A detailed insight into the complexities of food extrusion

“The Food Extrusion Seminar 2014”, which we organized in collaboration with the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL, www.dil-ev.de), Quakenbrück, Germany, at our premises in Stuttgart, Germany, on May 6 and 7, 2014, met with a highly rewarding response. We were able to welcome around 40 participants from Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland. The participants mainly came from the production and product development departments of food manufacturing companies. Speakers from Coperion, Coperion K-Tron and DIL as well as guest speakers from Neuheus Neotec Maschinen- und Anlagenbau GmbH, Reinbek, Germany, and Mars Petcare Deutschland, a subsidiary company of Mars GmbH, Verden, Germany, presented diverse technological aspects of food extrusion. The presentations were complemented by a visit to our new Food Test Lab, where one of the highlights of the seminar was a demonstration of high-moisture extrusion of textured soy protein as a meat analogue. This series of seminars, which began last year at the DIL, is scheduled to continue in 2015.

In their lectures, the experts covered the entire food extrusion process from start to finish, providing the participants not only with basic knowledge but also information on the latest developments and trends. As an example of a versatile, continuous production system for food extrusion, Coperion's ZSK twin screw extruder was described and explained in detail. This extruder owes its versatility to the numerous different process steps that take place within its process section – from mixing, plasticizing, cooking, denaturing and sterilizing of the foodstuff through to forming, cooling and cutting of the end product. The possible applications for the ZSK twin screw extruder range from the production of direct expanded breakfast cereals and snacks, the modification of flour and starch, the production of chocolate and caramel masses and confectionary through to the microencapsulation and the maillard-reaction of flavours and the production of pet foods (e.g. dry cat/dog food). Seminar participants were presented with the range of products that can be produced as well as with what influence respective formulations or recipes and the geometrical and processing parameters of the extruder have on the ultimate properties of the end product produced. Possible ways of optimizing the process when extruding natural products, which by reason of their different origins display widely fluctuating starting properties, were also discussed.