Food and Beverages

Food and beverages can be comprised of thousands of different materials. It is important to know the properties of consumables in order to ensure that it is both safe and desirable to ingest. At Ebatco, a team of professionals will run the material tests needed to have confidence in manufactureded food or beverage. Our professional report will numerically and graphically show accurate results for all desired tests.

In today’s world it is possible to ensure your product is meeting the customer standards using laboratory testing techniques. This is also true of products and the food and beverage industry. When engineering principles are applied to creating high quality foods, it is possible to test different properties such as shelf life. At Ebatco, we can perform tests on consumable products and verify the desired characteristics. Our skilled scientists can test for a multitude of physical, chemical, and other tests on consumable products to make sure the product meets industry standards and performs to the best of its abilities.

Developing new recipes can be one of the most difficult things in the food and beverage industry, especially if customers are loyal to the current products. However, before a new product can hit the shelves, it must be tested for shelf life, stability, contaminants, density, viscosity, particle size, particle distribution, and more. The experts at Ebatco produce quality results in an efficient manner to assure consumers that the food or beverage is made of quality ingredients. This can help prevent consumer dissatisfaction, illness, lawsuits, and any other undesirable outcomes after the product is commercialized. If you have any questions about the services or instrumentation available at Ebatco, feel free to call or email and a member of our team will be able to further assist you.

Applications

For more information please read our application notes:
Interfacial Tension between Soap Water and Vegetable Oil
Particle Sizing of Coffee Grounds
Particle Sizing of Tap and Bottled Water

Particle Sizing of Coffee Grounds

Coffee plays an important role in people’s daily life. To brew coffee, ground coffee beans are immersed in hot water to extract the flavor. Different sizes of coffee grounds are needed for various brewing methods. A French press, for example, uses coffee grounds that are very coarse, while the coffee grounds required for Turkish coffee are very fine. The grounds used for drip and Cappuccino makers fall in between those used in a French press and for Turkish coffee. Controlling the coffee ground particle size distribution is important in extracting the best flavor for the applied brewing method. Undesirable size distributions can lead to over extraction or under extraction of the coffee grounds, which affects the taste of the brew.

Measuring the size of the particles in coffee grounds can be accomplished using particle size analysis based on light scattering technique. Light refracted by a particle creates a scattering angle unique to its shape and size. The intensity of the scattering light is measured by an array of light detectors at different angles. The Mie Theory is the preferred method used to relate the measured scattering angle to the particle diameter. The Mie theory takes the complex refractive index of the particle into account when measuring the particle size. Nonetheless, in applications involving particles with high light absorption or with sizes significantly larger than the laser wavelength, the Fraunhofer Theory can be used to measure particle size. The Fraunhofer Theory is a simplified form of the Mie Theory; relating the scattering angle to the diameter of the particle and the light wavelength using the following equation:

where θ is the measured scattering angle, λ is the wavelength of the laser light and d is the diameter of the particle. The complex refractive index of the particle required for the Mie Theory is not needed for the Fraunhofer Theory.

The LS 13 320 Laser Diffraction Particle Size Analyzer, manufactured by Beckman Coulter, is capable of measuring particles suspended in a liquid medium or in a dry powder form by using specially designed sample modules. The module capable of measuring dry powders is the Tornado Dry Powder System (DPS). The Tornado DPS is capable of measuring particle size of dry powders from 2mm to 0.4µm without a liquid medium. The LS 13 320 is designed to be compliant with ISO 13320, the standard pertaining to particle size analysis through laser diffraction.

The data presented here are three commercially available coffee brands, Folgers, Starbucks and Dunn Brothers. The Folgers and Starbucks coffee grounds came packaged from a local supermarket. The Dunn Bros. coffee grounds were freshly ground from a local franchise. All three brands are for a drip coffee maker. Using the LS 13 320 and Tornado DPS, the coffee grounds were sized. The results presented in Table 1 and Figure 1 show differences in size distribution among the prepackaged coffee grounds (Folgers and Starbucks) and the freshly ground coffee grounds (Dunn Bros.).