System sorts small foods according to internal composition
grains and other additives based on internal content, allowing
processors to monitor the quality of the ingredients going into
their products.
Sweden-based BoMill and Cimbria Heid, which is located in Austria, have devised an automated system for determining if the internal composition of such small-sized ingredients as wheat are suitable for a particular type of processed food.
The development of the Triq sorting system by the two companies is being funded by Eureka, a research and development agency set up by EU governments.
Quality control is a fundamental part of today's food production industry. Wheat's characteristics, especially protein and gluten content, are a key factor in determining the quality of a particular product.
Soft, low protein wheats are used in cakes, pastries, cookies, crackers and Oriental noodles. Hard, high protein wheats are used in breads and quick breads.
However such factors are not easy to assess with current technologies. While a team of well-trained workers can pick out bad apples from a production line, it is more difficult to achieve the same quality control for small-sized ingredients such as grains.
Bo Löfqvist, chief executive officer of Sweden's BoMill AB said current technologies in use tosort grain, seeds, and other small particles only detect size, colour or density. However thesetechnologies are unable to detect the internal quality and composition of grain kernels withoutdestroying the grains, he said.
Wheat kernel composition is closely related to final product quality, and while plant breeders are actively developing tailor-made grains with novel starch and other characteristics, these factors still vary widely even within a single plant, hesaid.
"Even on a single wheat plant, which produces a maximum of about 100 grains, there are significant qualitative differences between theindividual grains," he said. "Some of the grains will be better suited to biscuit production, for example. Others will make better bread. A third type will bebest for producing pasta."
The Triq sorting system involves capturing individual particles, in this case wheat grains, in little pockets on the inside surface of a speciallyequipped cylinder, which is like the drum of a clothes washing machine, he said in describing themachines.
The machine irradiates the individual grains with infrared light and the reflections are analysed by a specially designed detector. From there, the grains are shot out by bursts of air into separate receptacles, based on their qualities. The cylinder rotates and the next batch of grains is analysed.
He claims the system is capable of sorting, with a high degree of accuracy, as many as two billion individual wheat kernels per hour.
Löfqvist and his team say the new system simplifies the wheat grain sorting process.
"We have already demonstrated the feasibility of this system for sorting wheat for foodproduction," he said. "It has also been used to sort malting barley."
The system now needs to be scaled upwards from the prototype for commercial food processing. The team is now lookingfor further funding to complete operational testing and, ultimately, full-scale commercialisation ofthe system.
Cimbria Heid specialises in the development and installation of seed and grain processing plants. Its product range includesall machines required for the cleaning, drying, sorting, treating, weighing and packing of seed.
