Food engineering has become increasingly important in the food industry over the years, as food engineers play a key role in developing new food products and improved manufacturing processes. While other textbooks have covered some aspects of this emerging field, this is the first applications-oriented handbook to cover food engineering processes and manufacturing techniques. A major portion of Handbook of Food Engineering Practice is devoted to defining and explaining essential food operations such as pumping systems, food preservation, and sterilization, as well as freezing and drying. Membranes and evaporator systems and packaging materials and their properties are examined as well. The handbook provides information on how to design accelerated storage studies and determine the temperature tolerance of foods, both of which are important in predicting shelf life. The book also examines the importance of physical and rheological properties of foods, with a special look at the rheology of dough and the design of processing systems for the manufacture of dough. The final third of the book provides useful supporting material that applies to all of the previously discussed unit operations, including cost/profit analysis methods, simulation procedures, sanitary guidelines, and process controller design. The book also includes a survey of food chemistry, a critical area of science for food engineers.

Polymers are permeable, whilst ceramics, glasses and metals are gener ally impermeable. This may seem a disadvantage in that polymeric containers may allow loss or contamination of their contents and aggressive substances such as water will diffuse into polymeric struc tures such as adhesive joints or fibre-reinforced composites and cause weakening. However, in some cases permeability is an advantage, and one particular area where this is so is in the use of polymers in drug delivery systems. Also, without permeable polymers, we would not enjoy the wide range of dyed fabrics used in clothing and furnishing. The fundamental reason for the permeability of polymers is their relatively high level of molecular motion, a factor which also leads to their high levels of creep in comparison with ceramics, glasses and metals. The aim of this volume is to examine some timely applied aspects of polymer permeability. In the first chapter basic issues in the mathema tics of diffusion are introduced, and this is followed by two chapters where the fundamental aspects of diffusion in polymers are presented. The following chapters, then, each examine some area of applied science where permeability is a key issue. Each chapter is reasonably self-contained and intended to be informative without frequent outside reference. This inevitably leads to some repetition, but it is hoped that this is not excessive.

Trends in Food Engineering presents a wide vision of food engineering, with an emphasis on topics vital to the food industry today. The first section deals with physical and sensory properties of food. The emphasis in these chapters is on structure-function relationships, food rheology, and the correlations between physicochemical and sensory data. The second section, on advances in food processing, includes recent developments in minimal preservation and thermal and nonthermal processing of foods. The book concludes with current topics in food engineering, including applied biotechnology, food additives, and functional properties of proteins.

Vols. 16-21 include supplement: British empire vegetation abstracts.