A Lumped Specific Heat Capacity Approach for Predicting the Non-stationary Thermal Profile of Coffee During Roasting

Coffee undergoes numerous and relevant chemical and physical changes during roasting. These modifications lead to the development of those typical organoleptic properties of coffee, on which the acceptability of the product depends. The roasting process therefore, plays a central role within the coffee’s technological cycle. This crucial character of roasting has contributed to encouraging the continuous progress of the roasting industry incorporating the necessary scientific and technological research. However, due to the geometrical complexity and transformations undergone by coffee during roasting, the relationship between the heating mode and the material properties of coffee on the one hand and the non-stationary temperature profile within the bean on the other, are still far from being fully understood. In this presented work, a dynamic model is proposed for predicting the non-stationary thermal profile of coffee during roasting. The model is based on the assumption that the thermal effects occurring within the bean during roasting, such as moisture evaporation, can be approximately encompassed within a lumped together specific heat parameter. Using this hypothesis, it is possible to develop a mathematical model, which is quite simple in structure but still able to describe the two most important technological aspects, i.e. the evolution over time of the beans’ average temperature and internal thermal gradient

Supercritical Antisolvent Precipitation of Quercetin Systems: Preliminary Experiments

Flavonoids have attracted a lot of attention due to their antioxidant, antitumor and antibacterial activities. Quercetin (3,5,7,3,4-pentahydroxyflavone) is a polyphenolic flavonoid that shows several biological effects including a strong inhibitory effect on the growth of several human and animal cancer cell lines and enhances the antiproliferative effect of cisplatin both in-vitro and in-vivo. In spite of a variety of its biological effects. Quercetin is very poorly soluble in water, which has limited its absorption upon oral administration. As known, the solubility of drug is often due to the increase of the surface/volume ratio which implies the increase of the number of surface atoms (or molecules) with respect to the number of bulk atoms (or molecules). With this aim, we investigated the use of supercritical antisolvent (SAS) technique for Quercetin microparticles generation finding the best operative conditions through the Peng Robinson’s Equation of State. The obtained simulation behaviors were confirmed by experimental precipitation: the physicochemical characterizations of the samples were also performe

Drug-polymer filled micro-containers for oral delivery loaded using supercritical CO₂ aided-impregnation

In this work we present an effective loading technique of micro-containers for oral drug delivery of a poorly water soluble drug in a solid dispersion with polymer. By combining inkjet printing and supercritical CO2 impregnation we load ketoprofen in a solid dispersion with poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) into cylindrical micro-containers providing unidirectional release. Both the printing and the impregnation step can be tuned in order to control drug loading with accuracy in the range of micro-grams