Projects
Pectin structure modifications for targeted emulsifying and emulsion stabilizing properties KU Leuven
One of the major trends in transforming fruit and vegetable raw materials into food products is to minimize the production of waste streams and/or to valorize such waste streams into high added value ingredients for use in foods. Large volume waste streams are available from e.g. the juice industry, and more recently from manufacturing natural food colorants (a fast growing part of the ingredient industry). The current project aims at optimal ...
Implementation of flow technology for continuous microencapsulation through emulsion based techniques KU Leuven
Microcapsules are spherical particles containing a liquid core of active ingredients, protected by a shell material. The release of core material is controlled by the shell material. These principle of microencapsulation, sparked the advent of an extensive range of new controlled release products. As these products have flooded the market, the demand of large scale production methods has increased. In both product development and commercial ...
Particle engineering of protein-polysaccharide complexes for oil in water emulsion stabilization Ghent University
This work aims to establish novel food emulsifiers. Hereby, stable colloidal nanoparticles will be obtained by protein-polysaccharide electrostatic complexation and heat treatment. These functional food-grade nanoparticles are expected to have some advantages over classical emulsifiers, such as being stable to oral consumption conditions, enabling the controlled release of bioactive compounds and allowing the stabilization of complex food ...
Plant protein-based particles as food foam and emulsion stabilizing agents KU Leuven
Foams and emulsions give texture and mouthfeel to food products such as sauces, meringues, coffee foams and many more. They usually consist of finely dispersed air bubbles or oil droplets in an aqueous phase. Such dispersions are often stabilized by animal proteins, such as those of egg white or milk. Such proteins position themselves at the surface of air bubbles or oil droplets, thereby preventing the dispersions from separating into two ...
On-demand Interfacial Coverage and Composition using Double Emulsion Templating KU Leuven
Emulsions are dispersions of an immiscible liquid into another liquid. We encounter them on daily basis, such as in food and personal care products. However, emulsions are thermodynamically unstable due to the high cost of the interface between the droplets and matrix fluid. For this reason, emulsions tend to coarsen over time by morphological processes such as coalescence and Ostwald ripening to reduce their interfacial energy. Therefore, ...
Chemistry informed machine learning in emulsion polymerization processes and products Ghent University
Machine learning (ML) systems continue to revolutionize many aspects of daily life, but despite their immense potential have yet to impact significantly in polymer science. One major issue that is hindering the more widespread use of machine learning in polymer science, and many other physical sciences, lies in the challenges in amassing sufficient data to efficiently train machine learning models. This in itself is not necessarily a problem, ...
KEKULEU: Designing an innovative oil-in-water emulsion for tailored control of nutrient digestion in the gastrointestinal tract of poultry KU Leuven
Meat production is commonly linked with a negative environmental impact such as the emission of greenhouse gasses, water and soil pollution, ... One possible strategy to reduce this impact is by decreasing the feed conversion ratio, of for example broiler feed, by improving the nutrient digestibility. This can be achieved by applying feed structural design for a tailored and improved digestion in broilers. Since lipids are an important aspect ...
Multiscale design of radical polymerization in emulsion Ghent University
An improved understanding of mesoscale phenomena (radical exit and entry, phase partitioning, surfactant role, ionic stabilization, particle nucleation, growth and aggregation or coalescence) in radical polymerization in aqueous mini-, micro and macro-emulsions using both experimental and computational methods, targeting improved properties of nanostructured materials produced in environmentally benign solvents such as water.
Advanced set-up for emulsion polymerization Ghent University
The requested equipment allows to obtain fundamental characteristics and insights for emulsion polymerizaiton, an important chemical production process and to synthesize new functional polymeric materials under industrially relevant conditions, due to the inherent flexibility with respect to control over reaction temperature, mixing and feeding rates. It will allows to strengthen the University in the research field of polymer reaction ...