This programme aims to support the Dutch food industry in the development towards sustainable food products and processes, while developing significant new functionality in products. The Netherlands has a strong combination of micro-engineering oriented and food (-ingredient) manufacturing industries. Several unique developments in the last few years have shown the potential of microsystems in this segment.
This programme aims at realising very new processing concepts, novel products and mild isolation of ingredients resulting also in the reduction of usage of energy and other utilities. On the one hand it will generate better insight in the dynamics of multiphase fluids in microsystems, and on the other hand will enable larger scale application making use of those new insights, and knowledge of the behaviour of mesophase forming components in microchannels.
We will specifically explore emulsification and separation with microsystems. Microsystem emulsification can yield monodisperse emulsions under extremely mild conditions, at low energy consumption levels. We will give attention to the dynamics of spontaneous droplet formation and the interaction between many nozzles when scaling out. For separation, new engineering approaches are explored to make and apply membranes with highly complex outer geometries and incorporating other driving forces.
Back to theme 5: Food
Programme Director:
Prof. dr. ir. Karin Schroën (Wageningen UR)