New technology offers ultra-fast shelf-life prediction
Manufacturers can determine the shelf-life of new drink products in record time using ‘microfluidic’ systems, according to a start-up firm specialising in the technology.
If you superheat a drink while it is flowing through microscopically small diameter pipes - so called ‘microfluidic’ systems - you can emulate its degradation over months and even years in a matter of minutes, claimed Mark Gilligan, who heads up the Dolomite Centre, a microfluidic application centre part-funded by the Department of Trade and Industry.
Dolomite had not actually targeted the food sector, but had a surge of interest from drinks manufacturers as they cottoned on to the potential of microfluidic systems for speeding up new product development work, he said.
“There is no substitute for putting a drink in a cupboard and monitoring what happens to it over time, but being able to accelerate the degradation process can give you a pretty good indication of what its shelf-life might be in the early stages of product development.”
He added: “The basic principle of microfluidic systems is that when you push things down microscopic tubes, they behave very differently. If you superheat a liquid while it is flowing in a microfluidic system, you can emulate a five-year degradation in an hour.”
Typically, food manufacturers heated things up in test tubes to 100°C to speed up the degradation process, he said. “We can superheat things to 300 degrees and run a series of experiments in quick succession way above the boiling points of these solutions. The fluid enters a microreactor, heats up in a second and cools down immediately. When you are dealing with things on a microscale, their physics change.”
He added: ”Our expertise is in manipulating fluids at a microscale; we are working with companies involved in everything from drug discovery to inkjet printing, soft drinks and shampoos.”
Based in Royston, the Dolomite Centre was formed in 2005 as a spin out from a company called Syrris, which specialises in flow chemistry and microreactor technology.
