Sabine Danthine

I am a Ph.D. student at the Food Technology Department of Gembloux Agricultural University, an institution open to the world and ready to welcome you.

 

Founded in 1860, the University of Gembloux, a small town in the French-speaking part of Belgium, is the oldest Belgian Institution of teaching and research devoted entirely to Agronomy and Biological Engineering. Activities of this University are organized around three main topics : agronomic sciences, environmental sciences and technologies, chemistry and bio-industries.

A lot of research projects are currently running in the Food Technology Department: they are of course all related to food. Most of them are dedicated to the cracking of agricultural material in order to produce new products and/or to add value to by-products. Here are some examples of the main topics developed: pea proteins, starch, milk fat globule membrane, chicory root inulin, beet leaves, whey, and of course, oils & fats technology.

I began my undergraduate education in the chemical engineering program at the University of Gembloux in Belgium. There I met my first advisor, Professor Ph. Thonart, who hired me to work in the Bio-Industries laboratory and where I performed my engineer thesis related to the production of fungi by fermentation for the production of starters for the meat industry. Upon graduating, Professor Deroanne hired me to work in his Food Technology laboratory, working on interfacial phenomena and physical properties of dairy products and consulting a private Belgian company. Some of the results obtained during this research have been patented (European Patent). Afterwards, I moved from the field of protein and surface active materials research to fats and oils and I began my Ph.D. with Professor Deroanne. This subject has now become my passion.

My Ph.D. thesis is directed at understanding the physicochemical properties of oils, fats and their blends. I have been investigating the physical characteristics and molecular interactions that occur in binary and ternary model systems of oils and fats commonly used in European shortenings. Studies of phase behavior help to provide a better understanding of the ways in which fat blends interact, an important aspect since the large-scale industrial production of shortenings and other fat-containing products often requires blending of lipids from many different sources. I investigate physical properties such as solid fat content (SFC) by pulsed nuclear magnetic resonance (pNMR), melting profile by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and polymorphism by variable temperature powder X-ray diffraction pattern analysis (XRD) under dynamic conditions and after a tempering procedure. First several individual oils and fats are studies,  followed by selected binary and ternary blends. The microstructure and macroscopic properties (hardness) are also investigated for some cases. Isosolid diagrams are drawn based on pNMR data.Phase behavior diagrams of model systems are established from DSC and XRD data under dynamic and/or after controlled tempered conditions. It is indeed really important for food product manufactures to control techno-functional properties and interchangeability of fat components, as final properties of a lot of industrial food products such as margarines, butter, spreads, ice cream, chocolate, fillings and bakery shortenings are determined by the rheological behavior (which is related to melting curves, phase behavior diagrams, polymorphism, intersolubility) of fats that they contain.

Research has been performed using complementary techniques. Indeed, the extent of equipment in the Food Technology laboratory allows us to investigate many levels of a fat sample structure without leaving the lab. As a result, I have now gained experience in the use of a lot of analytical and pilot devices : DSC, texturometer, powder X-Ray Diffraction, pulsed NMR, microscopy, pilot equipment for dry fractionation of fats, pilot margarine plant, and surface analysis techniques : drop volume tensiometer, dynamic drop tensiometer, spinning drop, langmuir film balance.

In 2004, I presented a part of my thesis work at the 96th Annual AOCS Meeting and Expo and received an AOCS Honored student award. The work presented concerned a way to calculate the SFC of a ternary fat blend after an isothermal crystallization and tempering procedure from data obtained for correspondent binary blends crystallized in the same way.

Because of the focus on trans fat free shortenings, I have since directed my study to palm oil and palm oil fractions. Palm oil is indeed used as a feedstock for a wide variety of functional fats derived from oil modifications. I presented this work at this year's AOCS annual meeting in the crystallization session, work for which I received the EAT Division Student Excellence Award at this year's AOCS Annual Meeting and Expo. I really hope now to have the opportunity to continue my research in the same direction and perhaps also teach after my graduation which is expected in the fall of 2007.