Search

Sanitation is crucial in the food industry, involving cleaning and disinfection processes to ensure facility cleanliness. This study examined sanitation knowledge and practices among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia's frozen meat sector. It also evaluated the acceptance of eco-friendly sanitation technology, specifically an electrolysis unit producing electrolyzed water. Data was collected through an open-ended online questionnaire using Google Forms. The questionnaire comprises demographic profiles, sanitation knowledge, sanitation program design knowledge, sanitation challenges, and the acceptance of integrating a green cleaner with the current sanitation program. Results show SME manufacturers possess sanitation knowledge but face implementation challenges due to absent sanitation programs, skilled labor shortage, hot water supply issues, difficulty cleaning narrow spaces in equipment, chemical storage, and budget constraints. Due to low-temperature operations, only 73 % of frozen meat industries use hot water for sanitation. Additionally, 45 % lack wastewater treatment, leading to chemical residue discharge into municipal drainage. SMEs show interest in electrolyzed water for its dual role as a cleaning and disinfecting agent. The technology's room-temperature efficacy and environmentally friendly degradation into salt and water appeal to SMEs. Adopting electrolysis sanitation technology is expected to significantly reduce costs by utilizing only salt, water, and electricity for electrolyzed water generation.

The green plant-based extraction of phenolic compounds is still challenging and attractive due to their benefit. The mechanism controlling of desorption rate of phenolic compounds, measured as total phenolic content (TPC), from Piper betle Linn. (PBL) leaves using subcritical water, and a one-site kinetic desorption model (first order) was studied. One-site kinetic desorption model has well explained the extraction mechanism of phenolic compounds from PBL leaves using subcritical water through desorption and diffusion mechanism. This model fits with the experimental data and presents a good description of the extraction mechanism with R-squared of 0.94. The recovery of TPC from PBL leaves using subcritical water was influenced by intraparticle diffusion, temperature, and extraction time. The desorption rate constant in the one-site kinetic desorption model increased from 100 to 200 °C (0.3975±0.02 to 3.3045±0.00 min-1) and then decreased to 250 °C (3.2093±0.00 min-1). The highest TPC was recovered quickly for 5 min at 200 °C. In addition, a high yield of TPC was also obtained at a slow desorption process for 30 min at a lower temperature of 175 °C. The low activation energy for the diffusion of phenolic compounds from PBL leaves of this study was 8.964 kJ/mol. This result showed that the one-site kinetic desorption model of subcritical water extraction has an excellent opportunity to be applicable in phenolic compounds recovery from PBL leaves. The one-site kinetic desorption rate constant and mathematical kinetic model equation achieved in this study might control the quality of phenolic compounds extracted from PBL leaves through subcritical water.

The effects of screw speed and oyster mushroom (OM) addition on the texture characteristics (hardness, gumminess, and chewiness) and specific mechanical energy (SME) were determined via factorial experiment design. Increasing screw speeds alone exhibited an insignificant effect (p > 0.05) compared to the effect exhibited by OM addition. The combined effects of screw speed and OM addition significantly reduced (p ≤ 0.05) all the texture characteristics. The hardness (3521.35 g) and gumminess (2717.85) of the meat analogue extruded at the maximum screw speed of 160 rpm and 15% OM addition were close to the characteristics of the chicken breast, respectively. The OM–soy protein (SP) extrudates were chewier than the non-hydrated texturised vegetable protein (TVP) and chicken meat. The SME values of the single-screw extrusion were linearly affected by the increasing screw speed, which also lies in the range < 200 kJ/kg for producing meat analogues with acceptable characteristics. Applying the superposition technique has successfully shifted the individual curves of the SME into a smooth master curve horizontally, allowing an interpolating in the prediction of SME value at a given screw speed value. An adequate low-grade OM content and extrusion screw speed value in the SP-based meat imitation provide hardness and gumminess that resembles the chicken breast. A prediction value on the specific mechanical energy of the SP-based meat analogue extrusion may be interpolated by a given screw speed value by using an established master curve.

Piper betle Linn. (PBL) leaves is a medical plant commonly available in Malaysia, Indonesia, and other South and Southeast Asia countries. It contains high phenolic compounds, which allows it to be used as remedies that can treat many infectious diseases and is considered safe and cost-effective as a medicine. However, PBL leaves are a perishable commodity that requires an extraction process to obtain the benefit. A green process called pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE) can potentially extract the phenolic compounds from PBL leaves. There are many kinds of research related to PBL leaves, but lack of focus on the extraction optimization of phenolic compounds and antioxidants from PBL leaves using PHWE. This research aims to optimize the PHWE process of phenolic compounds and antioxidants from PBL leaves using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) - Box-Behnken Design (BBD). The RSM-BBD consisted of three dependent variables (process parameters), namely time (5-25 min), temperature (150-250oC), and solid loading (5-15%) at a pressure range of 0.4761-3.9760 MPa. The responses for the optimization were total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant activity. The optimal conditions were achieved at 210oC, 5 min, and 15% solid loading, producing 8.079 mg GAE/g of TPC and 92.561% of antioxidant activity. The validation shows that the predicted values are 83% (TPC) and 99.52% (antioxidant activity) compared to actual data. This result indicates that PHWE is a potential extraction method to extract phenolic compounds and antioxidants from PBL leaves.

Sanitation is a compulsory procedure in the food industry. As it involves production downtime, it imposes overhead costs. One way to obtain higher profit margins is to cut the overhead costs of sanitation. Eco-innovative cleaners and sanitisers such as electrolysed water have a high potential to reduce sanitation costs. The only ingredients of electrolysed water are salt and distilled water. Some major food industries invest in expensive commercial electrolysed water generators to produce different types of electrolysed water (acidic, alkaline, and neutral). Smaller food industries can install an electrolysed water generator independently, but they need to determine the optimum and most economical electrolysing parameters. Different electrolysed water generators employ different electrolysing parameters to produce electrolysed water with the same physical and chemical properties. Thus, in this work, electrolysing parameter screening methods are demonstrated. A laboratory-scale electrolysed water generator was used to investigate the effects of different electrolysing parameters (voltages (1–20 V), electrolysis times (1–15 min), and sodium chloride concentrations (0.05–3%)) on the physical and chemical properties (pH, oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), and available chlorine concentration (ACC)) of electrolysed water (both acidic and alkaline). These screening methods were essential to determining the range of electrolysing parameters to use for the optimisation experiments and ascertaining the generator's limit. The subsequent optimisation experiments aimed to ensure the generator could be used for a long period and that economical usage conditions were achieved. The screening experiments helped to reduce the parameter variations in these experiments and provide reliable data on electrolysed water properties.

Pumpkin (Cucurbita sp.) is a widely consumed fruit as it has high carotenoid content and medicinal value, but has a relatively short shelf life and prone to microbial spoilage. Various drying techniques have been introduced to the industry to preserve pumpkinbased products. During the drying process, products are prone to serious decay caused by changes in temperature, thus affecting the physical or chemical properties of the product. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of different drying methods on the physical properties and proximate composition of pumpkin powder produced from different parts of the fruit. Samples were made using unpeeled pumpkin and parts of the fruit, i.e. skin, flesh and seed and were dried using different drying methods, i.e. oven (80°C), rapid hot air oven (80°C) and freeze dryer (-110°C). The dried samples were then milled and sieved at approximately 250 µm and 710 µm in diameter. Different drying methods had a significant influence on the physical and chemical properties of the samples (p<0.05). Rapid hot air drying showed a promising impact on the production of pumpkin powder resulting in powder with a moisture content of 5.61-6.89%, particle size of 122.98-256.46 µm, and density of 304.80-724.69 kg/m3. These results were better than freeze-dried powders. Proximate composition values of samples dried using rapid hot air were also found to be better than oven-dried powder with a protein content of 9.86-31.54% and fat content of 3.88-34.93%. In conclusion, rapid hot air-dried powder showed the best quality in terms of physical properties and proximate composition.

This study evaluates the process conditions, (enzyme concentration (120-1200 U/g substrate), temperature (30-60 °C), and pH (3-9)) of enzymatic hydrolysis (EH) for sugar recovery from leftover croissants (LC) and leftover doughnut (LD), and characterizing its residue and hydrolysate. The highest sugar yield recovered from LC was 574.21 ± 0.74 mg/g (840 U/g substrate, 49 °C and pH 3) and for LD was 460.53 ± 0.74 mg/g (1176 U/g substrate, 47 °C and pH 3). The highest fructose and glucose yield for LC and LD were 14.47±0.73 mg/g and 11.84±0.21 mg/g, and 13.26±0.63 mg/g and 10.34±0.11 mg/g, respectively. Morphology analysis (SEM) showed that the structure of LC and LD had changes in its starch granules that indicates hydrolysis process occurrence. The presence of monosaccharides and oligosaccharides were detected from FTIR. HMF was also detected from sugar degradation due to EH, (0.043 ± 0.0334 mg/g for LC) and (0.023 ± 0.0124 mg/g for LD).

The limited budget allocation and storage chemicals space are the main reasons food SMEs manufacturers took cleaning and sanitation for granted. A portable electrolyzed water cleaning rig which can generate sanitation solution and at the same time generated high-speed water will ease the cleaning and sanitation process for SMEs. In this study, the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ method) is applied in the development of a portable electrolyzed water cleaning rig. A new conceptual design for the rig, which is robust and affordable is proposed. The rig could improve cleaning efficiency significantly in SME food industry in Malaysia, which is a major cause of a low number of SME with GMP certification. However, the final conceptual design has to undergo several modifications for assembly and manufacturing purposes, which will be performed in further study. The idea of generation for the portable electrolyzed water cleaning rig design was illustrated based on the TRIZ contradiction matrix. This portable rig will be able to generate both strongly acidic electrolyzed water (AcEW) and strongly alkaline electrolyzed water (AlEW) solution continuously. Both cleaning solutions are green cleaning solutions which can replace the commercial cleaning sanitation solutions. The development of the conceptual design of the portable water cleaning rig will help food SMEs tremendously.

Spray drying techniques are one of the methods to preserve and extend the shelf-life of coconut milk. The objective of this research was to create a particle swarm optimization-enhanced artificial neural network (PSO-ANN) that could predict the coconut milk spray drying process. The parameters for PSO tuning were selected as the number of particles and acceleration constant, respectively, for both global and personal best using a 2k factorial design. The optimal PSO settings were recorded as global best, C1 = 4.0; personal best, C2 = 0; and number of particles = 100. When comparing different types of spray drying models, PSO-ANN had an MSE value of 0.077, GA-ANN had an MSE of 0.033, while ANN had an MSE of 0.082. Sensitivity analysis was conducted on all three models to evaluate the significance level of each parameter on the model, and it was discovered that inlet temperature had the most significant influence on the model performance. In conclusion, the PSO-ANN was found to be more effective than ANN but less effective than GA-ANN in predicting the quality of coconut milk powder.

Single-screw extrusion of a fibrous-structured meat analog from soy proteins added with low-grade oyster mushroom was successful. Satisfactory extrudates were obtained at a barrel temperature of 140 °C, screw speed range of 100–160 rpm, and oyster mushroom addition at 0%, 7.5%, and 15% via factorial experiments. Single-screw extrusion equipped with a slit die successfully produced expanded oyster mushroom-soy protein extrudates. However, the increase in the oyster mushroom content significantly decreased (p ≤ 0.05) the expansion ratio of the extrudate from 1.26 to 0.98. This result indicated that adding more oyster mushroom restrained the expansion ratio. The extrudates had a medium density range (max of 1393.70 ± 6.30 kg/m3). By adding oyster mushroom, the extrudates attained a higher moisture content (range = 34.77% to 37.93%) compared with the extrudates containing the protein mixture only (range = 26.99% to 32.33%). The increase in screw speed and oyster mushroom significantly increased (p ≤ 0.05) the water absorption index. The increase in the texturization index was significantly influenced (p ≤ 0.05) by oyster mushroom addition rather than the screw speed. A defined fibrous structure supported the high texturization index and small shape of air cells observed in the extrudates.

Delay in the consumption of bakery products has contributed to the food waste problem, which is a serious global issue. Delayed consumption or can be regarded as the ‘leftovers’ bakery products such as croissants and doughnuts are normally discarded due to the impairment in texture or quality degradation causing them to taste not as good as fresh baked, although the products still edible. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the physical and chemical changes during the delaying of consumption of croissants and doughnuts at three (3) different storage times (day 0, 1 and 2). The hardness of croissants and doughnuts had an increased throughout storage time, with doughnuts have the higher hardness than croissants, with 175.63 % and 92.31 % increased, respectively. Carbohydrate was found as the major component for croissants and doughnuts. Croissants and doughnuts recorded carbohydrate content of (50.32-52.42 %) and (43.22-46.59 %), respectively, from day 0 to day 2. While sugar profile analysis detected three types of monosaccharides sugars, which were fructose, glucose and maltose for croissants and doughnuts. Thus, high content of carbohydrate and monosaccharides that available in the leftovers doughnut and croissants suggest that it could potentially be used as renewable resources for sugar recovery.

Rapid airflow in oven will influence the heat transfer in baking process therefore the purpose of this study is to experimentally and numerically investigate the effects of operating conditions on the heat transfer mechanism and volume expansion during baking. Cakes are baked in an air fryer and convection oven with constant speed 5.11 m/s and 0.88 m/s respectively at 150, 160, 170 °C in different baking times. A heat transfer model was defined to describe the influence of baking temperature on internal cake temperature by Fourier’s law. It was observed that the presence of rapid airflow (air fryer) and increment in oven temperature yielded an increase in volume expansion but produced a less moist product. Cakes baked in the presence of rapid airflow at 150 °C were moister but with little volume expansion in the cakes compared to convection oven-baked cakes. Significant correlation between the numerical models with experimental temperature profiles were recorded during complete cake baking process.