Processing using micro-channel devices for the production of complex food emulsions

Innovation is an essential element of the food industry, it enhances competitiveness between companies and impacts greatly on the growth of the business sector as a whole. Nonetheless, the development of innovative processes and products is a rather complex practice that involves faster translation of scientific results into high-value application(s) as well as the utilisation of technical advances from other disciplines.
An exciting area of research currently focuses on manufacturing approaches and processes utilising micro-channels for the production of emulsions, and is generally divided into two main areas of interest. The first is the use of microfluidic devices that create emulsions droplet-by-droplet, and offer excellent control over the production of complex structures, such as compartmentalised emulsions, which are very difficult to manufacture using conventional high-shear emulsification methods. The second area concentrates on the use of micro-channel impinging jet technologies that, although encouraging droplet breakup within a confined high-shear environment, offer the ability to create emulsion-based microstructures with lower energy inputs than traditional high-pressure manufacturing routes.
The aims of this PhD project will be to expand the process-specific functionalities that can be imparted onto emulsion-based simple and complex microstructures manufactured via micro-channels, but to also explore approaches for their successful industrialisation. Microstructures fabricated through the developed micro-channel methods will be evaluated in terms of their overall performance, including assessment of their rheological behaviour and stability, and then compared against their equivalents as delivered through conventional emulsification routes.
The PhD project will be based within the Microstructure Engineering Group (led by Prof. Ian Norton) within the School of Chemical Engineering. The group’s core research activities focus on understanding and subsequently controlling the interplay between food structure and food processing. The group is an integral part of the EPSRC’s Centre for Innovative Manufacturing (CIM) in Food and the PhD student will be directly contributing to the research activities of the Centre. The Centre aims to meet the current and future needs of the Food Manufacturing Industry by providing a step change in process engineering, with the key transformations required in intelligent product design providing targets for novel resource efficient engineered processes. The PhD student will be encouraged to engage with researchers from our academic CIM partners (University of Nottingham and Loughborough University) as well as with scientists from our 14 industrial CIM