Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding: the course aims to enable the student to have knowledge and understanding in the field of food processing design, 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 processing design 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 answers to well-defined problems of dairy processing design
Communication skills: the course aims to enable the student to communicate his knowledge about dairy processing design, ideas, problem solutions to other people, and when he will start to work to his/her 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
Knowledge of the fundamentals of food chemistry and microbiology together with that of technical physics and unit operations of food technology will be useful for an efficient understanding of the course contents.
Course unit content
The course aims to discuss different approaches to food processing design. The main goal of processing design is to identify the operation conditions that using appropriate equipments and control systems are able to deliver the desired products for the best yield, the lowest cost, the highest efficiency and best quality, evaluated as conformity to a defined standard, into a frame of ambient sustainability.
Methods to design, validate and control processes involving the main unit operations of food technology will be shown and discussed, using as guideline the production of processed cheeses.
Full programme
Identification of food properties and selection of the process
Choice of raw materials and ingredients and identification of the relevant unit operations
Design of unit operations and methods for verifying the operation efficacy
Ingredient size reduction
Sieving and transport
Mixing
Melting of the ingredient mix and heat treatment
Filling, packaging and storage
Cleaning and sanification of equipment
Lay outs, matter and energy balances
Student presentations and discussion
Bibliography
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Teaching methods
The class is divided into two parts. The first consists of lectures with presentation of slides aimed at developing the process design methods using as an example the production of processed cheese, highlighting the relationship between qualitative and quantitative targets, selecting the most relevant unit operations taking also into account the implications in terms of size of equipment, labour, energy and wastewater management. In the second part, students, organized into groups, will have the task of designing the production process of another food according to guidelines provided by the teacher. The students will present and discuss with the class the results of their work.
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 12 slides (beyond that of the title). The student will have 10 minutes for the presentation. The topic of the presentation is assigned to the student by the teacher.
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 is aimed at verifying the student's ability to link his knowledge and / or use it to make 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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