ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING OF PROTEIN SNACK FOODS FROM ELECTROSTATICALLY ENRICHED PROTEIN FRACTIONS PREPARED FROM LEGUMES AND CEREALS

The long-term goal of this research is to develop a dry or chemical-free tribo-electrostatic separation (TES) approach for fractionation of a variety of starch-rich legumes and cereals into protein and starch-enriched fractions suitable for not only traditional food preparation processes, but also for extrusion-based 3D food printing technology.The integration of TES and 3D food printing technologies will offer an eco-friendly and sustainable solution not only to deal with a growing demand for food, but also to fabricate high-quality and nutritious food products with mass customization. The following specific objectives have been selected as the first critical steps towards my long-term goal.1)Objective 1 - Examine the tribo-charging behavior of single-component protein and starch particles along with their binary mixtures.2)Objective 2 - Investigate the classification behavior of starch-rich legumes and cereals into protein- and starch-enriched fractions through TES.3)Objective 3 - Evaluate the functional properties of the resulting protein-rich fractions for different food processing systems.4)Objective 4 - Assess the extrudability and printability of the pastes prepared from tribo-electrostatically enriched protein fractions.