30.2 FOOD ENGINEERING AND CHEMICAL
ENGINEERING
Major advances in food engineering in the twentieth century came from transfer of
knowledge and technology from related fields such as chemical or mechanical
engineering and physics. The impact of these technologies was largely at the macroscale
through the adoption and adaptation of unit operations, mechanization, and
automation of processes; use of protective packaging; etc., all of which led to the
transformation of an artisan production into the high-volume and reliable food
industry of today. This chapter postulates that, in the coming decades, materials
science and biology will have a higher impact in food engineering and that the
relevant scale of analysis will change to the submicron level. Modeling and optimization
of current and future food processes will not only depend on better mathematical
algorithms or faster and more powerful computers, but on a clearer comprehension
of the underlying phenomena at the appropriate relevant scales.