The appearance of a food product greatly influences consumer
perception and overbaked products may look too dark and under-baked
products too light. Typcially, manufacturers utilize off-line
sample testing to determine the degree of bake, which can be time
consuming and does not provide instant outputs to a PLC or control
system.
NDC’s approach is to combine Degree of Bake measurement with its
traditional NIR on-line measurements such as moisture or oil
content to provide simultaneous measurement of all parameters
in a single instrument.
The Degree of Bake measurement is offered as an option for the
MM710e Foods Gauge and is applicable to
a wide variety of snack food processes, such as:
The MM710e monitors the changes in appearance associated with the
Maillard (browning) reaction as a result of the baking process,
detecting the changes in the brownness of a baked product in
much the same way as the human eye .
The gauge is typically located at the exit of a conveying oven.
This enables optimization of downstream process efficiency by
maintaining moisture content within desired limits, while
monitoring the degree of bake.
To learn more about the other Applications for the the
Foods Industry from NDC Infrared Engineering, please visit our
"Applications"
section.