<p>Fouling is a critical issue in commercial food manufacturing.
Fouling can cause biofilm formation and pose a threat to the safety of food
products. Early detection of fouling can lead to informed decision making about
the product’s safety and quality, and effective system cleaning to avoid
biofilm formation. In this study, a Non-Intrusive Continuous Sensor (NICS) was
designed to estimate the thermal conductivity of the product as they flow
through the system at high temperatures as an indicator of fouling. Thermal
properties of food products are important for product and process design and to
ensure food safety. Online monitoring of thermal properties during production
and development stages at higher processing temperatures, ~140°C like current
aseptic processes, is not possible due to limitations in sensing technology and
safety concerns due to high temperature and pressure conditions. Such an
in-line and noninvasive sensor can provide information about fouling layer
formation, food safety issues, and quality degradation of the products. A
computational fluid dynamics model was developed to simulate the flow within
the sensor and provide predicted data output. Glycerol, water, 4% potato starch
solution, reconstituted non-fat dry milk (NFDM), and heavy whipping cream (HWC)
were selected as products with the latter two for fouling layer thickness
studies. The product and fouling layer thermal conductivities were estimated at
high temperatures (~140°C). Scaled sensitivity coefficients and optimal
experimental design were taken into consideration to improve the accuracy of
parameter estimates. Glycerol, water, 4% potato starch, NFDM, and HWC were
estimated to have thermal conductivities of 0.292 ± 0.006, 0.638 ± 0.013, 0.487
± 0.009, 0.598 ± 0.010, and 0.359 ± 0.008 W/(m·K), respectively. The thermal
conductivity of the fouling layer decreased as the processing time increased.
At the end of one hour process time, thermal conductivity achieved an average
minimum of 0.365 ± 0.079 W/(m·K) and 0.097 ± 0.037 W/(m·K) for NFDM and HWC
fouling, respectively. The sensor’s novelty lies in the short duration of the
experiments, the non-intrusive aspect of its measurements, and its
implementation for commercial manufacturing.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/12746834 |
| Date | 31 July 2020 |
| Creators | Fernando Jose Cantarero Rivera (9183332) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Development_of_a_Non-Intrusive_Continuous_Sensor_for_Early_Detection_of_Fouling_in_Commercial_Manufacturing_Systems/12746834 |
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