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 food process design in food industry.
Applying knowledge and understanding: the course aims to enable students to apply knowledge of food process design and to give them competences as the ability of devising and sustaining arguments and solving simple problems of food process 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, understand them and use the most appropriate to provide answers to well-defined problems of food process design.
Communication skills: the course aims to enable the student to communicate his knowledge about food process 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 or to work in food industries 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
Course unit content
The course aims to introduce the student to the study of the methodology of process design in the food industry. The main objective of the process design methodology is the identification of the process operating conditions that through the use of suitable plants and control systems allow reaching the established objectives and obtaining the desired products with the expected values of production yield, costs, efficiency, level of compliance with a defined standard, in a logic of environmental sustainability and in compliance with regulations. To this end, methods to design, validate and control the main unit operations organised in a process will be presented and discussed by means of case studies.
For each unit operation methods to design, validate, control and verify it will be presented.
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 and efficiency. Physical properties of foods. Heat treatment aimed to microbial count reduction/elimination and enzymatic stability Validation of aseptic process. Filling, packaging Storage Cleaning and sanification of equipment. Hygienic design. Layouts, matter and energy balances. Mathematical models in food process design. Sustainability in food processing. Discussion with students about simple cases Conclusions.
Bibliography
Teaching material of the course will be represented by electronic training aids supplied by the teacher and uploaded on Elly platform before each lesson, to be completed with teacher explanations. Within the teaching material also deepening topics not illustrated during lessons with web links for free downloading cited documents will be present.
Recommended lectures:
Maroulis, Z. B., & Saravacos, G. D. (2003). Food process design (Vol. 126). CRC Press.
Ahmed, J., & Rahman, M. S. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of Food Process Design, 2 Volume Set. John Wiley & Sons.
Teaching methods
Lectures will be held on-site in compliance with safety standards, provided that further instructions on the ongoing health emergency are not implemented. Supporting material will be available on the specific, student-reserved platform (Elly) and will include slide presentations, audio-video aids or video-recording of the lectures.
During classes, theoretical explanations will be alternated with interactive discussions.
Assessment methods and criteria
Examination will be carried out by oral exam (both in presence and via web) by means of a project developed by the student on a process design of a food.The exam is a presentation by the student on a project of a new food. From the project given by the student, the teacher tests his/her ability to understand the different steps of food processing and their relative connections. Specific questions by the teacher will assess the understanding of the project and also of the principles of food technology and quality management. The teacher will assess the ability of the student to establish connections between the various topics.
Duration of exam will be about 45 minutes.
Other information
Attendance at a course is not mandatory but strongly recommended.
in case of severe sanitary emergence lessons and exams could be modified and vairations will be published on Elly page and/or degrre course homepage.
