ISBN 9783843936637

978-3-8439-3663-7, Reihe Lebensmitteltechnologie

Anja Eggert
Fast laboratory micro-CT of food foams - Principle, experimental setup for foam characterization and stability

145 Seiten, Dissertation Universität Hohenheim Stuttgart-Hohenheim (2018), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

Understanding the behavior of foams is of great interest for modern food industry, because foam structure influences product properties such as sensory and stability. For this task at hand fast X-ray micro computed tomography (µCT) is a very promising technique. µCT has become an important tool for quantitative characterization of cellular structures over the years, because it is a non-invasive 3D imaging technique, which can scan samples multiple times under different conditions.

In this work a µCT setup is presented that overcomes the limitations of conventional CT systems concerning measurement time, motion artefacts and climate conditions to provide a quantitative method even suited for characterization of instable food foams to observe structural changes over time.

The developed method is applied on solid, semi-solid and instable food foams. From the 3D data quantitative geometric information of the microstructure were measured directly and with sufficiently large statistics, serving as input to numerical modelling of the structural dynamics.

The results of foam characterization using fast laboratory µCT were compared with measurements executed with synchrotron radiation as the high-end technology in this field. In addition these measurements allow for a deeper insight into the dynamic foam processes.

The information generated in this studies were used in multiple projects and co-operations for a better understanding of the relation between the production and the structure of foamed material in order to design products with desired attributes and optimize their quality.