Upon completion of the module, students should be able to:

- Learning Outcome 1 (LO1): Critically analyse the operating principles and engineering sciences associated with key unit operations in the food and bioprocessing industries, specifically those related to separation processes, such as sedimentation, centrifugation, distillation, membrane separation, liquid-liquid extraction and evaporation.

- LO2: Apply the principles of mass and energy balances to analyse and design specific unit operations employed in the food and bioprocessing industries.

- LO3: Use graphical and numerical methods to solve advanced material and energy balance calculations for integrated food and bioprocessing systems.

- LO4: Apply the engineering sciences learned on the unit operations to the analysis of a microalgae biorefinery system (as a case study of novel food system) and the experimental design and investigation of microalgae cultivation.

The module content is as follows:

1. Unit Operations in Food Processing
- Fundamental principles of different separation processes
- Analysis of biorefinery involving multiple unit operations

2. Microalgae
- Overview of industry and roles in bioeconomy
- Different unit operations for cultivation, and biorefinery processing of microalgae
- Safety and risks associated with novel food ingredients

3. Sedimentation
- Laminar and turbulent flows
- Stoke’s Law and terminal velocity

4. Centrifugation
- Operating principles and rate of separation
- Centrifugation for liquid/liquid separation
- Different centrifugation units in food processing

5. Distillation
- Operating principles and design of distillation column
- Mc-Cabe Thiele’s graphical method to design a distillation column
- Stage efficiency and reflux ratio

6. Membrane Separation
- Operating principles and definition
- Different types of membrane processes and configuration (e.g. reverse osmosis)
- Transmembrane pressure and membrane area
- Membrane fouling and mitigation

7. Counter-Current Extraction
- Two-phase extraction
- Partition coefficient and equilibrium stages
- Mass balance to scale extraction column

8. Evaporation
- Single-effect evaporator
- Mass and energy balance to calculate heat exchange size
- Different types of evaporators (e.g. falling film)
- Multiple-effect evaporator

9. Laboratory Session in Microalgae

Not applicable to this module.

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

Formative feedback after the completion of each assignment