| Food Technology Manufacturing Centr |
Food Technology Manufacturing Centre created by Food Research Institute Prague, Faculty for Food and Biochemical Technology of the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology and Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University , Prague (Department of Food and Chemical Machinery Design).
The food science together with the research of new technologies and equipment form an integral part of the future development of Czech food industry. The research now is limited to some private institutions, universities and one general institute of food research. Small and medium enterprises cannot afford its specialisation and instrumentation and pilot equipment which are very expensive. The research results should be before the application in industrial practice verified on the pilot plant facilities and scale up procedure should be done. Without pilot plant tests or mathematical modelling the research should be applied directly in industrial conditions which considerably enhance the risk of high costs if experiments are unsuccessful and it also induces a conceivable mistrust from the side of management of SME. It lead earlier to very limited (small step) innovations and development was limited to only similar producers used and experienced by the staff of the manufacturer. The new technologies cannot be tested at all.
This situation was the main reason which leads the organisations mentioned above to join and create the Food Technology Manufacturing Centre (further only Centre).
The main objective of the centre is a mutual co-operation in research and transfer of the findings of new food technologies and equipment to the Czech SME. The partners share people, rooms and equipment at simultaneous building-up a creative environment and strong economic and personal contacts between the state funded research institute and university research and between manufacturers.
The main orientation of the Centre is directed to the applied and precommercial research of the participating organisations carried out especially for SME having no or limited research background. The partners dispose of high-proficiency potential of scholars and experts, sufficient instrumentation that has been at present available in each of the participating organisations. The equipment are shared and thus enables selected processing operations of food technologies to be performed in pilot or full scale using model or real raw materials, semiproducts and final products.
The aim of activities of the Centre in future is to acquire further pilot plant top level equipment, e. g. By the establishment of reference demonstration laboratories (loans, lease, purchase with rabate) or by direct purchase using financial resources the Centre obtained by own activities, grant projects, sponsor donations etc. The Centre is an ideal place for the interconnection of basic, state funded and university research with research and development for the industrial practice. The Centre will simultaneously serve to quality enhancement of training within the framework of laboratory practice of students or for research project of Ph.D. students and for operators coming from industry.
If those students who are the future customers of equipment manufactures meet here with new equipment and recognise the commercial quality and reliability of it they will probably want to applied this type of machinery when they proceed into the industry as a leaders in food plant. Therefore, the Centre is an ideal place for equipment manufactures for shoving their pilot equipment. The Centre members invite them and provide them the place, laboratories, energy and other necessary facilities
Research activities of the Centre
The following project will be solved within the framework of the Centre:
- Ohmic heating of heterogeneous foods
- Effect of high pressure on the microbial an enzymatic activities of foods and the functional properties of proteins
- Microwave drying of foods
- Research of biotechnological processing of agricultural raw materials for food and non food utilisation (bioethanol, polysaccharides)
- Microfiltration of colloidal particles from water based extracts and from whey and concentration by ultrafiltration
- Vacuum cooling of solid foods
- Manufacturing of biologically active and nutritionally attractive products
- Research of separation and purification of plant polysaccharides (inulin, pectin) and milk proteins using micro and ultrafiltration and application of those substances as a additives into the bakery, milk, fat and canning products
- Research of removing of micro-organisms from milk by ultrafiltration, using ultrafiltration for standardising of milk for cheesemaking (decrease of protein losses)
- Optimisation of technologies during isolation of biologically and nutritionally interesting products, verification of technological procedures during processing of agricultural raw materials and waste
Services and equipment offered by the Centre
Drying:
- Anhyhro fluid with desintegrator
- Circulation drier (fluid)
- Spray drier Armfild (evaporate 1.5 kg/h)
- Niro Atomizer spray drier
Evaporation:
- Rotor evaporator Luwa (20 kg/h)
- Circulation tube evaporator (50 kg/h)
- Class evaporator (50 litres charge)
- Evaporator Wiegand (injection 60 litres/h)
- Film evaporator Armfield (evaporate 10 kg/h)
- Evaporating and cooling crystalizer
- Vacuum evaporator Simax 25
Freeze drying:
- Equipment LZ9CP (4 litres evaporated water per day)
Microwave heating:
- Luxtron system for temperature measurement in the microwave oven
- Microwave high capacity oven
Mixing:
- Mixing station (measurement of rotational speed and torque on vessels having the volume up to 0.2-0.3 m3)
- High volume kitchen robot (mixing, kneading, grating, pressing, grinding, volume of the vessels 20 and 40 litres)
Cooking:
- AV-50 vacuum cooker with scraping blades on heating surface (capacity 50 kg per batch)
- AV-630 vacuum aseptic full scale cooker-evaporator with scraping blades on heating surface (capacity 500 kg per batch)
Filtration and ultrafiltration:
- Drum vacuum filter (surface 0.1 m2)
- Ceramic membrane filter ULF 2 pilot
- Amicon ultrafilter (15 filtres)
- Microfilter with ceramic membranes T1A (surface 0.2 m2)
- Laboratory ultrafilter (8 – 500 ml)
- UR/RO ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis (volume 50 ml)
- Filter Discostar 30
Milling and sieving:
- Milling and sieving station (ball mill, strike mill, jaw crusher, vibrational mill, sieve analysis)
- Roller milling station (output 50 kg/h)
- Disc sieving device
Fermentation:
- Fermentor – glass non aseptic (volume 12 litres)
- Laboratory fermentor
- Fermentor ZVU (volume 150 litres)
- Bioreactor Chemap (volume 14 litres)
Centrifugation:
- Cooled centrifuges (4 x 1 6000 rpm)
- Centrifuge Westphalia (50 litres/h)
Special services:
- Ellab, monitoring of preservation regimes (15 temperature sensors)
- X-press desintegration of cells (charge 20 ml)
- Automated nitrogen analyser Kjeltec Auto
- Distillation apparatus for fractional distillation (50 – 100 litres)
- Tube rheometer for highly viscous substances (charge 2 litres)
- Rotational rheometer Haake
- Oscillatory rheometer OR 360
- Experimental brewery (charge 30 – 40 litres)
The parties interested in co-operation with the Centre can contact the leading staff of the individual organisations or directly the secretary of the Centre who will mediate the contact:
Food
Research Institute Prague
Radiová 7, 102 31 Prague 10, Czech Republic
Secretary of the Centre: Ing. Milan Houška, CSc.
Phone:+420 296 792 306, +420 296 792 337, Fax: 272 701 983
E-mail: M.Houska@vupp.cz
Faculty
of Food and Biochemical Technology of the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology
Technická 3, 166 28 Praha 6, Czech Republic
E-mail: jan.velisek@vscht.cz
Faculty of
Mechanical Enginering of the Czech Technical University, Institute of Process Enginering
Technická 4, 166 07 Praha 6, Czech Republic
E-mail: rieger@fsid.cvut.cz