Wheat flour milling

The grinding of wheat into flour is mankind's oldest continuously practised industry and the parent of all modern industry; all modern particle breakage operations have wheat milling in their ancestry. Through direct consumption and indirectly via animal feed, cereals supply more than half of our global food consumption. Around 2 billion tonnes of cereals are produced annually, with wheat, maize and rice each contributing around 600 million tonnes. Rice is mostly eaten directly by humans, while wheat and maize are also used as animal feed and increasingly as a feedstock for production of non-food products. Wheat is the most widely grown cereal and the most extensively traded internationally, and has had the greatest impact on the history of the human race, both in ancient times and in recent centuries and decades. The milling of cereal kernels in general, and wheat kernels in particular, to release their multifunctional potential is an industrial activity that underpins all human society.

Wheat flour milling is simply a fascinating subject. This project will continue well established studies to model the flour milling process as a function of wheat properties. Previous work has established the breakage equation for roller milling of wheat; this project would continue that work to later stages of the process and extend it to include modelling of particle composition as well as size.