The application of innovative food technologies often fails due to production related or technical hurdles. The project i³-food starts here and developed concepts for industrial implementation for various technologies.

In the i³-food project, a consortium looked at the opportunities and bar-riers of three food technologies and explored their implementation. These are the pulsed electric field method, high-pressure thermal sterilization and a low-shear extrusion process. As part of a foresight analysis, the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe/Ger-many, developed three roadmaps that illustrate the potentials and obstacles to these food technologies.

The planetary roller extrusion process that has been considered is a relatively new food technology which is used, among other things, in the processing of chocolate. The aim was to transfer the advantages of this process to the production of ice cream. In conventional screw extruders, control of important parameters such as product temperature or shear rate is often difficult, which can lead to quality losses. The project therefore used a low-speed planetary roller extruder with temperature, pressure and density sensors to better monitor the ice cream manufacturing process. This not only saves time and energy, but also produces a creamier ice cream. This is due to the reduced ice crystals that form in this process without the addition of sugar. As the roadmap shows, the technology could lead to more diversified products by 2025 and beyond. More at: http://i3food.eu/ and http://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/isi-en/v/projekte/i3-food.php