Virtual cleaning assistant for consistent quality assurance and documentation

At IFFA from May 14 to 19, 2022 in Hall 11.1 Booth B70, the Fraun­hofer Insti­tute for Process Engi­neer­ing and Pack­ag­ing IVV will present solu­tions for the cur­rent chal­lenges of the food indus­try. The intel­li­gent, sen­sor-mon­i­tored clean­ing lance “CleanAs­sist” has been devel­oped for man­u­al clean­ing process­es, enabling con­sis­tent repro­ducibil­i­ty and qual­i­ty assur­ance for the first time. In the field of “Food Safe­ty”, a cus­tomiz­able sen­sor “Co-Con­trol” for the detec­tion of organ­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion for par­tic­u­lar­ly hygiene-crit­i­cal envi­ron­ments will be presented.

With regard to meat alter­na­tives, the Fraun­hofer IVV will demon­strate how cus­tomized food ingre­di­ents and mar­ket-ready prod­ucts are cre­at­ed from plant-based pro­tein sources. The holis­tic con­cepts respond to the diverse demands that Indus­try 4.0, cli­mate pro­tec­tion and a short­age of skilled work­ers are plac­ing on com­pa­nies: From raw mate­r­i­al uti­liza­tion to indi­vid­ual solu­tions for safe, auto­mat­ed process­es includ­ing hygien­ic design con­sult­ing and the devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing from recy­clable pack­ag­ing materials.

In order to be able to guar­an­tee a safe and repro­ducible clean­ing process for the first time even when clean­ing is car­ried out man­u­al­ly, researchers at the Fraun­hofer IVV have devel­oped the first intel­li­gent clean­ing lance in a ZIM-fund­ed joint project. 

The sen­sors inte­grat­ed into the lance enable the clean­ing process to be logged. All rel­e­vant process para­me­ters, the cleaned areas and their clean­ing qual­i­ty are auto­mat­i­cal­ly record­ed. The sub­se­quent trans­fer of the data to an AR device (glass­es, tablet or smart­phone) projects a “dig­i­tal twin” into the real clean­ing envi­ron­ment in real time. The oper­a­tor of the clean­ing lance is shown the clean­ing suc­cess as well as the areas that still need to be cleaned. In addi­tion, the “CleanAs­sist” pro­vides sup­port in select­ing the appro­pri­ate clean­ing sequence. In this way, it can be guar­an­teed on a local­ly resolved basis that all areas have been processed with the required clean­ing effort.

In addi­tion to reli­able, con­sis­tent qual­i­ty assur­ance and doc­u­men­ta­tion of clean­ing, the clean­ing lance also enables guid­ed opti­miza­tion of clean­ing runs and helps to avoid prod­uct qual­i­ty-reduc­ing errors caused by incor­rect clean­ing. In this way, per­son­nel are not only sup­port­ed dur­ing clean­ing, but can also be trained in a tar­get­ed man­ner by means of spe­cial train­ing runs.

Mobile quality assurance through imaging detection of organic contaminants

Based on the exten­sive know-how in the field of sen­sor tech­nolo­gies and the appli­ca­tion-ori­ent­ed design of cam­era-based mea­sure­ment tech­nol­o­gy, the opti­cal detec­tion sys­tem was devel­oped at the Fraun­hofer IVV. The sys­tem is based on flu­o­res­cence analy­sis using UV radi­a­tion and enables the spa­tial­ly resolved detec­tion of organ­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants on 2- and 3‑dimensional com­po­nents. It can be used both as a mobile pho­tocham­ber and as a cus­tomized inline sys­tem. Con­t­a­m­i­nants can thus be quan­ti­fied direct­ly in pro­duc­tion or as an at-line or off-line solu­tion, thus elim­i­nat­ing the caus­es of qual­i­ty problems.

High-quality proteins for meat alternatives

The ongo­ing trend to give up meat has led to a rapid increase in demand for high-qual­i­ty alter­na­tive pro­teins. Based on many years of expe­ri­ence in the pro­duc­tion of pro­tein ingre­di­ents and the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of their tech­no­log­i­cal prop­er­ties, the Fraun­hofer IVV is work­ing to con­tin­u­ous­ly improve the sen­so­ry qual­i­ty of meat alter­na­tives. This is because very few con­sumers want to give up famil­iar dietary patterns. 

The Fraun­hofer IVV is meet­ing this high demand for meat alter­na­tives with research into valu­able pro­tein sources from plant-based raw mate­ri­als and insects. All process steps, start­ing from the raw mate­r­i­al, through the devel­op­ment of new meat-like tex­tures, to the hygien­ic pro­duc­tion of mar­ket-ready meat alter­na­tives, can be mapped on a lab­o­ra­to­ry and pilot scale. New prod­uct ideas are devel­oped direct­ly in the com­pa­ny’s own food pilot plant and then sub­ject­ed to ana­lyt­i­cal test­ing. Tai­lor-made food ingre­di­ents with a focus on holis­tic raw mate­r­i­al uti­liza­tion as well as indi­vid­ual solu­tions for auto­mat­ed process­es offer the answers to the chal­lenges of tomor­row’s meat-pro­cess­ing food indus­try and the food trade — also and espe­cial­ly for medi­um-sized companies.