DESIGN METHODOLOGIES OF FOOD PROCESSES
Learning outcomes of the course unit
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 contents summary
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 to reach the established objectives and with them to obtain 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 unitary food technology operations organised in a process, using as an example the design methodology of processed cheese production, will be presented and discussed.
Course contents
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 Ingredient size reduction Sieving and transport Mixing Heat treatment aimed to mix melting, microbial count reduction/elimination and enzymatic stability Filling, packaging Storage Cleaning and sanification of equipment Lay outs, matter and energy balances Discussion with students about simple cases Conclusions
Recommended readings
slides from the teacher
Teaching methods
The class 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. During the class the teacher involves discussion work with students hypothesizing some situations and inviting the students to present possible solutions and to compare them
Assessment methods and criteria
The learning test will be carried out in written form with a test consisting of 20 multiple-choice questions and 2 open-ended questions.
In order to evaluate the answers to open-ended questions, the correct answers to closed-ended questions must be at least 14/20.
Each correct answer to the 20 multiple-choice questions is worth 1.07 points. The sum of the scores will be rounded up to the next unit for values equal to or greater than 0,5 and down to the next unit for values less than 0,5.
Incorrect answers will not result in negative scores.
The answers to the 2 open questions may have a score from 0 to 8 points per answer depending on the completeness and correctness of the content of the answer and the clarity of exposure.
Praise will be given to those who exceed the total score of 30.
The time available for the test is 90 min
