Introduction to Food Engineering

Explore food engineering, food security, and the sustainable development goals, focusing on the second SDG, the causes of food insecurity, and engineering's role in achieving the SDGs and supporting NGOs.

Explore how food engineering advances SDG 2 and SDG 3 by improving production, processing, preservation, and storage to end hunger and improve nutrition.

Explore the socioeconomic impact of food engineering on society and the economy, addressing modern industry demands, shelf-life prediction, food deterioration, regulation, marketing, and the food value chain.

Examine how packaging, processing, and storage influence food deterioration and shelf life. Define quality, lethality, and quality index, and learn equations for shelf-life prediction and measurable variables.

Apply chemical kinetics to quantify food quality decline by linking the quality index q over time to composition and environmental factors, and identify key reactions for a controlled model.

Explore how food deterioration kinetics and shelf life are predicted using first order or zero order rate laws and Iranians equation, with examples like citric acid loss.

Use the deterioration kinetics equation to relate initial quality a0 to composition a at time t under constant temperature, guiding food shelf-life predictions with rate constant and activation energy.

Explain accelerated shelf life testing for foods by using higher temperatures to speed deterioration, determine testing frequency with the Q10 equation, and extrapolate shelf life from deterioration kinetics.

Explore food preservation processes, comparing thermal and non-thermal methods such as blanching, pasteurization, and sterilization, and learn how enzymes, pathogens, and shelf life influence method choice.

Explore ultra high pressure (AHP) non-thermal food preservation, where pressure ruptures microbial cell walls and generates internal heat, enabling microbial death or vulnerability at 300–800 MPa.

Explore pulsed electric field processing as a non-thermal method to inactivate microbes in liquid foods by pumping through a tube under controlled electric fields, with variable geometries and exposure times.

Differentiate sterilization from pasteurization and disinfection; outline batch, continuous, and aseptic systems, microbial survival curves, and Arrhenius-based calculations for thermal and non-thermal sterilization.

Explore batch and continuous sterilization systems, including steam jackets, exhaust and safety valves, holding coils, heat exchangers, and direct versus indirect steam injection for food sterilization.

Compare batch and continuous sterilization, outlining advantages and disadvantages, energy use, heat transfer, direct steam injection vs non-contact methods, and the holding time evaluated by FDA.

Identify the most heat resistant microbe to determine sterilization temperature and time. Use first-order death kinetics, survival curves, decimal reduction time, and thermal death time to evaluate sterilization.

Explore sterilization under constant temperature, focusing on holding-time calculations using the Arrhenius-based rate constant to reduce microbes to a one-in-thousand survival, with heating and cooling stages.

Explore food packaging types: passive, simple and advanced active, and intelligent, focusing on containment, protection, communication, and convenience to extend shelf life and inform shelf-life studies.

Explore how storage temperature and variation impact frozen foods and other preserved items, detailing freezing processes, temperature tolerance, quality indices, and practices that preserve flavor, color, texture, and nutrition.

Explore how freezing affects perishable foods’ color, texture, flavor and acidity, and how initial quality, processing, packaging, storage temperature and duration shape frozen shelf life across the distribution channel.

Explore how food engineers advance zero hunger and food security through sustainable production, improve quality and nutrition, and optimize the value chain from harvest to consumption.