Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-05-07

Electronic profiling of food and beverage odour for quality determinations Profile-qd

Objective

The main objective for this demonstration project is to manufacture and demonstrate a sensory array system for use in the food and drinks industry which overcomes the problems of water vapour interference, irreproducibility and lack of discrimination to volatile food components.

Over the last 1 - 2 years the food and beverage industry has been evaluating new types of instrumentation that use a number of gas sensors arranged in an array to mimic biological olfaction and thus create a digital profile of smell. However, the commercially available technology suffers from a number of serious drawbacks including: - A very high response to water vapour, leading to irreproducibility, lack of sensitivity and drift. - Manufacturability of the sensors used, particularly in batch to batch reproducibility. The initial conclusions of the industry about existing olfaction arrays is rather mixed, with great interest being shown in the potential of the method but little confidence in the available systems due to the problems described.

The objective of this project is to overcome the main problems by using the results of previously internally funded research which has produced several new types of water insensitive sensors based on new patented materials, discotic liquid crystals. The demonstration project aims to assemble beta-prototype instruments using the patented technology and to demonstrate the effective use in 'real' environments in a variety of food applications. This will be carried out by supplying the sensory array systems assembled by the technlogy producers within the project to a number of technology users. These will validate and demonstrate the technology in a variety of application areas and use the results generated to disseminate the methods to targetted extended audiences throughout the project lifetime. In addition to internal validation and dissemination through project hosted seminars, a series of demonstration plafform meetings will be arranged with Ministry Departments throughout the EC who are responsible for Food and Beverages at the National Level.

It is also intended to arrange miniproject site placements of beta+ prototypes with a carefully selected number of industrial parties. Such placements will have a supportive role in demonstrating the new technology.

Potentially this technology could have significant benefits in a large number of areas in the Food and Beverage industry including; - Rapid detection and identification of bacteria, leading to increases in quality and safety. Quality. Mistakes. Methods. - Operation of instrument by trained but unskilled personnel, therefore reduction in labour costs. Some of these application areas have been reported in the literature using the existing methods currently available. With the new type of sensor system it is expected that the reliability of the method can be improved significantly and commercial devices could result from the demonstration of the new discotic liquid crystal instruments to the industry sectors targetted.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

Data not available

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

DEM - Demonstration contracts

Coordinator

University of Leeds
EU contribution
No data
Address
175 WOODHOUSE LANE
LS2 3AR LEEDS
United Kingdom

See on map

Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (1)

My booklet 0 0