In the industrial bakery and pastry sector, the moisture of bread and pasta doughs is a parameter that requires exhaustive control, since changes in product moisture affect phenomena such as honeycombing, type of crust, or consistency, as well as alterations in conservation and the effect of time during the supply chain, from the factory to the end consumer. In this article we will talk about real-time moisture monitoring, the scope of infrared spectroscopy (NIR) at different points of the process and we will share an application case of automatic control in the manufacture of toast at the exit of the oven.

The current reference laboratory method for determining the % moisture content is the gravimetric method, which consists of drying a sample and measuring the weight loss (water difference). This method can take from several minutes to hours if stoves are used. It is therefore a resource-intensive method (personnel, equipment, materials and time) that directly affects efforts and the possibility of being able to optimize the nutritional parameter – moisture – of the product.

In the bread and bakery industry, moisture references are obtained at different stages of the manufacturing process in order to ensure compliance with standardized quality criteria, which can be synthetically grouped as follows:

Quality control of raw materials and ingredients. They can be used to verify that raw material arrivals are in compliance and to verify the quality of whole and milled grains, which affects the quality of the final product.

Quality control of bakery mixes and doughs. They can be used during production to measure flour yield, water absorption during the milling process, dough fermentation time and to determine the composition of the baking mix (% moisture, protein and ash).

Quality control of finished products. They can be used to control the quality of the finished product at the end of production or on the packaging line, ensuring compliance with legal compositional requirements, or provide data for nutritional labeling.

NIR (near infrared) technology is able to optimize all measurements in real time, either by monitoring with a portable analyzer, as in the case of the Visum Palm™, or by ensuring continuous control on the conveyor belt, cooler, or in the mixing tank with a Visum NIR In-Line™ analyzer, working in this case connected to the line’s management systems and PLC to control the manufacturing process or rectify in real time any malfunctions.

An application case, control of the baking process.

A mini-toast manufacturer needed a method to determine the humidity of the toast at the oven exit in real time, to mitigate the effects of the analysis time variable that made it impossible to rectify the baking temperature and therefore lost production batches that were not in accordance with the manufacturer’s specifications.

The problem of humidity in toast is that when humidity values are below 3.5%, the toast is fragile and tends to break during transport or handling, and when humidity is above 4.5%, the toast loses its crispiness. Continuous NIR technology makes it possible to optimize the parameter of interest.

For practical purposes, a predictive moisture model was made from samples and reference values from the customer’s laboratory, and since infrared spectroscopy is particularly sensitive to the presence of water, the same model could at the same time predict moisture in different varieties of the same customer’s product. The resulting model has a correlation coefficient close to 1 (0.99), indicating its accuracy. Connected to the PLC, the system identifies the product and instantly configures the analyzer to monitor the parameter of interest.

Finally, a Visum NIR In-Line™ continuous NIR analyzer was installed on the conveyor belt at the oven exit to determine the moisture value per area and, connected to the oven PLC, to rectify the burner temperature and provide real-time process/product information.

Instead of working with Vis-NIR, with the Visum HSI™ NIR (900-1700 nm) it would have been possible to analyze product unit by product unit, adding to the moisture analysis parameters such as color, homogeneity of components, spatial distribution of components, detection of foreign bodies (metals, plastics, cartons, etc.) or other critical process parameters. Needless to say that a single analyzer can perform countless predictions simultaneously, moisture, fats, proteins, sugars, etc. But this was not the case, we will tell you about it in another article.

I hope you have found this article on moisture monitoring with on-line NIR spectroscopy useful and we invite you to send us your comments and suggestions to our e-mail address news@iris-eng.com.


Joel Valdés Bravo
Technical Disclosure
IRIS Technology | Visum

 

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IRIS Technology presents in Farmespaña Industrial applications of its PAT analyzers for the pharmaceutical and dermo-cosmetic industry.

Real-time content uniformity.

Real-time bioavailability.

Fluorescence-free Raman.

Read the complete note here.

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IRIS presents at Expoquimia 2021 its NIR and Raman applications for on-line process control.

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Next Wednesday September 15 at 10 am, in the framework of the panel organized by ACCIÓ at Expoquimia called „Industry 4.0 Marketplace in the chemical, plastics and pharmaceutical sectors“, Joan Puig, Deputy Director of IRIS, will present some relevant industrial projects where NIR and Raman spectroscopy has been applied in integrated solutions to production lines in real time.

Both spectroscopic techniques (NIR and Raman) that IRIS works with and incorporated in its Visum® line of devices promote the digitization of quality and process control, without the need to resort to traditional laboratory and sampling techniques, and have a direct impact on time-to-market and quality standardization throughout the entire production process.

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Digitalization-de, Industry-4-0-de 22 Juni 2021

VISUM® at the first edition of Food 4 Future FoodTech Bilbao 2021

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Last week, the VISUM® team participated in Food 4 Future in Bilbao, where the entire food and beverage industry was invited. In parallel, networking activities and the Congress took place, where Alejandro Rosales, Science and Technology Manager at IRIS presented „Spectroscopy and machine learning: 4.0 tools for process control and food safety“.

It is important to highlight the growing interest of the industry in the digitization of processes, including those aimed at optimizing quality and making costs more efficient.

 

Von IRIS Technology Solutions
Digitalization-de, Industry-4-0-de 26 Mai 2021

IRIS will participate in FoodTech: FOOD 4 FUTURE – BILBAO 2021 | June 15 – 17

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After a long break of physical social interaction and with recharged energies, we are back to the big trade shows and conventions of the year, this time, participating in FoodTech: Food 4 Future (F4F), which will take place at the Bilbao Exhibition Center, in Bilbao, from June 15 to 17.

F4F condenses the offer of technological innovation and industry 4.0 for the food chain and is the meeting place of this 2021 for all professionals or technicians in the sector. Whether to learn about the most innovative solutions to promote the digital transformation of the company, to return to networking -real-, or to participate in the Food 4 Future World Summit, the largest European congress on innovation technology in the food and beverage industry.

 

Where to find us?

We will be present at Stand F620 in Hall 1 of the exhibition center. You will also be able to listen to us as speakers at the Congress, where our Science and Technology Manager, Phd. Alejandro Rosales, will talk about „Spectroscopy and machine learning 4.0 tools for process control and food safety“.

 

We are waiting for you!

Von IRIS Technology Solutions
Industry-4-0-de, Innovation-de 14 Mai 2021

IRIS Technology among the Top 10 Spanish mechanical engineering startups of 2021

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The company IRIS Technology, is awarded in the ranking „Top Mechanical Engineering Startups in Spain 2021“, elaborated by the British portal „startupill.com„, in the position Nº6 of the most innovative companies in the mechanical engineering industry and worth following this year.

Startupill.com bases its selection on the performance of companies in categories such as: innovation, innovative ideas, innovative route to market, innovative product, growth, exponential growth, exponential growth strategy, management and social impact. Look the entire publication here.

About IRIS Technology

IRIS (www.iris-eng.com) is an advanced engineering company that manufactures PAT systems for in-line process and quality control in the pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries with its own devices registered under the VISUM Devices trademark. As a manufacturer, it realizes tailor-made solutions and ad-hoc configurations for different processes and analytical or control needs, from the actual engineering development to the specific chemometric modeling. In addition, it actively collaborates in numerous EU innovation projects with international partners and has in its staff physicists, mathematicians, chemometricians, opticians, engineers, software developers and highly specialized profiles from the world of science and technology.

Von IRIS Technology Solutions
Digitalization-de, Industry-4-0-de 4 Mai 2021

New financial aid from ACCIÓ for the development of Industry 4.0 projects in Catalonia.

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To promote the development and adaptation of SMEs to new consumer trends, the Agency for the Competitiveness of the Company (ACCIÓ) has initiated a financing process through the „ACCIÓ coupons for the competitiveness of the company“.

These coupons translate into a direct economic funding of up to 20,000 € that the applicant SMEs can exchange for an expert service in internationalization, innovation, new technologies, financing or strategy.

Since April in IRIS we are accredited as service providers within the ACCIÓ program (the supplier certificate is attributed to a person within each company, in our case, we have three accredited consultants).

These coupons provide access to the SMEs of Catalonia to be able to carry out with the IRIS service turnkey projects for process monitoring and quality control in real time with NIR spectroscopy and at different critical control points from the receipt of raw materials, manufacturing processes to the final quality control.

For this, we have our line of NIR analyzers „VISUM“, configurable and adaptable to different needs and production lines, from its portable version for at-line analysis or in the field, to those that can be integrated in conveyor belts or pipelines for the control of content uniformity, homogeneity, chemical composition, foreign bodies or other purposes in real time.

If you want to know more about the VISUM family, please visit our website or write us at info@iris-eng.com.

 

 

 

Von IRIS Technology Solutions
Digitalization-de 23 April 2021

IRIS presents the VISUM line with the Galician Food Cluster

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On March 30, IRIS Technology Solutions participated in the webinar „HSI-FOOD: Hyperspectral photonic technology for the determination of quality parameters in food“, organized by the Food Cluster of Galicia (CLUSAGA) as part of the closing of the HSI-FOOD project.

Also participating were the National Association of Canned Fish Manufacturers ANFACO-CECOPESCA and the companies Freshcut and Lugar da Veiga, who presented their projects in the field of hyperspectral technology applied to their manufacturing processes and their results. IRIS presented cases of application of this technology in different industries of the sector, as well as the existing devices and solutions manufactured under the VISUM brand for the food sector.

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