Structure and rate of growth of whey protein deposit from in situ electrical conductivity during fouling in a plate heat exchanger

Exploring the formation of surficial whey protein deposits under shear stress by rheofluidic approach

Understanding how shear affects whey protein stability is crucial to deal with typical industrial issues occurring at the bulk solution/surface interface, such as fouling during heat treatments. However, at the state of the art, this effect remains unclear, contrary to that of temperature. This article presents a novel strategy to study the impact of shear rate and concentration on the accumulation of whey protein surficial deposits. It consists in applying a range of shear rates (0-200 s-1) at controlled temperature (65 °C) on whey protein solutions (5-10 wt%) by a parallel plate rheometer equipped with a glass disc, thus allowing the off-line characterization of the deposits by microscopy. Our results highlight an unequivocal effect of increasing shear stress. At 5 wt%, it fosters the formation of primary deposits (≈ 10 μm), whereas at 10 wt% it results in the development of complex branched structures (≈ 50 μm) especially for shear rates ranging from 140 s-1 to 200 s-1. Based on the classification by size of the observed populations, we discuss possible hypotheses for the deposit growth kinetics, involving the interplay of different physico-chemical protein-surface interactions and paving the way to future further investigations.

A critical review on surface modifications mitigating dairy fouling

Thermal treatments performed in food processing industries generate fouling. This fouling deposit impairs heat transfer mechanism by creating a thermal resistance, thus leading to regular shutdown of the processes. Therefore, periodic and harsh cleaning-in-place (CIP) procedures are implemented. This CIP involves the use of chemicals and high amounts of water, thus increasing environmental burden. It has been estimated that 80% of production costs are owed to dairy fouling deposit. Since the 1970s, different types of surface modifications have been performed either to prevent fouling deposition (anti-fouling) or to facilitate removal (fouling-release). This review points out the impacts of surface modification on type A dairy fouling and on cleaning behaviors under batch and continuous flow conditions. Both types of anti-fouling and fouling-release coatings are reported as well as the different techniques used to modify stainless steel surface. Finally, methods for testing and characterising the effectiveness of coatings in mitigating dairy fouling are discussed.

Intelligent Industrial Cleaning: A Multi-Sensor Approach Utilising Machine Learning-Based Regression

Effectively cleaning equipment is essential for the safe production of food but requires a significant amount of time and resources such as water, energy, and chemicals. To optimize the cleaning of food production equipment, there is the need for innovative technologies to monitor the removal of fouling from equipment surfaces. In this work, optical and ultrasonic sensors are used to monitor the fouling removal of food materials with different physicochemical properties from a benchtop rig. Tailored signal and image processing procedures are developed to monitor the cleaning process, and a neural network regression model is developed to predict the amount of fouling remaining on the surface. The results show that the three dissimilar food fouling materials investigated were removed from the test section via different cleaning mechanisms, and the neural network models were able to predict the area and volume of fouling present during cleaning with accuracies as high as 98% and 97%, respectively. This work demonstrates that sensors and machine learning methods can be effectively combined to monitor cleaning processes.

Monitoring cleaning cycles of fouled ducts using ultrasonic coda wave interferometry (CWI)

Fouling in heat exchangers is the buildup of deposits on the solid surfaces. These deposits reduce the eco-efficiency of the processing equipment and increase the risk of subsequent surface contamination with the formation of biofilms. In the agro-food and water supplier sectors, which are our main concern, fouling on the hot walls of processing heat exchangers is a common occurrence and requires frequent cleaning cycles to ensure hygiene requirements are met. This results in a considerable ecological footprint. Sensors and diagnostic tools for monitoring fouling are thus of utmost importance to ensure the rational validation of the cleaning end-point and to decrease the environmental impact of the cleaning cycles. In this paper, a non-destructive ultrasonic monitoring technique using coda waves and the associated signal processing was tested to monitor the evolution over time of a deposit layer on a solid wall during cleaning. To ascertain the feasibility of the method, a piece of wax of controlled thickness was deposited to simulate the initial fouling state and a cleaning cycle was launched. The decorrelation coefficient was used as an indicator to monitor fouling. This article presents the principle of this unprecedented technique for measuring the degree of fouling. The results of the experiments show that this non-destructive monitoring technology is sensitive to changes in fouling and that the decorrelation coefficient curves are in agreement with the cleaning kinetics captured using a video camera, thus ascertaining the pertinence of the diagnostic tool proposed.

Predicting the distribution of whey protein fouling in a plate heat exchanger using the kinetic parameters of the thermal denaturation reaction of β-lactoglobulin and the bulk temperature profiles

Fouling of plate heat exchangers (PHE) is a severe problem in the dairy industry, notably because the relationship between the build-up of protein fouling deposits and the chemical reactions taking place in the fouling solution has not yet been fully elucidated. Experiments were conducted at pilot scale in a corrugated PHE, and fouling deposits were generated using a model β-lactoglobulin (β-LG) fouling solution for which the β-LG thermal denaturation reaction constants had been previously determined experimentally. Then 18 different bulk temperature profiles within the PHE were imposed. Analysis of the fouling runs shows that the dry deposit mass per channel versus the ratio R=k_unf/k_agg (with k_unf and k_agg representing, respectively, the unfolding and aggregation rate constants computed from both the identification of the β-LG thermal denaturation process and knowledge of the imposed bulk temperature profile into the PHE channel) is able to gather reasonably well the experimental fouling mass data into a unique master curve. This type of representation of the results clearly shows that the heat-induced reactions (unfolding and aggregation) of the various β-LG molecular species in the bulk fluid are essential to capture the trend of the fouling mass distribution inside a PHE. This investigation also illustrates unambiguously that the release of the unfolded β-LG (also called β-LG molten globule) within the bulk fluid (and the absence of its consumption in the form of aggregates) is a key phenomenon that controls the extent of protein fouling as well as its location inside the PHE.