Grain stored in silos in the United States of America is generally cooled with an aeration system to limit mold spoilage and insect infestation. Monitoring efficacy of aeration and real-time conditions of stored grain is generally done using temperature cables with fixed-spaced sensor locations that are hung from the roof of the silo. Numerous placement options exist in terms of the number of cables and their positions. However, little investigation has been done into the effects of cable placement on aeration system operation decisions and real-time monitoring of stored grain conditions. For a one-year period, the temperatures predicted by sensors in three recommended temperature cable configurations were evaluated for conditions in Ames, IA, USA. The average temperatures of each of the cable sensor configurations were lower than the average temperatures of the entire silo, with as much as an 11.4 °C difference. When sensor locations were used as inputs for aeration control, all cable sensor configurations predicted similar average temperatures. However, the temperature averages varied by as much as 3.6 °C depending on the temperature cable distribution chosen. Results demonstrated that temperature cables near the center or near the edges of the silos produce results that are not representative of the grain mass, resulting in less efficient aerations. Simulations were also conducted with randomized horizontal “wireless” sensor locations at fixed grain depths. The average temperatures were similar, but an increase in the number of sensors reduced variability between simulated storage years as the number of randomized sensors increased.

Recovery of the butterfat in waste ice cream may be an opportunity to mitigate food and economic loss. Previous efforts to recover such fat have succeeded in producing a fat‐enriched fraction but have not succeeded in demulsifying the fat. In the present study, a method involving a sequence of emulsion‐breaking steps is shown to be effective for releasing a majority of the fat from waste ice cream as free, unemulsified oil. The effect of altering process conditions including enzyme type, pH, and incubation temperature is reported. Depending on the test conditions and the variety of ice cream used, typically 59%–81% of the fat was recovered, with varying degrees of hydrolytic and oxidative damage. As the method is relatively complex, an experiment which omitted individual processing steps demonstrated that each step was required for high recovery. Success with 4 of 5 tested varieties showed that the method has reasonably broad applicability. The results are compared with those achieved using a standardized solvent extraction method. Finally, the method is evaluated for its potential as the basis for a commercial WIC fat recovery process.

Three-dimensional (3D) food printing holds the potential to help reduce food waste by precise portion control and use of materials that are produced in excess or are otherwise discarded. This relatively new technology is likely to undergo decreases in equipment costs. To take advantage of such prospects, we developed a novel micellar casein-based edible 3D printing formulation. Our formulation relies on a highly concentrated micellar casein solution (27.75%, wt/wt, final) along with pH adjustments (3.5, 4.0, 4.8, 6.7, 7.2, and 8.2) at chilled temperature (4-9°C) to avoid premature aggregation. In comparison to the natural pH of 6.7, both alkalinization and acidification past the isoelectric point of 4.6 enhanced both elastic and viscous moduli that enable for shape retention during and after extrusion from a 3D food printer. However, alkalinization led to smaller increases in the viscous modulus and did not lead to the shape retention that acidification to 4.0 or 3.5 does. Both acidification and alkalinization also resulted in rougher surface textures compared with the formulation at pH 6.7. Whereas the pH 4.8 formulation had inferior shape retention qualities compared with those at the other pH values tested, it had optimized water resilience, defined here as minimized swelling and dissolution of dried structures placed in water. Overall, we present a novel casein-based 3D printing formulation that could be printed while chilled, and with properties that could be modified by pH adjustments.