Soft Sensor for Snack Food Textural Properties Using On-Line Vibrational Measurements

• Published in: Industrial & engineering chemistry research 2007-01, Vol.46 (3), p.864-870
• Main Authors: Bruwer, Mark-John, MacGregor, John. F, Bourg, Wilfred M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Chemical engineering; Exact sciences and technology; Food engineering; Food industries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects
• ISSN: 0888-5885; 1520-5045
• DOI: 10.1021/ie060832r

It is common in the food industry to produce solid-phase products that are not amenable to ready characterization on the production line via traditional on-line instrumentation. This motivates research into novel sensor technologies. In this work, an on-line vibrational sensor is used to develop a soft sensor for real-time prediction of product texture in a commercial snack food process. This in turn enables real-time multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) and indicates the opportunity for automated feedback control. An accelerometer is used to record the vibrational signature generated by a snack food product falling onto a metal surface. The frequency distribution of the acoustic signature is obtained via the discrete Fourier transform. This provides a predictor space from which the textural properties are modeled using partial least-squares (PLS). Excellent results are obtained, with R 2 upward of 96% on an independent test set for two properties that fully span the texture space of this product.