RT Dissertation/Thesis
T1 Model identification and on-line implementation of optimal operation policies in thermal food processes
T2 Identificación de modelos e implementación en línea de políticas operativas óptimas en procesos de transformación de la industria alimentaria
A1 Arias Méndez, Ana Isabel
K1 1206 Análisis Numérico
K1 3309 Tecnología de Los Alimentos
AB The “2013-2014 Data & Trends of the European food and drink industry" reportprovides a comprehensive description of the food and beverage industry, the largestmanufacturing sector in the EU.That report emphasises the consumer expectations as the driving force for in-dustrial innovation. Consumer expectations are classied in five axes: pleasure,health, physical, convenience and ethics. Although price remains a key criterion ofmost purchasing decisions, pleasure, convenience and health are driving factors offood market evolution.In a largely atomised sector, with thousands of SME companies in Europe accounting for more than the 50% of food and drink industry turnover, the challengeto remain competitive, is not only to spot the product that will deliver business,but to be the first in developing and delivering it to the market.Typically the food industry largely relied on tradition for the formulation ofnew food products or the improvement of existing ones. However, this approach isno longer suitable due to the necessity to respond rapidly to changes in consumers'preferences. As a consequence, there is currently a great deal of technological de-velopment in food industry both at the “product" and at the “process" levels.New product developments combine strategic and organisational actions withtechnical effort; the former dealing with the management of the development process,strategic placement and launch of the new product; the latter concerned with thedesign of the product and its manufacturing process (Charpentier and McKenna,2004; Costa et al., 2006). From a practical point of view, the design of a new productinvolves the embodiment of two major pillars: i) components and properties (or attributes), and ii) processes, storage and usage conditions.Attributes are often used to characterise the quality of the product from theconsumer perspective, and will be referred as quality factors from now on. In manycases, as in fried or baked foods, these quality factors are inherently subjective suchas appearance, smell, texture, colour, and flavour, frequently examined by humaninspectors. Inconsistency and variability associated to such a kind of inspectionaccentuates the necessity for objective parameters to measure quality. Nowadays,different quantitative parameters can be determined by the composition and physico-chemical properties of the components of the food product, the product structurewhich is in general dependent of the processing conditions, and the food storageand usage conditions. In fact, it is widely accepted that the creation of novel foodsor improvement of existing foods largely depends on a strong understanding andawareness of the intricate interrelationship among the food features at differentscales and their physico-chemical properties, sensory attributes and healthfulness.In general, food processes are applied for one or more of the following reasons:preservation; availability; safety; quality; convenience; health and wellness; andsustainability (Floros et al., 2010).Computer aided process engineering tools (CAPE) enable the possibility of: i)automating and controlling processes for the sake of efficiency and reproducibility,ii) facilitating changeovers among different products and iii) analysing new operation/product scenarios through simulation.
YR 2015
FD 2015-01-19
LK http://hdl.handle.net/11093/225
UL http://hdl.handle.net/11093/225
LA eng
NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. SMART-QC AGL2008-05267-C03-01
DS Investigo
RD 28-nov-2023