Acquisition and Evaluation of Process and Quality Data in Companies of the Foodstuff Industry

Abstract

For Canola oil, basically all phosphatides have to be converted into the lyso-phosphatide. In comparison to the other oils the phosphorous content in the first stage is nearly the same as the content of the crude oil, so that probably no coagulation and precipitation of the phosphatides have occurred when adding the citric acid. But also for this oil, the phosphorous content in the full-degummed oil is less than 10 ppm P.As an example for continuous operation, the residual phosphorous content in the fully-degummed oil is shown in Fig. 4 for May 1997 in a 400 tpd plant. A series of six continuous stirred tank reactors is also installed in this plant. Despite a few exceptions, a phosphorous content of less than 10 ppm P could be achieved. A deviation of up to 15 ppm P can be tolerated without an increase in bleaching earth consumption. ConclusionsThe enzymatic degumming of seed oils is a suitable process for the physical refining, i.e., bleaching ± deacidification by distillation ± deodorizing. The phosphatides in the oil are converted by enzymatic catalyzed hydrolysis to less than 10 ppm P. Apart from the reduction in waste water from the soapstock splitting, an enhancement in product yield and a reduction in operating costs can also be observed [10].Small and middle-sized companies mainly represent the foodstuff industry in the young federal states. These companies have to react in a quick and flexible way to changing market and supply conditions, shorter product life cycles, as well as increased customer requirements on quality and diversity of products. Among others, improvement of acquisition, management, and complex evaluation of quality and the process are goals from the information technology point of view. Efficient solutions which are based to a large extent on existing equipment are in demand.The operational implementation of such a solution is described by means of an information system for the most important production range of the Dr. Quendt Backwaren GmbH. The system enables automatic acquisition of process data, documentation of sensory product quality tests, and a combined evaluation of this information.Because of the implementation of a quality assurance system and the continuously increasing production of the main product, the company sought possibilities for implementing a computer-aided data acquisition and evaluation system. The following issues resulted from this: l Process visualization: on-the-spot display of the important process values all at a glance', trend evaluation, and review.l Data analysis: selection of important process variables, influence of the variables on the product quality, specification of optimum values for the important process variables.l Quality assurance: continuous product testing, quick evaluation of the test results, traceability in the case of complaints.