From the arrival of "modern" processed foods through pasteurization, bottling, and canning to today’s "convenience foods" made possible by refrigeration, freezing, and freeze drying, food processing has evolved into a vast global industry driven by the need to safely preserve foods for long-term storage and worldwide distribution.

To meet ever-changing 21st century tastes, customers with busy lifestyles demand food that’s quick, tasty, and ready now. Supermarket shelves, chill cabinets, and freezers are filled with foods that have been processed to some extent to make them more convenient: From frozen peas, rows of jars containing variations on a basic recipe - smooth, crunchy, spicy or traditional – and entire meals that are microwave-ready.

Many processed foods comprise more than one ingredient that needs to be prepared, combined, and then treated in one or more ways to ensure it is safe to consume until its expiration date. To meet these demands, food processing companies are reliant on chains of machines designed to perform different tasks as the foodstuff progresses along the production line.

Moving Towards Safe and Efficient Food Processing

When it comes to measuring efficiency, food processors use parameters to monitor and report back into development of new product lines, including:

• Hygiene and Cleaning: Optimizing intervals between stopping production to clean, to assure contamination levels or micro-organisms per quantity of finished product are not exceeded whilst meeting product throughputs.
• Waste: Minimize waste of raw materials, e.g. peeling efficiency of root vegetables.
• Energy: Optimize energy use per quantity processed, e.g. temperature profiles of ovens.
• Automation and Manual Labor: Modern food processing factories utilize complex machinery working 24/7, often at very high-speed and precision. From farm to factory, some processes cannot or have yet to be automated. Here, time spent or the number of interventions to clear problems on productions lines, for example, remain useful metrics to identify problems.

At Altair, the convergence of simulation, high performance computing (HPC), and data analytics has made us a leader across all engineering sectors, helping companies stay ahead of their competition. Let’s take a deeper look at how simulation applied in the food and beverage industry can help processing continue to move efficiently.

How Can I Predict Food Behavior?

Whether producing coffee beans, milk powder, or chewing gum, to attain any efficiency metrics, knowing how different food materials will behave as it progresses through the development process is crucial to success. Any food material needs to be successfully processed in some way, then moved seamlessly onto the next stage, right up to the point its packaged form leaves the factory dispatch bay. This is the role of discrete element method (DEM), a recognized modeling simulation technique that can show process engineers how their food materials will behave virtually in a machine or transportation system.

A comprehensive DEM simulation solution, Altair® EDEM™ provides food processors with the information they need to optimize process parameters, minimize caking, segregation, and attrition effects, and assist when changing ingredients, formulations, or variations in raw materials across suppliers. It is widely applied to accurately simulate granular materials of any type or shape (from grains to bulk powders) to provide key insights into the wide range of operations and processes used throughout food processing – from material handling (screw auger, fluidized bed, pneumatic, hoppers, conveyors), mixing, milling, drying, extruding, to packaging (bottling, bagging), and more.

Problems such as crushed fruits, broken tortilla chips, blocked tubes, clumped powders, inconsistent spice blends, uneven coatings, and inconsistent filling, can be predicted and resolved before production starts, rather than being discovered and needing retro-fixing after the machinery is running on the factory floor.

The Digital Future is Here

Predicting and problem solving has traditionally relied on physical testing, prototypes, and lengthy on-site commissioning trials, where every setback becomes a costly rework. Today’s engineers use a new integrated simulation-driven approach that reduces the need for physical testing and prototyping.

Going further, the arrival of digital twins means that processes along entire production lines can be explored virtually, problem-solved, and optimized before launch.

With industrial digitalization comes the ability to both monitor and control complex processes by embedded sensor networks, with the continuous streams of data produced being analyzed by artificial intelligence and used to not only adjust on the fly but become a valuable asset in the data-driven companies’ future.

Want to optimize your food and beverage processes?

Click here to access our on-demand webinar to discover how to optimize food and beverage processes with the discrete element method.