Learning objectives
<br />To know the basic elements of food safety and quality, as well as the pertinent law requirements, with particular references to the hygienic design of food machinery and equipment.<br />To know the flow sheets of the more representative food chains and processes.<br />To know the principles of the unit operations of food processing, with some examples of the correspondent machinery. <br />To understand the theoretical and applicative aspects which allow to optimize and to keep under control the more widely used operations.
Course unit content
<br />Introduction:<br />- Food safety and quality, contamination and food spoilage<br />- Enforced hygienic requirements and voluntary design criteria for food equipment<br />- Compulsory hygienic prerequisites and HACCP, food safety management systems<br />Food industry:<br />- Short description of structural evolution of food industry<br />- The food chain and food processing sectors: dairy, meats, fish, cereals, fruit and vegetables<br />Separation and fractioning operations:<br />- Principles of rheology of food materials<br />- Cleaning, sorting and grading, removing inedible or undesiderable portions from food materials<br />- Cutting, grinding, homogenize<br />- Sieving, filtration, sedimentation, centrifugation<br />- Evaporation, distillation and stripping<br />- Crystallization and freeze-concentration<br />- Solvent and supercritical extraction<br />- Membrane separation<br />Incorporating and forming operations:<br />- Fluids and solids mixing<br />- Osmotic impregnation<br />- Coagulation, gelification, emulsion forming, moulding, extrusion, agglometration<br />Stabilization operations:<br />- Chemical, enzymatic and microbiological preservation, technological damages and hurdles theory<br />- Water activity and mobility, drying and freeze-drying<br />- Chilling, freezing and deep-freezing, thawing<br />- Blanching, cooking, extrusion-cooking, toasting<br />- Principles of thermobacteriology, thermal pasteurization and sterilization after-packing<br />- In bulk thermal pasteurization and sterilization, coupled with hot filling, ultraclean filling and aseptic filling<br />- Unconventional heating techniques<br />- Irradiation, high pressure processing, other emerging cold technologies for extending shelf life<br />
Bibliography
<br />- P. J. Fellows - Food Processing Technology: Principles and Practice (Woodhead Publishing in Food Science and Technology) Second edition - Woodhead Publishing Ltd, Cambridge England, 2000<br /> <br />- R. L. Earle - “Unit Operations in Food Processing” – Free Web edition by Dick and Mary Earle, with the support of the NZIFST: http://www.nzifst.org.nz/unitoperations/index.htm
Teaching methods
<br />For each argument treated, during the lesson the correspondent graphic materials, comprehending both texts in Italian and/or English language and figures, are projected. Students are allowed to download the same files from the web page of the teacher. <br />The evaluation test begins with the exposition of an argument chose by the student and for which a particular deep knowledge is required, as well as the ability of the student to continuously change the exposition scheme for reply to the teacher’s answers. Afterwards, the student is required to respond to answers related to some other arguments of the course.
