The author considered the contemporary state of the issue of water treatment in food and beverages production. The article presents regulated water quality parameters for drinking and bottled water, for dairy industry, beer and soft drinks production, as well as for production of vodka, vodka for export, and baby food. The article shows that water from central utility and drinking water supply needs additional treatment to produce food and beverages. It should be cleaned from hardness salts, iron, manganese, mineral salts, organic compounds and microbial contamination. Besides, many companies use groundwater sources (from wells). That makes water treatment procedure even more complicated. The author considered such treatment methods as ion exchange, magnetic water treatment, catalyzed oxidation, deferrization using sorption-filtering materials from mineral raw materials, aeration, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, activated carbon adsorption. The author shows the treatment mechanisms, their advantages and disadvantages. The article indicates which materials and equipment can be used to apply these methods in water treatment practice. It describes new techniques for effective water treatment such as radiolysis, cavitation and advanced oxidation treatment techniques. It gives flow diagram of bottled water production depending on its origin and content of impurities which is used by the companies working in Gelendzhiksky district, Lipetsk and Kemerovo. The author analyzed the contemporary state of the issue of water treatment in food and beverages production companies based on the available information and assessed the technical level of water treatment systems. The article reveals that only companies which produce alcoholic drinks such as vodka, liquors, and beer use a number of water treatment procedures which meet modern requirements. In general, food production companies face water treatment issue. Labor intensive, expensive and non-environmentally friendly water treatment methods are used everywhere. But they do not always guarantee required water quality. For that reason water treatment schemes in food industry should be revised. The author gives recommendations to replace traditional technologies with modern ones.

This paper presents an analysis of the physical properties of materials in powder and agglomerate form and their sorption characteristics on the basis of the shape of the water vapour adsorption isotherms and kinetics. The observed changes that led to a decrease in the vapour adsorption ability of the investigated powdered baby foods depended mainly on their milk powder content and to a lesser extent on the structure of the powders. This was related to the process of agglomeration and the type of wetting liquid used in that process. Wet agglomeration of the baby food powders investigated in this study influenced growth of particle size and increased wettability regardless of the type of wetting liquid used and the components of the powders. The agglomerates obtained using 2% lecithin solution or 50% sugar solution as the wetting liquids presented a decrease in their rate of water adsorption compared to the agglomerates obtained using water.

Water vapour sorption isotherms describe the relationship between water content and water activity. Depending on the nature of food powder (crystalline or amorphous), the shape of isotherm is different. Mostly food powders have complex structures, including potentially crystallisable solutes such as sugars, which show changes in crystallinity during the adsorption of water. Even for such an apparently simple system as crystalline sugar, numerous factors affect the adsorption of water vapour and, as a consequence, the storage stability. The presence of a thin film of saturated solution at the surface of the crystal, grain size distribution and the inclusion of mother liquor droplets in the crystal are some of the factors which perturb the equilibrium relative humidity of sugar and its aptitude to caking. These conditions were carefully studied at the level of the laboratory and in a pilot silo. Conditions of "decaking" (recovering a flowing sugar after caking) were also established. In the case of noncrystalline powders, water activity, together with glass transition temperature, is important to determine if it is necessary to interpret the origin of the formation of bridges between food powder particles and the caking phenomenon.

Perchlorate (ClO4−) is a strong oxidizer and has gained significant attention due to its reactivity, occurrence, and persistence in surface water, groundwater, soil and food. Stable isotope techniques (i.e., (18O/16O and 17O/16O) and 37Cl/35Cl) facilitate the differentiation of naturally occurring perchlorate from anthropogenic perchlorate. At high enough concentrations, perchlorate can inhibit proper function of the thyroid gland. Dietary reference dose (RfD) for perchlorate exposure from both food and water is set at 0.7 μg kg−1 body weight/day which translates to a drinking water level of 24.5 μg L−1. Chromatographic techniques (i.e., ion chromatography and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry) can be successfully used to detect trace level of perchlorate in environmental samples. Perchlorate can be effectively removed by wide variety of remediation techniques such as bio-reduction, chemical reduction, adsorption, membrane filtration, ion exchange and electro-reduction. Bio-reduction is appropriate for large scale treatment plants whereas ion exchange is suitable for removing trace level of perchlorate in aqueous medium. The environmental occurrence of perchlorate, toxicity, analytical techniques, removal technologies are presented.

Powder flow behavior is a complex phenomenon in which the physical and chemical properties of powder particles are involved. One of the main features that alter pharmaceutical and food powders flowability is water content. Water content modifies the arrangement and interaction of the powder’s internal particles. A water content increment in powders is generally associated with a flowability decrease. In this paper, the interaction mechanisms between water and powder particles are reviewed. Also, the most used flowing indexes in powders are analyzed, and their relationship with the water content index. Moisture content and water activity effect on powders flowability, described by Carr index, Hausner ratio, angle of repose, and flow factor are examined. Finally, the structural changes within the powder matrix due to water adsorption, agglomeration of particles, and powder caking are discussed. The water content of powders is hard to handle because it is in a dynamic equilibrium under ambient conditions. In this sense, the water content in powders becomes a critical control point to ensure an enhanced flowing capacity. Small changes in water content may lead the powder to flow or not to flow, with its inherent consequences during their storage or transport. Regarding flow factor and moisture content, an individual behavior for each powder is shown. These results could not be extrapolated. On the contrary, water activity data appear interesting due to the linear relationship with flow factor in almost all the reported powders.

In this paper we are concerned with adsorption, structure, topography, and dynamic properties (relaxation phenomena and surface dilatational rheology) of food dairy proteins (beta-casein, caseinate, and whey protein isolate, WPI), water-insoluble lipids (monopalmitin, monoolein, and monolaurin) and phospholipids (dipalmitoyl-phosphatidyl-choline, DPPC, and dioleoyl-phosphatidyl-choline, DOPC) at the air-water interface. Combined surface chemistry (surface film balance and static and dynamic tensiometry) and microscopy (Brewster angle microscopy, BAM) techniques have been used to determine the static and dynamic characteristics of these emulsifiers and their mixtures at the air-water interface. The derived information shows that biopolymer (proteins) and low-molecular-weight-emulsifier (LMWE, monoglycerides and phospholipids) type and their mixtures affect the interfacial characteristics of adsorbed and spread films. Important functional differences have been established between proteins, lipids and phospholipids. The static and dynamic characteristics of mixed films depend on the interfacial composition and the surface pressure (pi). At higher surface pressures, collapsed protein residues may be displaced from the interface by LMWE molecules with important repercussions on the interfacial characteristics of the mixed films.

Waste fractions of food processing are promising sources of polyphenols, which are of high demand because of their favourable bioactivities. More recently, also wastewater and process water fractions are in focus of research and technologies for downstream processing, which is reviewed here. Adsorption as well as membrane technologies are widely used to achieve selective recovery of polyphenols from waste water. For technical implementation the processing of waste fractions must be separated from the primary food production process. Therefore, the key step is the efficient transfer of the waste fractions into a storable and transportable form of polyphenol-enriched fractions. This strategy is shown exemplarily for the marzipan production. Almond skin and blanch water are waste fractions containing catechin and procyanidins, for which a recycling concept has been developed. The polyphenolic ingredients of the blanch water can be specifically adsorbed by means of Amberlite resins or zeolites with high yield followed by ultrafiltration.

The influence of water content and water activity (a sub(w)) on the concentration of volatile compounds in the head-space vapour over model and food samples was studied. Starch-water model systems and three different food systems (hard cheese, apple puree and raw ham) were prepared with a sub(w) values ranging from 0 to 1. For each sample gas chromatographic analyses of volatiles in the headspace vapour and water activity measurements were carried out. For solid foods at intermediate a sub(w) values the highest volatile concentration in the headspace strongly depended on the availability of water. The head-space volatile concentration decreased rapidly when the water became totally free and the water vapour pressure was close to that of pure water | E' stata studiata l'influenza del contenuto in umidita' e dell'attivita' dell'acqua (a inf(w)) sulla quantita' delle sostanze volatili presenti nel vapore dello spazio di testa di sistemi modello e di alimenti aventi una attivita' dell'acqua nell'intervallo di valori di a inf(w) tra 0 e 1. Sui campioni posti in recipienti chiusi ermeticamente sono state determinate per via gascromatografica le sostanze volatili nello spazio di testa e l'attivita' dell'acqua. La concentrazione delle sostanze volatili nello spazio di testa e' risultata fortemente influenzata dalle proprieta' di adsorbimento dell'acqua da parte delle diverse matrici alimentari. La presenza di sostanze volatili e' stata riscontrata al massimo livello, in tutti i casi esaminati, in corrispondenza dell'inizio del ramo ascendente della isoterma di adsorbimento dell'acqua, per discendere rapidamente ai valori piu' elevati di a inf(w), oltre i quali l'acqua presente nell'alimento diviene totalmente disponibile per agire come solvente