Department of Food Process Engineering

Department of Food Process Engineering

The Department is involved in the general and specialised training of the MSc in Food Engineering, the BSc in Food Technology and the BSc in Food and Wine Engineering. Our teaching consists of difficult, fundamental subjects such as Food Operations or Mechanical Engineering Fundamentals, but we also take a modern approach to teaching software-based manufacturing technology design, modelling and optimisation, as well as environmental and labour safety and health. 

Our main areas of research are the extraction of active ingredients from raw food materials, by-products, wastes, and the modern transformation of food components for nutritional, medicinal or cosmetic purposes by enzymatic reactions, fermentation and microencapsulation. Through these, students will learn about different operations (e.g. extraction, distillation, evaporation, membrane filtration, drying) and their optimisation, how to develop and use them in a complex system in their own work. 

Some research topics include: development of microencapsulation of active ingredients (omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D), extraction and purification of active ingredients from various plants and herbs, concentration (vitamins, antioxidants, colourants), elimination of allergenic components (e.g. in milk), particle or droplet size studies by laser diffraction, 3D printing.

Another of our important research area lies in environment protection; industrial and natural water/wastewater treatment: elimination of pollutants from drinking water resources, CIP water treatment and its recycle, separation of stable oil-water emulsion, air/gas cleaning.

The Department of Food Engineering is well equipped in order to assist research in context to process- and unit-operation development, design and optimisation. In our laboratories membrane fitration apparatuses are capable to test micro-, ultra-, nanofilters and reverse osmosis filters and as well to purify or separate any liquids from food industry and biotechnology and additionally we are able to operate them in diafiltration mode. Furthermore our laboratory is equipped with different convectional dries, like spay-dryer, tunnel and cabinet dryer, as well with quick moisture determinator. For active component recovery we have a small sized extractor for solids leaching with adjustable temperature and stirring. In order to investigate and design different biotechnological processes bioreactor and membrane bioreactor is also available. Our lab equipped with fluidized bed and packed column (with structured and random packs) too.

To ensure quick evalutation for the experiments carried out in our lab, beside general chemical lab equipment, spectrophotometer, HPLC, light scattering instruments, digital microscope, refract meter. Tools for common laboratory work, for example for titration, pH measurement, total protein determination, centrifugation are also available.