Why Choose Food Research Lab's FRL as Your Food Product Development (FPD) Consultant and Partner?

There are several options in almost every product area in today’s market, and the difficulty is in coming up with unique items that stand out and connect with customers. Food Research Lab's Food Research Lab (FRL) takes a holistic approach to creating food and beverage products. We define, demographically target, and build effective goods through a sequential process for category selection and comprehension. The client can visit the lab to learn the process. We offer unlimited rounds of revisions to ensure customer satisfaction. The final product prototype, along with the documentation process, including the video (through email), will be shipped to the client, and in case the client is not satisfied with the video, a food technology consultant will visit the place for the product demo at the client’s costs.

What are the different forms that you deliver the Food Product Formulations?

The food industry is witnessing a new form of consumption. Keeping that in mind, we can formulate the products in the form of ready-to-eat, ready-to-drink, ready-to-mix, ready-to-serve, and ready-to-cook food products. We use ingredients that offer an added value to the development and improve its indulgence and sustainability in terms of its functional ingredients, plant-based food dyes, and natural preservatives with a clean label.

What are the sectors Food Research Lab cover?

We cover a wide range of sectors such as soups, sauces and dips, chips, tortillas, dry beverage powder, plant-based products, masalas, puddings, instant mixes and many more.

How is sensory testing been carried out?

Our sensory examination leads to the precise formulation and recipe recommendations. We develop data-driven design models based on sensory research and customer insights. The fact-based design methodology used by Food Research Lab reduces risk and gives our clients market confidence while cutting development time in half. With our dedicated sensory lab facility, our team takes satisfaction in creating and optimizing successful products in the marketplace, generating a favourable return on investment, and developing brand advocates.

Refractance Window Drying

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Refractance Window Drying

INTRODUCTION

A novel drying method for producing high-quality powders, flakes or sheets from fruits, vegetables or herbs concentrate in an efficient time and energy.
MCD technologies ( Tacoma, Washington) designed the Refractance window dryer, patented by Richard Magoon in 1989.
Sun drying and hot air drying cause significant loss of colour, making the product less appealing to consumers and resulting in loss of nutrient content and rehydration ability.
Drum drying, developed for liquid products, causes severe quality loss in the product due to exposure to high temperatures (120-170°C) [1].
Spray-dried products often suffer from high volatile losses due to atomization and high air temperature of 150-300°C (although the temperature of most particles may remain at the wet bulb temperature of the air), as well as significant nutrient losses [2].
Freeze drying is a commercial process that can produce high-quality dehydrated products with good retention of shape, flavour, colour, nutrient content, and rehydration ability. However, the cost of producing freeze-dried products is very high, up to ten times the cost of using forced hot air drying.
Refractance window drying helps address the problems that occur with other drying methods.
The process uses 50 – 70% less cost and more than 50% less energy than freeze-drying [3].

WORKING PRINCIPLE

Refractance Window (RW) drying technique uses hot water as the source of heat.
Mylar sheet acts as a medium which transmits IR radiation and conducts heat to the product to be dried [4].

Figure 1: Schematic view design of RW [2]

COMPARISON WITH OTHER TECHNIQUES:

Figure 2: Mango powder at different particle slices obtained from different drying methods[5]

ADVANTAGES

Lower installation and operation costs
Shorter drying times
Reduced Nutrient loss(Vitamins, Carotenoids, Antioxidants, Ascorbic acid)
Reduced Microbial activity (E.coli, Innocula microbial activities)
Increased shelf life
No cross-contamination occurs.
Refractance window drying requires less capital and 50% less energy than the freeze drier.
A significant reduction of microbial load can be observed with refractance window heating.
The dried food products had better quality with RW drying than other methods. [2].

CONCLUSION

The refractance window drying method uses low temperatures, at less time and provides better colour, flavour, nutritional and textural properties in fruit leather production [4].
Concerning microbial reduction ability, Refractance Window achieved at least reductions for total aerobic counts, coliforms, E. coli, and L. innocua microbial activities [2].
The studies conducted on the Refractance Window drying technology show that the system demonstrates high retention of product quality (colour, vitamins, and antioxidants) when compared with other conventional drying methods.
These attributes of RW drying make it suitable for processing of high-value foods, nutraceuticals, and food supplements where high standards of quality and safety are required. Additionally, RW drying technology can be used in parts of the world where effective drying methods such as freeze drying have been challenging to implement due to their high cost [1].