INNOVATIVE STRUCTURING-LAYERING TECHNOLOGY FOR LARGE-SCALE PRODUCTION OF FISH ANALOGS

The overal goalof this projectis to improve the sustainability and healthiness of the food supply by advancing the knowledge required to createhigh-quality plant-based food.The overal objective of this project is todevelop an innovative structuring-layering process based on the coating technology that can be used to create next-generation fish analogs that closely resemble the major characteristics of real fish muscle texture.The following specific aim will be addressed:Aim 1: Identify and characterization of functional bio-inks. In this aim, we will test and characterize physicochemical properties of various potential functional plant ingredients including solubility, structure-forming, gelation, rheology, and the phase separation regions between the mixture of bi-polymer system.Aim 2: Identify feasibility for design parameters and processing regions for laminating protein fibers embedded biopolymer sheets To facilitate the process development, computational aided engineering (CAE) will be used to identify feasible design parameters of the die as well as processing regions based on critical relations between process and product that are difficult to access experimentally. High-fidelity numerical simulations will be conducted to estimate internal structure formation and orientation, multi-layer lamination process. The determined processing region and design parameters will be used to guide experiments in Aim 3 for fabricating fish analogs.Aim 3: Fish analog fabrication and texture characterizationIn this aim, we will build a bench-top coating rig that combines a slot die coating and an adjustable die slip. Following the feasibility region obtained by the simulation in Aim 2, we will create fish analogs using bio-inks identified in Aim 1. We will evaluate the internal structure of the fish analogs, as well as their their texture profile.A structure to texture relation will be established. In addition, the obtained texture profiles will be compared against our previously determined texture profile of real fish meat and iteratively improve the bio-ink formula and process design.