Intelligent potato frying: Time to say goodbye to the “good old” processing strategies

Abstract

• The appearance of intelligent potato friers is imminent. • Computer vision is promising in quality inspection of raw and processed potatoes. • New emerging pre-treatment technologies increase quality of potato chips. • Dynamic optimization is superior to static optimization in potato frying process. • Fully fledged Digital Twins will facilitate predictive control of product quality. Potato chips production is a traditional food process. To achieve uniform product quality, raw materials are usually rigorously sorted. Traditionally, the process is conducted in a single stage approach leading to high quality losses. Recently, dynamically optimized frying processes have been found to result in higher product quality. Consequently, industrial continuous deep-fat fryers convey potato disks through several zones pre-set at different temperatures. However, these improved systems still do not take the variabilities in frying kinetics among potatoes into consideration. To address this issue and decrease uncertainties in end-product quality, frying conditions of each zone must be optimized, physiochemical properties of the various raw tubers and their frying kinetics taking into account. This paper, therefore, presents a novel approach for an intelligent frying process with embedded computer vision systems providing continuous monitoring of product quality and, therefore, facilitate dynamic control of frying conditions in order to meet desired quality attributes in the final product. An extensive literature review of the key physiochemical attributes of raw potato tubers is presented, followed by an introduction to novel pre-treatment technologies, and the importance of optimal frying conditions. An overview of the potentials for using computer vision systems for the assessment of said quality criteria is given, followed by a detailed description of the envisioned frying process. The paper concludes that the realization of intelligent frying processes necessitates the development of fully fledged digital twins of the process and the products, combining physics based and data driven modelling with real time sensing and control. Terminology: Chips refer to thin slices of potato while French fries refers to wedges/stripes.