| Starches are major ingredients in cereal and snack products. Many cereals and snacks are manufactured from a combination of corn flour, rice flour and wheat flour with extrusion technology. Modified wheat starches are often added. These starches are supposed to facilitate the extrusion processes and improve the final product quality. However, the functions of these modified starches in extruded cereals and snacks have not well been documented. Further, computational fluid dynamic method (CFD) is a very useful tool for the study of fluid flow with defined boundary conditions. Its application in food extrusion is still in its infancy. It would be of interest to use this method to investigate the transport phenomena of corn flour melt in the extruder die and to evaluate the die swell and the expansion of extrudates. |
