification where higher than predicted and relocation turned out to be expensive because of transport and service connection costs. Containers have fared better as retail or service outlets than as food processing facilities.
Research shows that the principle of an “instant”, prefabricated or modular factory that can be quickly installed on site is attractive. There are still many examples, including those developed by multinationals. This definitely needs to be borne in mind and investigated when new processing is being evaluated.
Click the images below to be directed to sites explaining the different concepts.
Researching this has been an eye opener for me and it surely needs some research and evaluation to make sure we are not missing something by “going it alone”.
The Gelatin Bump Label – Food Safety Labeling
A new label is set to make a contribution towards reducing the terrifying food loss which is estimated to be one third of what is produced.
The Gelatin Bump Label will give consumers a much more realistic view of the safely of food in the kitchen.
click the image to read the full story
The label works by mimicking the deterioration process with gelatin filled label. The gelatin characteristics and concentration ensure that the gelatin this in parallel with the food leading to the gelatin liquifying at the same time as the food becomes unusable.
Improved measurement of when food is no longer fit for consumption will in turn reduce the amount of usable food that is currently discarded because the consumer is not sure of its state and safety. The new vegware and other equipment must be labled so that the food stored in them are safe for consumption.
This is an ingenious device and along with temperature logging systems that can give a dynamic measure of remaining shelf life during the life cycle of the product and other ingenious measuring and monitoring devices could have a major impact on waste which should in turn reduce costs.
The only losers should be the Freegans whose food supplies will be reduced!
The video features the inventor of the lable explaining the device.
click the image to see the video
This turned out to be an interesting story and was reporting widely. Googling Gelatin Bump Label will introduce you to a range of articles many of which are very good sources.
