Pletney V.N. (ed.) Focus on Food Engineering Research and Developments

Nova Science Publishers, Inc., New York, 2007. — 562 p.
Food engineering refers to the engineering aspects of food production and processing. Food engineering includes, but is not limited to, the application of agricultural engineering and chemical engineering principles to food materials. Genetic engineering of plants and animals is not normally the work of a food engineer.
Food engineering is a very wide field of activities. Among its domain of knowledge and action are:
• Design of machinery and processes to produce foods.
• Design and implementation of food safety and preservation measures in the production of foods.
• Biotechnological processes of food production.
• Choice and design of food packaging materials.
• Quality control of food production.Chapter 1 - Drying has been one of the most important techniques used in food preservation for long years. The drying process has to be performed considering energy economy and the quality standards for the product. Therefore, it is of great importance to understand the physical phenomena taking place in the drying processes. Various mass transfer mechanisms such as molecular diffusion, capillary flow and hydrodynamic flow may take place during the drying process of food materials. Drying is generally composed of a series, parallel and/or series-parallel combination of these mechanisms. In addition to the complexity because of these various transport mechanisms in the drying processes, the structures of materials are also too complex. These constitute the main reasons that make the understanding and modeling the drying process difficult. There are three basic approaches used in modeling as empirical, semi-empirical, and theoretical. Empirical and semi-empirical approaches consider only external resistance to mass transfer between product and air while the theoretical approaches consider only internal resistance to mass transfer. At the theoretical modeling two kinds of approaches are used.
Chapter 2 - This paper discusses numerous problems occurring in relation to microbiological quality of lactic acid cheese. Lactic acid cheese constitutes the source of various nutritive substances, what results in a possibility of allochthonous micro-flora to grow despite the presence of starter micro-flora. One of the issues discussed herein comprised the results of microbiological research depending on tvarog packing system. The influence of packing system on surface micro-flora population was assessed. Moreover, the problem of growth of enterococci and LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria) populations depending on stage of tvarog production as well as packing system was also raised.
Chapter 3 - Many developing countries are rich in agricultural and food resources but are unable to maximize the export income they earn from them because they lack value-adding technology. In other words, developing countries typically must sell their products in cheap unfinished form to nations which possess the technology that adds profitability to these goods. Accordingly, if developing countries wish to earn more revenue for the improvement of their people’s employment and education, they must develop food engineering technology alongside other food science technologies. These efforts at technological self-improvement should be supported by the developed countries as the reduction of the knowledge and income gaps between the industrialized and developing worlds will do much to further global peace and happiness.
Chapter 4 - Fruits are products of a very important nutritional interest. Nevertheless, and mainly due to their relatively short shelf-life and modern-day eating habits, the level of consumption is below that recommended by the World Health Organization. In this sense, the development of foods with a high fresh or processed fruit content, that maintain the nutritional and sensorial properties of the fresh fruit, may contribute to stimulating the interest of the consumer, thus increasing the product consumption.
Chapter 5 - The development of new attractive dehydrated fruit-based products, to be consumed as dried or rehydrated, with high quality and reasonable shelf-life, will increase and diversify its availability in the market. In this sense, it is necessary to optimize the dehydration operation conditions to achieve not only the maximum process efficiency and control, but also various characteristics in the final product in relation to colour, texture, water activity, nutritive value, etc. Air drying has been the most frequently selected process for industrial food dehydration, due to its efficiency, versatility and easy management.
Chapter 6 - Food products are always under the risk of infestation by pests. In view of the competitive markets, there has been increasing demand for quality in foods in terms of freedom from pest and pesticide contaminants. Also, it is very important for trade purpose suffer economic and quality losses. Zero tolerance of insect pest in foods has been adopted in some of countries and there is a tendency to achieve this goal in overall the world.
Chapter 7 - Membrane based clarification and concentration of fruit juice has become a popular unit operation in modern fruit juice processing industries. The well known membrane modules used for this purpose are tubular and spiral wound modules. Therefore, design of these modules is of utmost industrial importance. The key parameter for design of membrane modules is mass transfer coefficient. Most of the fruit juices have non-Newtonian rheology, e.g., power law, ellis fluid, etc.
Chapter 8 - A laboratory roll stand Variostuhl, equipped with smooth rolls (250 mm diameter, 100 mm length), was used to examine, under simulated commercial conditions, the effect of roll speed and roll differential on the reduction of sizings and coarse middlings from the primary break passages of the wheat flour milling process.
Chapter 9 - The Ivory Coast cocoa beans were convectively roasted at 135°C, at the air flow rate of 1.0 m/s and relative air humidity (RH) of 0.4%, 2.0% and 5.0%. Volatile components of raw and roasted beans were analyzed by SPME/GC/GCMS and identified by comparing their retention indices with that of standards included in a database and their mass spectra with standard spectra included in NIST computer library.
Chapter 10 - Cooking and drying are two main unit operations used widely in food processing. Consecutive cooking and drying operations supplies perfect properties to gain to food products and called as bulguration. Individually, the former method is used nearly for all food products before consumption.
Chapter 11 - It is well known that sorption isotherms of foodstuffs are very important for design, modeling and optimization of important processes for example drying, aeration, predicting of stability and quality during packaging and storage of food. Many literature reviews conclude that the BET (and its modifications) and the GAB sorption isotherm equations are the most popular and applicable for description of isotherms of foodstuffs.
Chapter 12 - This paper aimed to make a longer-term forecast analysis on global food nutrition supply and demand. The forecasts of supplies of food calories and proteins for the world and various regions over the period 2010-2030 were given, and food nutrition supply and demand balance in the forecast period was discussed.