{"id":6845,"date":"2024-04-18T09:36:09","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T02:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mtec.or.th\/en\/?p=6845"},"modified":"2024-10-03T15:14:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T08:14:39","slug":"research-projects-40215","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtec.or.th\/en\/research-projects-40215\/","title":{"rendered":"3D Food Printing: The Future of Food Production"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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3D Food Printing: The Future of Food Production<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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By Food Materials Research Team<\/span>
In recent years, food technology has been rapidly developed. There are various innovative food products with textures, nutrients, and aesthetics that satisfy consumers\u2019 needs.<\/span><\/p>

Current food innovation focuses on personalised diets that provide appropriate nutrients for each individual\u2019s body, such as children, athletes, the elderly, people with medical conditions, and soldiers in the army.<\/span><\/p>

The 3D food printing technology is a food production process that uses raw materials efficiently, thus causing less food waste. Moreover, the process is able to customize nutrients. Therefore 3D food printing will become an important option for food industries to prepare and produce sufficient food for the world population, which is estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050.<\/span><\/p>

The 3D printing technology has been in use for over 30 years. In the beginning, it was used to produce a rapid prototype; while, at present, this technology has found use in additive manufacturing at industrial level.<\/span><\/p>

This technology has been rapidly developed in the last 5 years in accordance with the digital transformation and is one of the key technologies for Industry 4.0. There are a number of examples of 3D printed parts and products that are individually manufactured, such as hip arthroplasty, parts in the construction industries, and clothing accessories.<\/span><\/p>

At present, the application of 3D printing technology in the food industry is still not prevalent even though it has gained more growth from various businesses in the past few years, such as international fine dining restaurants. The number of research articles in 3D food printing, however, has been increasing as shown in figure 1.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Figure 1: Numbers of<\/strong> 3D printing technology in academic articles during 2010-2020<\/span><\/p>

Since 3D printing technique is a process of forming an object layer-by-layer, it can create products with different shapes and structures. Once applied this to food products, the technique not only produces attractive food appearance, but can also add various nutrients and ingredients in the food as required.<\/span><\/p>

The 3D food printing technology can be classified into 3 main techniques, namely<\/span><\/strong><\/p>

  1. Extrusion-based printing or Fused Deposition Method (FDM)<\/span><\/strong>
    This technique is the most prevalent method because it is similar to food extrusion and able to create food products readily, as shown in figure 2. Moreover, a 3D food printer for the basic model of this technique is not expensive. There are various food products, which can be formed with this technique, such as chocolate, pasta, and food products for those who have dysphagia.<\/span><\/li><\/ol>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    Figure 2:<\/strong> Example of food printing with Fused Deposition Method<\/span><\/p>

    2 . Powder Bed Fusion or Selective Laser Scanning printing<\/span><\/strong><\/p>

    This technique processes by spreading powder into thin layers and uses a laser beam to melt the raw materials at the specified positions. Once one layer is done, the new raw material powder are spread for the next layer and the same process is repeated until the designed product is received. This technique poses a higher production cost than the Fused Deposition Method (FDM); however, it provides better quality of the finished products, and can be used to design desserts made from sugar (confectionery) to create a particular size and shape. It also helps reduce the number of raw materials in the production process, as shown in figure 3.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Figure 3:<\/strong> Example of food printing with Powder Bed Fusion<\/span><\/p>

    3. Binder Jetting<\/span><\/strong><\/p>

    This technique is quite similar to Powder Bed Fusion printing. However, it applies the spraying of liquids or other food ingredients, called binder, to bind the powders together at the required position, as shown in figure 4. This process is repeated over the desired numbers of layers until the products are embedded into the powder. The raw materials that do not attach to the binder will be removed from the product and can be reused for the next printing. The received product will be processed in the next step, such as baking. This technique can be used to design products in the bakery and confectionery groups because it can yield unique textures that will satisfy consumers\u2019 needs.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    \u00a0Figure 4:<\/strong> Example of food printing with Binder Jetting<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Example of 3D food printing technology video clips:<\/span><\/p>

    https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=x6WzyUgbT5A or<\/span><\/strong><\/p>

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    The 3D food printing is a great potential technology for the development of food industries in the future since it helps reduce the amount of food waste considered to be a challenge in food industries. Some food wastes are also rich in essential nutrients and bioactive compounds that can be transformed into food ink to use in 3D food printing. Thus, this technology creates value-added and reduce the loss in food production chain.<\/span><\/p>

    3D food printing technology can be used to develop various food products, are as follows<\/span><\/strong><\/p>