 And so my name is Niklas O'Rean. I'm a senior scientist at Rice Agriculture and Food, but also have adjunct professorships at the Department of Physics at Chalmers University of Technology. And I would like to share something about light industrial food research questions with extra new techniques with you. And out now for the talk today, I will give a short introduction and background. I talked very briefly about the initiative that we are setting up at Rice. And then I would like to share some food examples with you, industrial-based ones, to show the use of these techniques. And then I will talk briefly about sample environments and then some take-home messages. So then I think we could start with why is food structure important? I think we all know that are in this community, but I think it's worth to repeat it. And for me at least it's like that the process that basically makes the materials and the structure that codes for the properties and the functionality of the material. So we need to understand all these parts of the triangle. We need to understand the process and the structure and the properties and then understand the relationships between these. And then also finally how it influences functionality. And therefore it's very relevant to study the structure. And for me this is a lot about what extra neutrons is about that we would like to understand the structure and how that is influenced by, for instance, process and ingredients. And then when you start to think about structure, then of course length scales is very important. And then also then you can realize that there are a lot of techniques that could look into length scales. So what you see here is, I should just try to see if I can. Okay, here we go. So what you see here is just a scale, a length scale. And then I have put up a number of techniques over here and then some examples down here. So then you can see techniques that could be everything from like microscopy, advanced electron microscopy, but then also our X-ray and neutron techniques. And I think they all, so to say, belongs to different length scales, you can say, at least 10 to 30, you can say that that is like that. And then if we look into some examples here, then we could maybe take chocolate. I mean, so in a way, if you are at a length scale about 10 micrometers or longer or so, then you can say it's like a composite structure of a continuous fat crystal network. And there you also have liquid oil and you have sugar particles and you have cocoa particles. So then there are a lot of techniques that you can look into the structure at that level. But then if you go down to like 100 nanometers, 500 nanometers, one micrometer or so, then you could start to see the fat crystal network. And the fat crystal network is what determines a lot of the properties of the chocolate. And then if you go down even further, then you can look into more of the details of the individual parts of the fat crystal network. So then you look into the tags, then you look into polymorphs and so on. And that I think I'll end up talking a little bit about yesterday. And on the other hand, you can go to other materials like caradines and then on like 10 micrometer length scale and so on, you could have phase separation. But if you go down into the phases here, then you start to look into the Gelstrand network. And then if you go into the details of the Gelstrand network, then you're in caradine and you have double heli structures and so on. And I think all these are interesting to understand a different length scales in order to understand our macro scale properties that we have of the product. So then our techniques, if we go to the extra neutron techniques, then it's about understanding structures, properties at different length scales as you could see here, spanning from like millimeters, centimeters down to Ongström level. And then we could talk about that we could have different categories like tomography, scattering techniques, diffraction techniques and spectroscopy techniques that all can contribute to understand our food material. And then as far as we are very interesting in these techniques and therefore we since a couple of years ago, we start an initiative together with Max4 and ESS, but also we are interested in other LSRE techniques. So one of the aims then or the missions is to strengthen the competitiveness of the Swedish industry and help them to get access to the desired techniques and the experimental setups and so on. And in this we would like to collaborate with industries and academia and so on. So we also hope to contribute to the ecosystem around Max4 and ESS, but we also would like to integrate these techniques in our toolbox to facilitate business products and apply research products. And therefore since a few years we have also employed a number of technique experts on X-ray and neutron techniques. So some of them is in the conference today. Okay, and now I would like to share some examples how we could use these techniques to understand more of our food material. So this is coming from a Vinova pilot project that is ongoing. And here we would like to understand how the fat crystal structure is influenced by confinement basically because we know that if we put the fat into a confinement like a fat droplet, it will influence the fat crystallization. So the surface will start to play a role and the geometry start to play a role. And that will be important for properties of foods like ice creams and so on. And then we combine SUX VUX measurements with DSC and Comforco Microscopy. So this is a work together with Shunyu, Camilla, Mi and then Kimo Olosson at AAK is involved in that. And this is another Vinova pilot project. I thought that it could be interesting to show this since Maria talked earlier. So maybe you can get some inspiration of what you can do in future projects as well. So here we would like to understand more about the baking properties of bread by building a sample environment where we put in a microwave oven into the beam line. And then we could look either with X-rays and neutrons and look into with X-ray tomography for instance to see how the system goes from a dough to a final bread. And this is a work there. There we get a raw horse when he sucks on Camilla and me at rice and then Lars when again at Finnext involved. And then also Imani Larsson and Raymond Mokso together with colleagues at Max4 and LTH is involved. So that is also something that is ongoing. And this is a project that has been finalized, which is about starch gelatinization that we would like to use SUX VUX techniques to look into the crystallinity of the starch. So what you see here is a floor that we have from Lantman and then you can see different peaks here. And then these are caused as a function of temperatures. So we go from 25 degrees down to 75. So the dark with the black one here that is 25 degrees and this purple one is 75 degrees. And these peaks here is quite significant for like crystal in structure in starch. And then you can see how they disappear at different times. So that is a way to understand how the crystallization is influenced. And then you can look into the amount of crystals. You can have different water amounts and so on and then understand more about the crystals of the starch. And this is an example that I took from literature, which I found quite interesting. And that is to understand cracking in pralines. And then of course you can use SUX VUX to understand the fat crystal morphologies and so on. But here they have imaged with X-ray imagery, they have imaged cracks in the structure when they put some mechanical energy on it. And then they can calculate stresses and so on. I've found that they're very interesting paper. So that is one example where you can understand more about the cracks in pralines. And that if you have a lot of cracks that will for instance influence fat bloom properties, which is important to understand. So this is an example how salt is influencing bread structure. So that was a work done by Mane Larsson together with Elina Höglund and Camille Loupiac in France. So here you can see different examples of X-ray tomography images. So this is like 3D representations without salt and different amounts and salt and different sizes of grains. And then you can see that if you look into the pore structure here, that the size of the salt will influence a lot about how the structure looked like. And also you can see that to some extent also influence the crust and so on. So I think this was a very nice work done by Mane Land colleagues. So that is an example on how we can use these techniques in bread. And this is an example about ice cream. And this I think is also a nice example to look into the importance of complementary techniques. So here you can see it like the ice cream that we see it when we are eating it basically. So that on the on the centimeter scale. And here there are light macroscopic images and here you can see the air bubbles, for instance. And if we use confocal macroscopy, which is also on the micrometer scale, then you can look into that you have fat crystals around the air bubbles. So that is part of the stabilization. But if you go down and use transmission electron macroscopy, then you can see that also the Kessin missiles plays a role in this. And I think this was a work done by more than colleagues in the past. But then also in literature we find I find an example where they use X-ray tomography to look into the air cells in 3D. So that is also something and here they also looked into the stability of the ice cream. So I think this is a nice example where you can combine a lot of techniques to understand more about your ice cream samples. And this is a work, an example from a work that I did together with Tommy Lillander, which is about high temperature fouling. And then if you look here, so basically so this you can imagine this is like a steel plate in your process equipment. And then you as we heard earlier today that you can easily but then it was in membranes, but you can also get that this in the process industry where you have where you can get fouling. And the fouling is very much dependent on like the time history of it. And in this project we were interested in looking in the high temperature fouling that is much more crystalline and solid than the other ones that is formed on lower temperatures. But in principle it's protein and calcium phosphate that precipitates and aggregates on the surface here. And then we used the scanning electron microscopy combined with confocal laser microscopy to understand more about the fouling. So this was taking us out of the 15 hours of processing you can say at high temperature. And then what you see here is like the fouling structure on an overall scale. So it's a cross section you can say. And here we looked into the more detail of the structure and here you can see that you have a quite particulate structure at the shorter length scales. But then it's also interesting to think about like where where are the proteins and where are more the mineral structures. And then we use confocal microscopy to look into this. And then you can see that there is a lot of protein structure at the surface of the fouling. But then if you go into details that you can see that then you really have an interconnected structure at smaller length scales. Which is apparent in this magnified picture. You can also do a similar study by looking into for instance the nitrogen content in the SEM with an EDS detector. And they gave similar results. So that we thought was very interesting. And then in these articles and projects we looked into how different treatments like with acids or high pH and so on. How that influenced the removal of the fouling and which parts of the structure that was influenced for instance by the acids and so on. But then this also could combine with extra neutron techniques because it's interesting to see okay what kind of crystal instruction do we really have in these foulings. And then Tommy and colleagues they use wide angle X-ray diffractograms to look into this. And then we could clearly see that you have this beta calcium free phosphate type of structure from the X-ray diffractogram. Which was a nice knowledge as well to get. Okay now I come into one of my last examples here and this is about extrusion. And in this case we looked into a processing window of extrusion beta-glucane. And then it was like the foaming properties that was into focus. And then we would like to see for instance what is the effect of sodium b-carbonate. So here you have a sample without sodium b-carbonate and this is with sodium b-carbonate. And then the study was done with X-ray tomography and then Immanuel made a lot of nice image analysis on this as well. So we can look into the pore size distribution and the connectivity between different phases and so on. And you can clearly see that if you add sodium b-carbonate you get a more fluffy foam and a lot more pores and so on. But what was also interesting to see was that even if there are less foam or pores here the connectivity is better in this type of structure here compared to this one. And that was a little bit unexpected at first sight but with these techniques with X-ray and image analysis we could clearly see these differences. And then to one of my favorite babies which is really that we should be the lot of nice sample environment. So this is an example from an extruder. So imagine that we have extrusion of protein powder here and then we would like to form fibrous meat analogs. I mean this is very active now when we should eat less meat and have more plant based products and so on. And then you can clearly see that there are a lot of fibrous structure form here. And then if we look out in the cross section you can also see that you have some symmetry and so on. And that we believe is coming from like the flow field and so on. So there are a lot of influence on the structure built here of course from what is happening inside the extruder. But the problem is that the extruder is a really tough environment so you can't really put the microscope in there. I mean it's like high pressure, high temperature, shear and so on. So I think it would be fantastic if we could put this into our beam lines so we could use for instance sex or sense to look into what's happening in the dye or in the extruder. And then maybe also you take out samples and then use x-ray tomography and so on. And I think that these type of environments are at least to my knowledge they are in principle lacking at LSRE, so to say. So with this I would like to summarize with some take home messages. I think I have at least to some extent showed that x-ray and neutron techniques have a really huge potential to help us as food technologies to food scientists to solve industrial food science research questions. But that we also need complementary techniques that they are very important if we should understand what we see. So I really see this as a nice contribution to our food science toolbox, but we should also continue with the techniques we are already doing. Because a lot of these data are really challenging to interpret for instance sex patterns and so on. And then it's nice to have other techniques like electron macroscopic images or so to understand what we are looking at because then we can build the right evaluation models and so on. And then we all I think we also should strive for building good sample environments that are suited for food science applications. And that could be everything from like the extruder that I show, but it could be more that we should have temperature control. Maybe there should be re-meters together with measurements and so on or DSC. And I know that some of this is already ongoing or presence I would say, but I think we should emphasize that. So with that I would like to thank you for your attention. And I leave the word to Emma then. Thank you, Niklas for an excellent presentation, very clear and educational. Let's see, do we have any questions? We don't have any in the chat, but feel free to raise hands or just shout out if you have any questions for Niklas. Yeah, this is Hans-Thompe. I would like to have a question about your your fouling picture. It's probably too much detail for a talk like this, but I was intrigued by that. Do you have any idea why the protein wants to foul on top of mineral and not on steel? So this is actually, yeah actually is that the same question? Why does the mineral want to sit on the steel? And why does the protein wants to sit on the mineral? Yeah, that's a very good question. I think we have some ideas of a model, but I don't think we really understand, but I think we saw that in very many samples. But maybe there is also like, I think it's also partly a time-dependent process also that we have like this development of this interconnected protein mineral structure. I think that is something that is coming on as a function of time as well. Yes, but a mineral is not actually pure mineral, but there's also protein inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a continuous translation that maybe Tommy, you maybe have something to add on that. Yeah, I think we could dissolve one of the components. We could dissolve the calcium network and then have the protein network intact, so to speak. But to dissolve the whole fouling, we need to get rid of the protein. So it was sort of interconnected network. Yeah, and also a bit of whey protein. So that was, we couldn't analyze. It was hard to tell any to analyze the exact composition. I think my feeling also was that this protein on the surface is also quite in homogeneously distributed, so to say. So I think it's also like a kinetic phenomenon going on, how basically the material from the flow is really getting onto the structure as well. And in a way, to some extent, maybe also the protein works as a glow glue inside the structure. Yeah. Thank you. Maybe you can stop sharing Nicholas. Yes. We can see each other. Oops. Yeah. Any other questions. I have one. Yes. I mean, as a rice employee, you're really in between Academy and industry. And as you say, there are huge potential here to solve industrial needs to you. What's your, do you think that it's easy for you to get interest from industry, or do you start a struggle to make them understand. No, I think a little bit. I mean, I think what should be in focus on what this in focus is like the question that they would like to solve. And then I mean, maybe not so many people in the food industries expert on these techniques. But when you start to discuss with them, I think they are very open to use it as a technique to solve their problem. I think we should sell the technique. I think we should sell the solution. So maybe sell in question marks, but you see what I mean. I think that is the way to go because they are after the solution. Not that we should use something fancy, but I think these techniques could help a lot in understanding of what we see and so on.