Abstract
During industrial heat treatment of food products, the core temperature is a critical control parameter with respect to food quality and in particular food safety. This paper presents a novel prototype system based on near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) that enables continuous in-line and non-contact monitoring of core temperature in sausages during heat treatment in an industrial oven. NIRS interaction measurements in the 761–1081 nm region were used to probe the interior of the sausages. NIRS calibrations for the estimation of core temperature were developed for three different sausage types in the temperature range 60–90 °C. The best accuracy obtained for core temperature with NIRS was about ±1.0 °C. Results indicate that calibrations for core temperature can be transferred between different sausage types, which will ease implementation of such a method. The method was successfully tested in a modern sausage production plant.
Highlights
During industrial heat treatment of food products, the core temper ature is a critical control parameter with respect to food quality and in particular food safety
The core tempera ture of heat-treated products is usually the most critical and needs to be measured using an insertion thermometer. This procedure is insufficient since it leaves the producer with a large degree of uncertainty; only very few products of the total production volume are checked, and, due to manual insertion, it is not guaranteed that the measurement is taken at the core of the product
Core temperature for the calibration sausages varied rather evenly in the range 58–85 C for Grill and meat sausage (Meat), and in the range 57–92 C for Cheese. These temperature spans were wider than what is relevant during industrial production of sausages, but suit able for making NIR calibrations that could work well in the relevant span
Summary
During industrial heat treatment of food products, the core temper ature is a critical control parameter with respect to food quality and in particular food safety. The core tempera ture of heat-treated products is usually the most critical and needs to be measured using an insertion thermometer This procedure is insufficient since it leaves the producer with a large degree of uncertainty; only very few products of the total production volume are checked, and, due to manual insertion, it is not guaranteed that the measurement is taken at the core of the product. Due to these limitations, current practice is to over-cook the food to ensure that everything has reached the critical core temperature. The ideal system should be able to log the temperature in the entire production volume
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