LLA Instruments GmbH & Co. KGJustus-von-Liebig-Str. 9/11 Tel.: +49 30 6290790-0 www.lla-instruments.com12489 Berlin Fax: +49 30 6290790-10 mail@lla.de

Food & Feed AnALysIs By nIr

Analytical ImagingSorting

Quality Control

Quality Control & Sorting of Unprocessed Food & Feed

Detection of Foreign MaterialIdentification of Food Additives

figure 2: Camera picture and NIR identification of green beans and stems

figure 3: Camera picture and NIR identification of waltnut and nutshell

figure 1: NIR hyperspectral imaging camera uniSPEC1.7HSI

figure 4: Camera picture and NIR identification of potatoes and clay

Online Inspection of Unprocessed Goods

Strict guidelines and regulations in food industries result in a high demand for analytical control of raw materials and products. The analytical control is commonly provided by expensive and time-consuming laboratory-based methods. NIR spectroscopy is a fast and cost-efficient alternative for many applications. NIR Identification is not based on coloring or density differences but on differences in material composition on a molecular level. The NIR hyperspectral imaging camera uniSPEC1.7HSI is suitable for online NIR inspection in a food processing

plant. The spectrometer components can be easily integrated in existing industrial plants. Fresh produces such as fruit, vegetables, meat and fish or convenience and bakery products can be inspected and analysed. Both the detection of foreign materials and the identifica-tion of sub-standard goods by semi-quantitative analysis of nutrients are available. In addition to on-line analysis systems, LLA offers the compact hyperspectral scanning system ProScan-HSI as a turn-key solution for chemical imaging analysis in laboratory or at-line.

Unprocessed food often contains foreign materials such as stems, leaves, nut shells, stones, insects or plastic packaging material. Contrary to commonly used RGB cameras, identical colouring and shape of produce and foreign material does not affect their successful identifi-cation by NIR. The NIR hyperspectral imaging camera uniSPEC1.7HSI (figure 1) is ideally suitable for such

demanding sorting tasks. Depending on the customer’s identification task and quality requirements, applications are developed and modified by LLA. Figures 2 to 4 show ready-to-use application examples for the online monitor-ing of pole beans with or without stems, for an online separation of residual nut shells from walnuts and for the identification of stone / clay in a potato material stream.

Application

NIR Spectroscopy for Food & Feed Applications

Food Analysis and Food Inspection by NIR

figure 6: Camera picture and NIR identification result of cookies low-fat <9 %, medium-fat 9-19 %, high-fat >19 % accuracy: +- 0.5 %

figure 7: Camera picture and NIR identification result of candy - artificial sweetener and candy - sucrose

figure 5: Determination of fat in meat

At-line inspection of raw materials and food additives for food and feed industries are cost-intensive and time consuming. Hyperspectral imaging offers a fast, reliable and easy to use alternative analysis. Raw materials and ingredients can be identified by the compact hyperspectral scanning system ProScan-HSI (figure 8). Powdered samples can be analysed easily in cup sample holders without further sample preparation. The application is customised for the specific analyis task. The software interface is adapted as well. The analysis result is displayed either as quantitative result or as false color image.

figure 8: Compact hyperspectral scanner ProScan-HSI

Online Inspection of Unprocessed Goods

Online Analysis of Nutrients: Fatty Acids, Carbohydrates and Proteins

At-line Inspection by Chemical Imaging with ProScan-HSI

Application

Modern processed food must meet strict product specific standards. To ensure the quality of the final product, visual inspection, gustation tests as well as a laboratory nutrient analysis of control samples are utilised. The hyperspec-tral imaging camera uniSPEC1.7HSI can be utilised for

analysis of nutrient and moisture content directly in the production process. The analysis results are obtained in real time within fractions of seconds. Errors in the production process are detected at an early stage leading to a minimised portion of reject.

Figures 5 to 7 show applications including semi-quantita-tive analysis of nutrients such as:

▀ Determination of fat, connective tissue and lean meat for production of minced meat (figure 5)

▀ Analysis of fat content in bakery products (figure 6)

▀ Identification of carbohydrates (sugars) and artificial sweeteners for candy production (figure 7)

Food Analysis and Food Inspection by NIR

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LLA Instruments GmbH & Co. KGJustus-von-Liebig-Str. 9/11 Tel.: +49 30 6290790-0 www.lla-instruments.com12489 Berlin Fax: +49 30 6290790-10 mail@lla.de

NIR spectrometer uniSPEC1.7HSI uniSPEC1.9HSISpectral range 0.95 µm – 1.7 µm 1.32 µm – 1.9 µm

Particle size 3 mm – 30 mm 5 mm – 30 mmTracks 318 192Scan rate(ROI Δλ = 620 nm)

270 Hz(400 Hz ROI mode)

795 Hz at 100 μs exposure time

Illumination Illumination unit PMAmsiConveyor belt width Up to 2 mOptional accessories RGB-colour camera, automatic calibration, installation bridge, deflexion unit 90°PC-configuration Industrial PC, Windows® embeddedSupported protocol TCP/IP, UDPSupported interface Ethernet, USB, RS485Conveyor belt speed Up to 3 m/s

Application uniSPEC1.7HSI uniSPEC1.9HSI ProScan-HSI

Foreign material detection x x

Analysis of nutrients x (online) x (online) x (at-line)

Incoming goods inspection x (at-line)

Semi-quantitative analysis x (online) x (online) x (at-line)

Technical specification