Enjoying the full taste of sausage, even with less salt

Most people eat too much salt. Five to six grams per day are more than sufficient. However, people usually ingest twice that amount each day. We do not, however, have a lot of room to control how much salt we ingest. The reason for this is that we consume most of the salt through processed food, such as bread, cheese or meat products. The Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Freising, Germany, is working on ways to reduce the salt content in food, without having this negatively affect the taste.

“Most of the salt we consume does not even land on our taste buds. It is simply being swallowed,” explains Christian Zacherl of the IVV. He wanted to improve this, together with his colleagues from the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI in Freiburg. “We’ve developed a computer-supported simulation model that simulates how the taste of food is set free in the mouth,” says Dr. Martin Steinhauser of EMI. They checked the distribution of salt when chewing boiled sausage with this new method. The result is that the arrangement of the salt portions in Frankfurters or Lyoners sausages affects how the salt is tasted. “The more unevenly the salt is distributed in the sausage, the saltier it tastes,” says Zacherl. Many types of sausages could do less salt without losing in taste. The researchers want to fine-tune their simulation model even further to be able to create custom-made recipes for healthy food in the future.

Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV
Giggenhauser Straße 35 | 85354 Freising | www.ivv.fraunhofer.de
Contact: Christian Zacherl | Phone +49 8161 491-426 | christian.zacherl@ivv.fraunhofer.de
Press: Karin Agulla | Phone +49 8161 491-120 | karin.agulla@ivv.fraunhofer.de

Algae and crustaceans in the ship’s tank

The danger of introducing non-native organisms into an eco-system via a ship’s ballast water has been known for a long time. Millions of tons of water from ballast tanks flow into the North Sea and the Baltic Sea every year. This way algae, mussels and crustaceans from foreign shores end up in waters off the islands of Sylt, Amrum and Fehmarn. Most of them do not survive in the new environment. But if they do, it can cause great  ecological damage and cost billions of euros. To prevent this from happening in the future the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted the Ballast Water Management Convention in February 2004, which, however, has not yet come into force. For this reason, many ship-owners have not installed a ballast water treatment system (BWTS) on board of their vessels to this day.

New legislation passed in the USA last year might get things moving again now. According to the Ballast Water Discharge Standard of the US Coast Guard, the first vessels must ensure  that they are not introducing non-native species into U.S. waters from December 2013 on. This basically means that a BWTS must be installed on board when a North American port is called. Currently, there are several BWTS available from different manufacturers, each having its own strengths and weaknesses. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain an overview of the market for BWTS and identify the best system for a ship or a fleet. The Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and  Services CML helps ship-owners in this selection process. Based on market studies and the shipowner’s requirements profile it identifies suitable systems. Subsequently CML offers a structured decision making approach and prepares fact-based recommendations. Thus it enables ship-owners to choose the optimum BWTS.

Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services CML
Schwarzenbergstraße 95D | 21073 Hamburg | www.cml.fraunhofer.de
Contact: Lutz Kretschmann | Phone +49 40 42878-6118 | lutz.kretschmann@cml.fraunhofer.de
Press: Claudia Bosse | Phone +49 40 42878-4476 | claudia.bosse@cml.fraunhofer.de

Using the waste from olives several times over

Olive oil is tasty and healthy. However, liquid and solid waste materials are created during the production process that contains polyphenols. These aromatic compounds are of natural origin, but that is one of the reasons why waste products from the olive oil industry have a considerable negative environmental impact. For this reason, the waste must be disposed of in a complicated process. Partners from research and industry examined how to utilize the residues in the “En-X-Olive” project, which is sponsored by the EU. The idea is to first extract usable substances to use them as natural antioxidants in the cosmetics or foodstuffs industry. The remaining biomass should be utilized to create energy.

Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart are checking to see if the wastes are suitable for providing biogas. Initial laboratory-scale checks show that the liquids as well as the solid residues provide valuable energy. The residual wastes were fermented using a process developed at IGB during which the substrates are mixed optimally in the reactors during the fermentation process. Up to 720 liters of biogas were created from solid waste within 20 to 30 days per kilogram of organic dry substances, depending on the composition of the respective waste portion. For the liquid wastes, the researchers were able to prove 680 to 980 liters of biogas per kilogram of organic dry substances within 10 days. A traditional biogas facility with corn silage provides 680 liters of biogas per kilogram of organic dry substances. Even the fermentation residues can be utilized, for example, as organic fertilizer.

Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB
Nobelstr. 12 | 70569 Stuttgart | www.igb.fraunhofer.de
Contact: Prof. Dr. Dieter Bryniok | Phone +49 711 970-4211 | dieter.bryniok@igb.fraunhofer.de
Press: Claudia Vorbeck | Phone +49 711 970-4031 | claudia.vorbeck@igb.fraunhofer.de