Food Science Labs
Research facilities
- fats and oils laboratory
- seafood chemistry laboratory
- product development laboratory
- sensory evaluation laboratory
- food process engineering pilot plant
- low temperature storage facility
- food physical properties laboratory
- food microbiology laboratory
These areas contain specialized instruments and food processing equipment to enable experimental processing, laboratory analysis, and product storage evaluation. In addition to a computer-controlled cold-storage facility, the pilot plant is equipped for experimental food processing including freezing, thermal processing, chilling, dry-ing and smoking, centrifugal separation, meat/bone separation and modified atmosphere storage.
The pilot plant is especially well equipped for thermal processing with a modern automated retort capable of steam, steam-air, or water immersion processing research. The specially designed cold-storage facility is computer controlled and particularly useful for the study of changes in foods as a result of frozen storage history. The pilot plant is also equipped with a custom-built computer-controlled heat pump dryer for use in food dehydration experiments.
Specialized laboratory equipment includes:
- automated high performance and fast protein liquid chromatography systems
- gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy system
- Iatroscans Mark III and 5
- Zetaphore meter IV
- preparative ultracentrifuge
- analytical and preparative electrophoretic/isoelectric focusing equipment
- capillary electrophoresis system
- universal testing machine
- various colourimeters
- U.V. and visible spectrophotometers
- spectrofluorometer
- electrokinetic analyzer
- differential scanning calorimeter
- controlled stress rheometer with a high temperature/pressure attachment
- controlled rate rheometer
- optical shearing system
- rolling ball viscometer
- computer workstation for modelling food systems
- equipment for molecular microbiology