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Study and design of a multiproduct plant of vegetable beverages

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Treballs Finals de Màster d'Enginyeria Química, Facultat de Química, Universitat de Barcelona. Curs: 2021-2022. Tutores: Alicia Maestro Garriga, Esther Chamarro Aguilera

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The current project is focused on the development of several plant-based beverages in a multiproduct plant. The high percentage of lactose intolerant people, the great contribution of livestock to global warming and the increasing cow’s milk allergies makes it crucial to find an alternative to the classical cow milk. Furthermore, people are becoming more aware about their fitness and lifestyle and these types of beverages are perceived as healthier as bovine milk, gaining importance in the market. Other reasons to bet for these types of products are their sustainability and their impact on the environment. As bovine milk needs a lot of water and huge areas of land for its production, plant-based milks don’t require such amounts of water and land. In addition, CO2 emissions are another problem of cow’s milk and another reason why people decided to change to vegetable beverages.
This work is based on the development of formulated products, including all steps of this procedure: market study, product conceptualization, quality criteria, product formulation, design the manufacturing process and a scheduling to plan the production.
Three different types of plant-based milks have been selected to produce due to their popularity and consumption here in Catalonia. These beverages are soya milk, almond milk and oat milk. There is a general production process for all types of milk but obviously modifications have been made depending on the raw material used and the aims of the present thesis.
Two main quality criteria have been stablished to make this product especially appealing, which are their nutritional value and the flavor. When it comes to flavor, lipoxygenase and its oxidation reaction plays an important role when designing the production process and specially the equipment. In the present work one of the aims is to avoid the activation of this enzyme to improve the final flavor of the milk. On the other hand, to launch an alternative to cow’s milk, the substitute must have similar qualities in terms of nutritional value. Depending on the raw material, amounts of these nutrients differ from each other but in all of them there is a specific way to make the addition of nutrients in order to enrich the beverages.
Finally, to plan the production and operate properly it has been made a scheduling. Firstly, a batch size of 6000kg is stablished according to the total production wanted per year, the way milks are delivered and considering a production unit of six carboards of one liter of milk each. Afterwards, time required for each stage is estimated to plan the number of batches carried out every month. In this amount of time, it is included not only the main operation but also other operations such as the charging of the product or the cleaning. Taking into consideration the time and the total production to be carried out, it is estimated how to operate in the plan.

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Study and design of a multiproduct plant of vegetable beverages

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Estudio y diseño de una planta multiproducto de bebidas vegetales