Method for enriching food products with group d vitamins

Abstract

The invention relates to the food industry, and more particularly to methods for enriching milk and vegetable oils with group D vitamins, and can be used for vitaminizing milk and vegetable oils. A method for enriching food products with group D vitamins consists in feeding a non-enriched food product in the form of milk or a vegetable oil into a coil of a coil-type photochemical reactor, irradiating the food product with ultraviolet radiation having a wavelength of 280-315 nm, which causes a precursor contained in the initial food product to produce group D vitamins, and also stirring and homogenizing the food product by means of transverse eddies occurring inside the coil of the photochemical reactor, then extracting the vitaminized product from the photochemical reactor or feeding it to a repeat vitaminization cycle. The technical result of the invention includes a more effective process for vitaminizing a liquid food product by virtue of greater homogenization caused by spontaneous mixing, and a reduction in the time taken to obtain an end product.

Description

[0001] METHOD OF ENRICHING FOOD PRODUCTS WITH VITAMINS OF GROUP D

[0002] The invention relates to the food industry, namely to methods for enriching milk and vegetable oils with vitamins of group D, primarily vitamins D2 and D3, and can be used for fortifying milk and vegetable oils.

[0003] Currently, food fortification is done by adding artificially synthesized vitamin D or by converting ergosterol and 7-dehydrocholesterol, found in foods such as milk and vegetable oils, into vitamins D2 and D3 under the influence of UV irradiation.

[0004] For example, in a method for fortifying edible vegetable oil (patent application CN1813551A, published August 9, 2006), vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K are added to edible vegetable oil and uniformly mixed to produce a vitamin-enriched vegetable oil. However, the use of vitamin concentrates has a number of significant drawbacks, including storage and transportation requirements, raw material quality requirements for concentrate production, and increased complexity of the production process.

[0005] Obtaining vitamin D directly from food is preferable because it does not require delivery of vitamin D or the raw materials from which it is obtained to be incorporated into foods.

[0006] The prior art includes technical solutions for enriching food products with vitamin D by irradiating them with ultraviolet radiation. This solution is presented in RU 160816 "Milk Vitaminizer," which describes a process for fortifying milk with ultraviolet radiation at a wavelength of 252 nm from a mercury lamp with a protective quartz cover. However, this known solution does not ensure sufficient efficiency of the fortification process, as the highest spectral efficiency for vitamin D3 formation in milk is in the range of 280-315 nm.

[0007] The closest approach to the claimed technical solution is a method for fortifying milk with vitamin D3 (Russian Federation Patent No. 2802082, published August 22, 2023). This involves pouring unfortified milk into a tank. When a valve is opened, a peristaltic pump transfers the milk to a plasma-chemical reactor, where vitamin D3 is formed from a precursor contained in the milk. The product can then be sent to a final tank or sent for a repeat fortification cycle using a three-way valve. However, fortifying milk using this method is time-consuming and does not ensure uniform distribution of vitamin D3 throughout the milk, resulting in variations in the quality of the final product within a single batch.In addition, milk is irradiated only by pulsed radiation sources with a lower efficiency of conversion into radiation, which may be essential for some vitaminization processes.

[0008] The objective of this technical solution is to develop a method for enriching milk or vegetable oils with vitamins of group D, ensuring uniform distribution of vitamins throughout the volume of the original raw material.

[0009] The technical result of the claimed invention consists in increasing the efficiency of the process of vitaminization of liquid food raw materials by increasing the degree of its homogenization as a result of spontaneous mixing and reducing the time required to obtain the final product.

[0010] The technical result is achieved by a method for enriching food products with vitamins of group D, which consists in the fact that an unenriched food product, which is milk or vegetable oil, is fed into the spiral of a spiral-type photochemical reactor, irradiated with ultraviolet radiation with a wavelength of 280-315 nm, as a result of which vitamins of group D are formed from the precursor contained in the original food product, and also mixed and homogenized by means of transverse vortices arising inside the spiral of the photochemical reactor, then the fortified product is removed from the photochemical reactor or fed for a repeated cycle of fortification.

[0011] The claimed invention is illustrated by figures: Fig. 1 shows a diagram of the internal part of a photochemical reactor, in the center of which a UV radiation source is located; Fig. 2 shows the calculated degrees of vitaminization of milk at different pulse repetition frequencies depending on the flow rate, illustrating an example of the implementation of the claimed method.

[0012] The numbers indicate the following:

[0013] 1 - spiral,

[0014] 2 - ultraviolet radiation source. The method for enriching food products with vitamin D is as follows. Unfortified liquid food raw material (milk or vegetable oil) is fed, for example, by means of a peristaltic pump, from the original container into the coil of a spiral-type photochemical reactor, in which the coil is made of an optically transparent material and twisted around an ultraviolet light source with a wavelength of 280-315 nm. A pulsed xenon lamp, an ultraviolet lamp, or an array of ultraviolet diodes can be used as such a source. The specified ultraviolet light source is turned on and the original raw material is irradiated. During the irradiation process, vitamins of group D (primarily D2 and D3) are formed in the milk or vegetable oil in a known manner (for example, as in Russian patent for invention No. 2802082).

[0015] Curves in the spiral channel of a photochemical reactor generate mass forces that cause secondary flows in the liquid, known as Dean vortices (see Dean WR, Hurst JM Note on the motion of fluid in a curved pipe / / Mathematika. - 1959. - V. 6. - №. 1. - Pp. 77-85). The number of turns of the spiral, its length, and the length of the lamp do not affect the nature of the vortices; they only influence the residence time of the product in the irradiation zone. The ratio of the spiral channel diameter to the diameter of a spiral turn affects the intensity of the vortices; this ratio should lie in the optimal range of 0.03...0.10. This ratio, coupled with the product flow rate, should also ensure a high Dean number (a dimensionless criterion describing the process). As a result of the action of the vortices, the product particles move from the center to the periphery, displacing the near-wall liquid first in the transverse direction and then normal to the surface of the spiral wall.Thus, in flow-through mode, the feedstock is simultaneously irradiated and mixed as it passes through the spiral, ensuring better mixing of the precursor in milk (7-dihydrocholesterol) or vegetable oil (ergosterol) and a higher degree of vitaminization. After this, the product, depending on the desired objectives, can be sent to the final container via a three-way valve or sent for a repeat vitaminization cycle. If necessary, the photochemical reactor spiral is emptied, for example, by opening a filler valve, after which it is emptied under atmospheric pressure. During repeated vitaminization cycles, intermediate sampling is possible. Studies on the fortification of milk with vitamin D3 using the proposed method have been conducted. An INP-7 / 120 pulsed xenon lamp was selected as the UV radiation source.VkusVill brand milk with a fat content of 3.2% was used as the product fortified with vitamin D3. The working volume of the liquid was 5 liters. The peristaltic pump operating speed was 79.8 l / h.

[0016] As a result of calculations performed using a numerical model, the dependence of the degree of milk fortification on its flow rate was obtained at various pulse repetition rates per single pass of a spiral-type photochemical reactor. These dependences are presented in Fig. 2, where the dotted lines indicate the fourth-degree polynomial approximations.

[0017] It was found that, with an optimal pulse repetition rate of 2 Hz, the highest degree of vitaminization (14% or 0.14) was achieved at a flow rate of approximately 79.8 l / hour (the limit of the pump used). It was decided to extrapolate this case to a circulation mode in order to determine the number of passes at which the degree of vitaminization would be 50%.

[0018] It is assumed that each subsequent cycle fortifies y = 0.14 of the remaining precursor. Then, after the first pass, the degree of fortification is: where C о - initial concentration of precursor, μg / l,

[0019] - precursor concentration after the 1st pass, μg / l.

[0020] Where can C be expressed from? г :

[0021] Ci ^ l - rXo. (2)

[0022] As a result of the second pass, the degree of vitaminization is: where C2 is the precursor concentration after the 2nd pass, µg / l.

[0023] From where for C2: c2 = (I - y) 2 ■ c0. (4)

[0024] Similar expressions for subsequent cycles lead to the following formula for the precursor concentration after the n-th pass C п :

[0025] C n = (1 - y) п ■ C о . (5)

[0026] Then for the final degree of vitaminization after n passes г you can write:

[0027] Where does the number of passes to achieve the final degree of vitaminization y come from? s = 0.50 can be expressed as follows: 4.60 (7)

[0028] Accordingly, to achieve the required degree of vitaminization with a reserve, 5 passes will be required. For the chosen flow rate, this number of cycles will require approximately 18.5 minutes of processing. For comparison, achieving the required degree of vitaminization using the existing vitaminization method, which was adopted as a prototype, takes 60 minutes.

[0029] Previous experimental studies indicate that the maximum achievable concentration of vitamin D3 is approximately 58 μg / L. Therefore, treatment with the parameters under consideration would yield a value of 29 μg / L or 1160 IU, which exceeds the daily prophylactic dose for individuals aged 18-50 (600-800 IU).

[0030] Thus, it can be concluded that the claimed method provides a complete cycle for enriching milk or vegetable oil with vitamin D, and also improves the efficiency of the vitaminization process for liquid food raw materials by increasing the degree of homogenization as a result of spontaneous mixing. Furthermore, the time required to obtain the final product is reduced. The use of a spiral liquid flow offers several advantages over known methods, namely: an extended liquid path around the radiation source due to the "winding" of the spiral; and, as a result, increased productivity with the same reactor dimensions; and scalability for different optical densities of the product (the gap width is not tied to a specific absorption coefficient). Furthermore, this method enables intensive mixing of the product without the use of external means, using only the channel geometry.

Claims

FORMULA A method for enriching food products with vitamins of group D, which consists in the fact that an unenriched food product, which is milk or vegetable oil, is fed into the spiral of a spiral-type photochemical reactor, irradiated with ultraviolet radiation of a wavelength of 280-315 nm, as a result of which vitamins of group D are formed from the precursor contained in the original food product, and also mixed and homogenized by means of transverse vortices arising inside the spiral of the photochemical reactor, then the fortified product is removed from the photochemical reactor or fed for a repeated cycle of fortification.

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