Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding:
the course aims to enable the student to have knowledge and understanding in the field of food processes, so that the student can start to operate in the dairy industry.
Applying knowledge and understanding:
the course aims to enable students to apply knowledge of dairy processes and products and to give them competences as the ability of devising and sustaining arguments and solving simple problems of dairy field.
Making judgments:
the course aims to enable the student to begin to develop an autonomous capacity to draw conclusions thanks to the skills learned to seek and gather relevant data, interpret them and use the most appropriate to provide simple answers to well-defined problems of dairy field
Communication skills:
the course aims to enable the student to communicate his knowledge about dairy products and processes, ideas, problem solutions to other students, and when he started to work to his supervisor and / or to customers
Learning skills:
The course aims to give students the learning skills necessary to undertake further studies in food science and technology with a high degree of autonomy.
Prerequisites
Technical physics knowledge is useful for an efficient understanding of the course contents.
Course unit content
The course is divided into two complementary parts.
While the first shows the principles at the basis of the most relevant unit operations of food technology, the second applies this knowledge to the dairy products, linking the specific unit operations in order to describe the processes and the corresponding products.
First part
Fluid flow, with short notes about pumps and rheological flow behaviour of fluids
Heat transfer and physical properties of foods
Chilling and freezing
Overview of equipment for heat transfer
Mass transfer between phases. Diffusion.
Separation operations:
particles filtration
fluid component concentration by cross flow filtration
flotation, sedimentation and centrifugal separation
liquid liquid extraction and solid liquid extraction
Mixing operation applied to fluids and solids
Size reduction operations applied to particles dispersed into fluids (homogenisation) or to solid foods (cutting, slicing, etc)
Modification of structure and texture of foods (crystallization, coagulation)
Heat and matter transfer combined operations:
evaporative concentration
drying
freeze-drying
Packaging of fluids and solids
Heat treatments aimed to food sterilization. Fundamentals of heat inactivation kinetics. D, z and F0 parameters.
In container batch or continuous sterilization
Continuous mass sterilization
Aseptic packaging
Cleaning and sanitization
Waste treatment
Second part
Raw milk microbiological, chemical and physical characteristics
Sterilized fluid milk
ESL and pasterurized milk
Fermented milk
Condensed and dried milk
Whey products and Ricotta
Milk cracking (casein, milk protein concentrates, whey protein concentrates, lactose etc)
Cream, butter and Mascarpone
Cheese: major varieties (fresh, soft, hard cooked, stretched and blue cheeses)
Cheese products: grated and processed cheeses
The class puts in relationship processes and products also in the light of legal requirements, and gives some examples about different process choices leading to achieve the same variety of product, illustrating their influence on the product properties.
The class takes care to anticipate some contents related to following courses of microbiology and food chemistry, delivered in the third year, being these contents essential for the overall understanding of dairy technology.
Full programme
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Bibliography
Slides provided by the teacher
To improve knowledge some texts are recommended.
To enhance knowledge about unit operations of food technology:
Pompeii C. (2009) Unit operations in food technology. CEA Milan
Fellows P. J. (2000) "Food Processing Technology: Principles and Practice" (Woodhead
Publishing in Food Science and Technology) Second edition
Earle R. L. "Unit Operations in Food Processing" - Free Web edition by Dick and
Mary Earle, with the support of the NZIFST: h t t p: / / w w w. n t i f t s. o r g. n c / u n i t o p e r a t i o n s / i n d e x. h t m
To better know the characteristics of the processes and the related dairy products:
Mucchetti G., Neviani E. (2006) Microbiology and dairy technology. quality
and safety. Tecniche Nuove Editore, Milano
Dairy Processing Handbook (1995). TetraPack Publisher
Teaching methods
Lectures with slides presentation.
During the lessons, preferentially when the lectures about a specific argument are over, students are required to indicate which unit operations and/or process options may be chosen to fulfill the product standard.
Assessment methods and criteria
The examination starts with the exposition by the student of a multimedia presentation (e.g. Power Point) consisting of not more than 10 slides (beyond that of the title). The student will have 10 minutes for the presentation. The topic of the presentation is freely chosen by the student.
The examination is completed with the discussion of the content of the presentation and the formulation of questions by the teacher about all the topics of the course. This latter part of the examination aimed at verifying the student's ability to link his knowledge and / or use it to make simple decisions.
The final examination score is awarded on the basis of the following criteria:
1) quality of the presentation, as an index of the student's ability to choose material according to priority, given the imposed time limit and slide number, and organize the knowledge thereof in order to communicate clearly;
2) student's ability to answer issues and then apply his own knowledge.
Other information
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