Meals Engineer Aims for Circularity of Environment Foodstuff Units

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Ebenezer Miezah Kwofie sees food stuff manufacturing and use as linear, with squander items leaking out all alongside the line. He’d like to convert that line into a loop to make a much more sustainable food stuff process throughout the world.

Kwofie has joined the University of Arkansas College of Engineering with appointments in the departments of organic and agricultural engineering and chemical engineering. He will also have a research appointment in the office of foods science in the Dale Bumpers School of Agricultural, Food stuff and Daily life Sciences.

The departments of organic and agricultural engineering and foodstuff science are also section of the College of Arkansas Technique Division of Agriculture.

“Dr. Kowfie’s emphasis on sustainable meals techniques will increase beneficial ability to the staff on sustainable meals and nourishment to deal with worldwide food items problems,” stated Lalit Verma, biological and agricultural engineering section head. “Dr. Jeyam Subbiah and I are working to develop a core of excellence in food items engineering in the Division of Agriculture and the College of Arkansas.”

“Our departments’ collaboration on built-in food stuff sustainability demands analysis of profitability, foods protection, social impacts and other features,” Subbiah, head of the food science division for the Division of Agriculture and Bumpers School, said. “Our scientists and engineers have to ascertain how to quantify people metrics, and Dr. Kwofie brings an interesting stock of techniques and working experience to the task.”

History

“I know what we imply when we say our existing food stuff process is not working,” Kwofie claimed. “I know it from the subject, not just the lab.”

Ahead of coming to the U of A, Kwofie worked on foodstuff sustainability projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia. He led assignments to establish plans and designs to measure foodstuff sustainability in community meals methods in those people locations.

“I know what it usually means not to connect the dots,” he reported.

Kwofie attained a bachelor’s diploma in chemical engineering at Kwame Nkrumah College of Science and Engineering in his indigenous Ghana. He gained a master’s diploma in industrial engineering at the University of Boras, Sweden, and a doctorate in bioresource engineering at McGill University, Canada.

For the duration of postdoctoral appointments at McGill, he done his get the job done in metrics and technologies in Zambia, Ethiopia, Bolivia and Laos. In a different venture throughout the identical postdoc, he worked modeling sustainable industrial processing in the Dry Corridors of Honduras.

Connecting the dots

Kwofie explained existing meals systems are linear. When rice is harvested, for example, tons of straw are remaining in the fields. About a 3rd of the grain’s mass — rice hulls and bran — is taken off in the course of the milling of white rice, and frequently most are wasted.

It really is a straight line, Kwofie claimed, that starts with manufacturing on the farm and passes through processing, distribution and usage. This program wastes several foods byproducts by the end of the line.

Other crops, like legumes these types of as peas and soybeans, are usually grown for plant-centered protein meals, Kwofie reported. “But these meals comprise a ton additional starch than protein,” he explained. “While starch has huge opportunity for non-food stuff purposes, it is thought of a byproduct by the protein industries and is addressed as these types of.”

His remedy is to switch the line into a circle. Kwofie mentioned discovering makes use of for all those wasted byproducts is vital to circularity. The byproducts can be recycled back into the procedure, utilised as soil amendments for the farms, burned to make power or any selection of other makes use of.

“Examining the technological, financial and environmental trade-offs of these utilization pathways supplies extra chances and choices for stakeholders to make a additional sustainable selection,” Kwofie said.

His research explores the connectivity of the components that make up food items systems. He commences by analyzing client requirements and dreams. “Buyers generate the farms in that the farmers know they need to mature crops they can sell,” he stated.

He believes customers could make additional informed meals options if they experienced extra facts about dietary values and environmental expenditures associated with distinct foodstuff. “This info is accessible for industries,” he said. “I want to seem at strategies that same info can be created quickly out there to people.”

Kwofie options to boost sustainable nutritious foodstuff decisions among the customers through nudging and enabling consumers to see the affect of their possibilities on their wellbeing and the ecosystem. His lab is developing a sustainable balanced selection internet platform that allows consumers to know the nourishment good quality, contribution to healthy dwelling, and the environmental impacts of their foods selection ahead of earning their order. He reported the platform would be obtainable in dining spots and food stuff courts and on U of A internet websites for all set obtain.

Knowledge client requires can aid form food stuff creation, processing and distribution systems to establish far more sustainable food stuff devices to feed a hungry entire world, Kwofie said.

His appointments in many departments put Kwofie in an ideal posture to collaborate with foodstuff researchers in the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the investigate arm of the Division of Agriculture, and with chemical engineers. A team with these types of diverse awareness and competencies can assistance him link all those dots.

To learn much more about Division of Agriculture exploration, take a look at the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station internet site: aaes.uark.edu. Observe us on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch.

About the Division of Agriculture: The College of Arkansas Process Division of Agriculture’s mission is to reinforce agriculture, communities, and households by connecting reliable analysis to the adoption of greatest procedures. As a result of the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Services, the Division of Agriculture conducts analysis and extension function inside the nation’s historic land grant training program.

The Division of Agriculture is just one of 20 entities in just the University of Arkansas Process. It has places of work in all 75 counties in Arkansas and school on 5 program campuses.

The University of Arkansas Procedure Division of Agriculture delivers all its Extension and Investigate plans and services without regard to race, shade, sex, gender id, sexual orientation, countrywide origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic details, or any other lawfully shielded position, and is an Affirmative Motion/Equivalent Prospect Employer.