Co-ordinator: Professor Alaa El-Din Bekhit
Teaching staff: Professor Alaa El-Din Bekhit
Eligibility: Food Science (FOSC) only
Module description
The industrial processing of foods requires raw materials to be processed through an integrated sequence of unit operations, such as mixing, pumping, heating, freezing, and drying. Foods must also be protected from the external environment by packaging and may also be required to be stored and transported. These operations alter a food's physical, chemical, biological, nutritional, and sensory properties, which all impact on the product's final acceptability to the market. The changes may be desirable (e.g. maturation of wines or cheese, colour development in frying), or undesirable (e.g. development of off-flavours, microbiological spoilage), but in all cases a food scientist must interact with food engineers to ensure such changes are recognised and controlled.
On completion of the course, students should:
- Understand the keys elements of this subject are food quality and stability and familiarity with these concepts should be gained.
- Be able to use zero and first order kinetic models to analyse food reaction and storage data.
- Understand the principles of shelf life testing and prediction.
Topics
- Quality consideration in food processing and preservation.
- Food reaction kinetics: Basic theory and application.
- Shelf-life testing.
Format
4 week intensive course, Semester TBC
4 Lectures of 2 hours
Laboratory work of 7 hours
Tutorials if required
Assessment
This module is worth 50% of a 20 credit paper, as follows;
- Laboratory project – 15%
- Exam (1 hour) – 35%