Sensors for Monitoring the State of Water and Fat along the Dairy Process Line

In dairy processing, raw milk passes through several stages in various processing equipment that modulate the content and state of water and fat. The state of water and fat is controlled by the nano- and microscale structure of the solid matrix in which they reside. Controlling the state of water and fat during processing and in the final product is a key challenge with significant importance to product quality and stability. The main objective of this project is to enable monitoring of the state of water and fat with low-cost NMR sensors that may be installed at the dairy plants.

By: Anne Lau Heckmann

Raw milk undergoes processes such as standardization, cream treatment, homogenization, pasteurization, evaporation and fermentation to mention some examples. It is easy to measure the content of water and fat in dairy products. It is, however, difficult to measure their state, e.g. which microstructures they constitute, non-invasively and rapidly with a digital sensor. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a spectroscopic method that makes such a measurement possible. This project examines practical aspects towards process-line measurements by NMR sensors and creates a data-driven “dictionary” for translating NMR parameters into food science parameters. Finally, this project will create the first example of an automation system that reports results and enables automatic decision making based on the outcome. Integration of an NMR sensor in dairy unit operations, as will be shown by a prototype in this work, enables improved decision making, mapping the changes in the microstructures during dairy processes, and ultimately improved process control.