The teaching is organized as follows:

Learning outcomes

Aim of the course is to provide the students the basic knowledge related to the unit operations utilized in the food industry. At the end of the course the students should be able to break up a production process in its basic units and evaluate as well as calculate the working parameters involved in each unit operation.
Through an active participation to the practical numerical exercises, students will acquire the required knowledge and skills for the correct management of the various unit operations. Furthermore, participating to guided visits to food production plants or to factories manufacturing equipment for the food industries, the students will meet and discuss with technical specialists and will be able to face the problems related to the management of the production processes and also of their scale-up.

Program

Classification of the unit operations. - Process formalization through symbolic models - Dimensional analysis - General definition of transport phenomena - Steady state and unsteady state mass and heat transfer - Mass and energy balance - Fundamentals of rheology - Fluid dynamics and pumps - Unit operations; milling, sieving, sedimentation, centrifugation, filtration, reverse osmosis, crystallization, evaporation, drying technology, homogenization, solvent extraction. Besides the suggested textbooks, some study material might also be provided by the lecturer.
Students will be guided to solve real problems that may occur in the food industry and will be guided to find practical answers by also solving numerical exercises. This will oblige the students to have a global approach to the various issues and to take care of all the possible interactions that may occur among the different components of the raw materials and the various unit operations. Within this frame, students will also participate to guided visits to food production plants or to factories manufacturing equipment for the food industry.

Bibliography

Examination Methods

Oral exam - Initially the student will be asked to discuss one of the topics of the course that he considered of the utmost interest. Afterwards, the lecturer will present a practical problem that may be faced in the real working life and will evaluate how the candidate will organize and utilize the scientific and technical skills acquired during the study to highlight a possible solution to the problem. In this way the student will be oriented to study for acquiring not a mere "theoretical knowledge" but a "practical" one. The student will be graded over a score of 30 points, being 18 the minimum score to pass the exam. No different evaluation modalities are planned for students who have attended or not the theoretical and/or the practical part of the course.
Students are not required to take a specific exam for the practical part of the course. However, the acquired knowledge and skills will be evaluated within the oral exam set for the theoretical part of the course, taking into account the students’ capability to adapt and use in the real productive world the acquired theoretical knowledge and skills.