FlowCam^® - Flow Imaging Microscopy Blog

This year, in lieu of their annual conference and exhibition, Powder & Bulk Solids hosted a virtual conference: The Powder Show: Digital Flow.

Steve Bowen, Yokogawa Fluid Imaging Technologies Director of Sales, presented a short webinar at this event, titled "Measuring Sphericity & Aggregates of Powders Dispersed in Fluids". The talk is still available to view, alongside other presentations, on The Powder Show website.

A research group at Iowa State University is studying the use of Magnetic Ionic Liquids (MILs) as a tool to isolate foodborne pathogens in liquid suspensions. Previously, they showed the ability of MILs to capture a species of Salmonella.

Their new work, published in the current issue of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, extends the previous work on MILs to the capture of several Gram-negative bacteria of importance to food, agricultural and clinical testing, including subspecies of Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7.

When considering how to characterize your subvisible particles for food and beverage production it's important to be able to see the images of different particle types.

Taste and texture can't be directly measured, so you need to rely on “tasting panels” in order to gather information on prospective products. This is both time consuming and expensive.

Particle size, and more importantly particle shape, correlate directly to the taste and mouth-feel of food products. FlowCam can help you determine the optimum size and shape of the particles in your product, and then enable you to quickly analyze batches to ensure they meet the standard.

Particles come in many shapes and sizes. Analyzing particles in food ingredients and correctly characterizing them is important because they can greatly affect the taste, appearance, stability, and processability of the final product. CP Kelco, a leading producer of specialty hydrocolloids based in San Diego, manufactures a variety of texturizing and stabilizing ingredients for food processors. Flow Imaging Microscopy (FIM) allows them to quickly and easily detect particle variations and ensure top quality products.