PROCESO FCC (Fluid Catalytic Cracking)

Nowadays, the sector of cheese production does not have an automated procedure that guarantees a proper traceability throughout all the fabrication stages. The traceability in the sector of cheese production is based on casein plaques or special types of stamps. As a result, the production and quality control are performed by batches and the data are stored manually by written records. The main problem in this scenario is the cheese ripening which is done in special chambers where the surrounding conditions such as humidity, temperature, product handling and mold growing affect the readability of the products labels. Therefore, there is a great need for developing innovative systems and technologies that could improve the performance of traceability systems in the cheese sector. By automating information collection, ripening chambers and warehouse management can be optimized which reduces costs and thus improves the competitiveness.

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Nowadays, published studies relative to the use of these technologies in Europe within the cheese industry are still few. Pérez-Aloe et al. [53] tested different RFID systems based on fixed and portable reader configurations using two different types of RFID HF tags. The tags have been tested under different conditions of temperature, humidity, saline solutions immersions or in the presence of preservative substances and oils. Besides, physical tests including friction and flexibility have been also achieved. No significant negative effects on tags readability were reported, with the exception of those cases where metallic materials occurred in the range of the reader. Later, similar work realized by Regattieri et al. [54] proposed a traceability system for the supply chain of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, which was developed based on an integration of alphanumerical codes and HF RFID technology. Results obtained showed the benefits of applying RFID technology compared to barcode and alphanumerical codes despite the relatively higher cost of RFID systems.

In a subsequent study, Varese et al. [55] tested the applicability of RFID technology to the dairy cheese production not only for item identification but also for authentication in order to avoid cases of imitations of Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Two different types of small-sized tags were used and their efficiency was compared: an embedded tag directly inserted on the side of the cheese at the end of the forming process; an external tag inserted in a casein plate after the first or second turning over of the cheese. The results indicated that the positioning of the tags did not affect readability. The embedding tag proved to be more resistant during the various stages of processing, while the casein plate was more subjected to losses at handling, but only in those cases in which the cheese has a rough/uneven rind.

Papetti et al. [56] proposed the integration of an RFID system with quality analysis for single product of a typical Italian cheese. The tracing and quality information (chemical and spectrophotometric) are combined on a web platform where any details about the product shelf-life from producer to consumer can be easily obtained. The categories involved in this system are divided into manufacturers, wholesalers, resellers, retailers and consumers who contribute separately, according to their level of membership, to provide a set of data related to each product. All collected data are then registered into a centralized database.

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In the same context of applying RFID systems in the cheese production sector, Barge et al. [57] realized an interesting study by investigating the effectiveness of RFID technology in tracing single cheese wheels, from curd making to final packaging and delivery. RFID systems, operating at low, high and ultra-high frequencies (LF, HF and UHF respectively), were tested and compared with the aim of evaluating the performances and limits of each solution at different stages of the production process. According to the authors, the HF RFID system is considered to be more suitable for cheese traceability than UHF tags due to its lack of performance when used in direct contact with high water content material such as cheese. However, this conclusion is not accurate as the authors used commercial UHF tags for testing and they did not design appropriate UHF tags for this specific application and thus the UHF tags performance degraded significantly.

In all previously mentioned works, the RFID systems applied in the cheese sector were limited to identification and in some few cases the quality analysis was realized separately then combined with the product RFID identifier on a database, which improved the traceability and control management of the supply chain considerably. However, both cheese producers and consumers are looking for monitoring of the quality of cheese in real time to obtain a procedure for info- tracking systems, together with the combination with a web platform to access production history and quality of product using the RFID sensors. In this context, a French company realized smart shelves enhanced with RFID sensor tags for monitoring temperature and humidity in cheese maturation chambers [58]. The system is based on active RFID tags which can communicate with the reader antenna inside the ripening chamber in a range of 100 meters. Then, the reader will transmit the acquired data to the web interface which can be accessible at any time from a computer, tablet or smartphone.

Moreover, Google research department in France launched recently an innovative project called “Google cheese master” with the aim of developing smart sensing nodes combined with artificial intelligence techniques to detect cheese quality as shown in figure 8. However, the main challenge for these works is the capability of detecting the major varying parameters during the ripening of different types of cheese and the ability to integrate the sensors on a smart label such as RFID tags.

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a b

Fig. 8. Google cheese master research project for monitoring cheese quality based on several types of sensors a) Optical sensor b) Ultrasound sensor [59]