Food Engineering a Different Branch

Food engineering is a mathematical or engineering based branch of food technology which relates with design, fabrication, modification maintenance and operations of food process engineering equipments. It could be a dryer, an extractor, an evaporator, a condenser or a pasteurizer. This branch depends on other major branches of engineering such as a chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. Hence with all this aspect we can define food engineering is study engineering operations on agricultural products, in which agricultural product or food material is used a raw material to develop a consumable product or edible product. It is a branch related with different aspect of food packaging methods or food preservation methods to enhance shelf life of food.

This is branch which mostly includes following studies;

1.  Removal of moisture or water from fruit or vegetable to enhance its shelf life.
2. Evaporation of water from fruit juices.
3. Extraction of oil from different oil seeds by several methods.
4. Processing of milk and milk products to reduce their microbial load and increase shelf life.

But these operations could be done by chemical engineer also then why food engineering is different than that braches reasons are as given below;

1. Food material contains different components such as proteins, vitamins, fats, carbohydrates, enzymes, minerals and micro –organisms and management of all this components at each time in one process is skill of food engineer.
2. Food material changes their properties at each and every stage of processing such as moisture content reduced at each stage of drying. Hence food engineer have to concentrate on heat transfer as well as mass transfer in same process at same time so it is different from others.
3. Same raw material has different property so food engineer have to consider all properties of same material.
4. One operation in food processing can be done in several ways like drying can be done in tray dryer, tunnel dryer, freeze dryer, rotary dryer or vacuum dryer so to achieve proper conditions good food engineering skills are required.

Hence food engineer have to concentrate on several factors or combinations of different factors at a same time so it is considered as food engineering is a different or distinct branch.