EngD Project

EPSRC sponsored EngD Project

Dr. Fotis Spyropoulos Chemical Engineering

And an international snack food manufacturer 

Tax-free bursary of £20,500 p.a plus fees paid

Food industries are today faced with one of their biggest problems to date – that is the need to re-formulate a wide range of their current portfolio in order to deliver “healthier” food products. As a result an enormous amount of research effort is being carried out in order to reduce the salt and/or fat and/or sugar content of foods. This is far from a trivial task as such components do not just contribute to food only in terms of taste but are also responsible for the products’ overall structure/microstructure thus significantly affecting their performance upon consumption. The Reduced-Salt Emulsion Technologies (Re-SET) project will focus on the development of new, functional and healthier/safe snack foods, specifically formulated with reference to salt reduction.

Nonetheless uses of such structuring technology in dry (semi-dry) foods are absent due to serious processing and stability issues. (a) Processing issues: due to the fragile nature of shell interfaces, such structures are difficult to process. Further innovation is required to be able to apply these delicate structures onto the food (snack) surface after the cooking process. (b) Stability issues: emulsions containing salt are subject to large osmotic pressure and chemical potential differences which tend to destabilise these structures. Adding these salt-containing emulsions into/onto dry foods accelerates the destabilisation process. Evidence from research at the University of Birmingham (UoB) suggests that stable osmotic separation with triglyceride shells is possible and these shells can be constructed to melt at different temperatures and rates, thus giving potential to modulate salt perception at much lower salt concentrations.

The project’s main objective is be to deliver both the formulation design rules and processing routes in order to manufacture shell-stabilised water-in-oil emulsions for the development of salt-reduced healthy snack foods. The project programme has been carefully designed to quickly recognise potential shell-stabilised “technologies” for use in prototype manufacture, to scale-up the processes to produce these and finally to sensorially evaluate the manufactured prototypes and establish whether they can deliver acceptable salt-reduced snack food products. The project team provides a unique and synergistic offering which will catalyse different thinking, approaches and pave the way for innovation, through understanding of surface chemistries, advances in process engineering, measurement and characterisation. The Re-SET research program involves the UoB and a major International snack Food Company. The technology developed and understanding gained from this collaboration will enable many new applications and foods to reach the market, with IPR from this project also expected to be commercially innovative.

Eligibility: due to funding restrictions to qualify for an EPSRC studentship candidates must be a U.K. national and hold the minimum of at least a 2(i) or a 2(ii) plus MSc in a relevant discipline. If interested in the above position please send your c.v. to Dr Richard Greenwood at r.w.greenwood@bham.ac.uk