Abstract

The grinding of wheat into flour is mankind’s oldest continuously practised industry and has been described as “the parent of all modern industry”. In pursuing the fundamental need for efficient milling of wheat, millers and millwrights of old introduced a practical mastery of several of the fundamental engineering disciplines: fluid dynamics and aerodynamics for power generation from water wheels and windmills, mechanical engineering for the transmission of power via gearing and control mechanisms, and particle handling, breakage and separation operations. Oliver Evans, American designer of the original highly automated flour mills, has been described as “the first thoroughgoing plant engineer”, while Professor Friedrich Kick, author of the first scientific treatise on flour milling in 1871, also furnished comminution science with one of its most beloved laws. Storck and Teague (1952) observe “In these two operations the story of milling… begins: the breaking up of cereal grain seeds, [and] the removal from the resulting meal of the unwanted portions… The story… is of how we men have learned to do these tasks better and better, devising improved tools and new skills as time passed; enlisting the forces of nature to help us; enlarging our mechanical arts and our mental capacities as we struggled with the twin problems of increasing the quantity and improving the quality of our product; adopting new ways of life, forming new social organizations as a result of a growing dependence on this increasing food supply. There is no other single thread of development that can be followed so continuously throughout all [Western] history, and none which bears so constant a cause-and-effect relation to every phase of our progress in civilization.” As Western civilization enters the new millennium, this ancient thread continues to develop new features. Cereals such as wheat are now being called upon to contribute to the energy and chemical needs of society as well as its food needs, and we are seeing the emergence of cereal biorefineries aiming to compete with oil refineries. In contrast with oil, which is a liquid, cereals are particulate in nature and much more challenging. Process engineers will therefore need to master the handling of particulate materials, and call on the skill and experience of flour milling, in order to design and operate efficient and economically competitive biorefineries.

 

Speaker Biography

Dr Grant Campbell is a Reader in the Satake Centre for Grain Process Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, The University of Manchester. Research in the Centre focuses on process engineering aspects of cereals processing for both food and non-food uses. Originally from New Zealand, Grant did his PhD at Cambridge University on the subject of “The aeration of bread dough during mixing”, and worked at Campden & Chorleywood Food Research Association before joining the university in 1995. Grant’s research interests are in wheat flour milling and fractionation, aeration aspects of breadmaking and other foods, cereal-based fermentations and extractions, and process integration for cereal biorefineries. He organised the international conferences Cereals: Novel Uses and Processes in 1996, Bubbles in Food in 1998 and Bubbles in Food 2: Novelty, Health and Luxury in 2006. He was awarded the Institution of Chemical Engineer’s Hanson Medal in 2006 for best contribution to The Chemical Engineer, and its Frank Morton Teaching Excellence medal in 2008.