Establishing formulations for ink-jet 3D printing of foods

The design and control of microstructures in food products is of great interest to provide understanding to develop new, functional products. The ability to design and accurately build complex edible structures would offer great advantage to creating products with well-defined ingredient distribution, textural and release properties. Additive manufacturing encompasses a wide range of technologies including layer-by-layer extrusion, stereolithography techniques and powder-based inkjet printing, its key advantage being to offer a route to produce these complex structures with the flexibility to include late stage customisation and distributed manufacture of a range of products. Currently the focus of these technologies is around manufacturing non-edible materials but this is increasing expanding, for example, to research including pharmaceutical products and bio-scaffolds.

This project is part of a programme of work set to investigate the design and understanding of edible materials in additive manufacturing (3D Printing) in conjunction with the Additive Manufacturing CIM at the University of Nottingham.

This project has a specific focus on micro-rheology and ink jet printing technologies, which will require the design and understanding of liquid formulations flowing at the micron scale. Initial work investigating controlled gelation of hydrocolloids will be carried out building on current knowledge in this area.