Plant agro-resources processing platform

Last update: 16 July 2020

The Plant agro-resources processing platform is a transversal tools to support the research activities of the JRU IATE by providing staff and equipment.

Aims

Plant raw materials processed on the platform have different origins (cereals or lignocellulosic materials). They are intended to be used as food, energy, biomaterials or biomolecules. This diversity allows the pooling of knowledge and practices and a comprehensive view of the biorefinery of plants keeping in the mind the competition of food valorizations with other valorizations.

  • Study, understanding and optimization of dry fractionation and structuration processes of plant agro-resources
  • Development of new products for food and non-food applications.
  • Controlling energy consumption on equipment

Facilities

The platform is located in a special building since 2008. It gathers traditional food processing equipment and innovative technologies to process mass ranging from g to kg in batch and continue. Most of them are instrumented to understand the processes. A large set of equipment covering a wide range of unit operations is available. The area is organized into different subspaces devoted to dry fractionation of cereals and lignocellulosic biomass, structuration processing of food and bio-based materials.

Dry fractionation of cereals

  • Traditional durum mill at pilot scale (flow rate : approximately 150 kg per hour)
  • Micro-mill for the measurement or the energy consumption
  • Roller mills;
  • Sieving processes ; air classification;
  • Debraning; grading machine

Dry biorefinery of lignocellulosic biomass

  • Polyvalent reactor for pretreatment, cryogenic grinding
  • Cutting mill, ball mill, Impact mill, pin mill, jet mill
  • Forced sieving, air classification, electrostatic separation

Structuration processes of food products

  • Mixing, kneading
  • Extrusion; Pasta making lines; Agglomeration processes, Asian noddle processing
  • Drying, baking; Test chamber for thermal treatment combining steam under pressure and microwave

Shaping processes for biomaterials packaging

  • Mixing
  • Twin screw extruder
  • Casting
  • Hot press

Characterization of powders and products

  • Furnace ash, ovens
  • Laser granulometry, microscopy
  • Texture analyzer
  • Equipment for the measurement of mechanical properties

Last update: 16 July 2020