3D Food Printing Innovations

3D food printing is an innovative technology, but the printing is only a very small part of the process, says Kjeld van Bommel, senior consultant at the Netherlands-based research institute TNO.

“Ninety per cent is about the important part, which is the structure,” van Bommel told the meeting of Bridge2Food’s Plant-Based Foods & Proteins EcoSystem, which was wholly focused on the latest in 3D printing. TNO has been working with Wageningen University and Research for about 12 years on 3D-food printing.

“To a large degree it is about the structure of the proteins in order to get the right kind of texture out of the materials.”

Leaders from around the world and all along the value chain are members of the EcoSystem, working together to improve the quality of plant-based foods and accelerate the transition to sustainable, healthy food systems. There are online meetings twice a month, once each day for the Europe/Asia time zone and then again for the Europe/Americas time zone.

Van Bommel noted some commercial 3D products they have helped developed at TNO, including a vegetable puree for people with dysphagia, designer pasta shapes, nutraceutical candies, and designer chocolates.

They have printed plant-based meat with a typical fibre structure of meat and fish.

When talking about printing plant-based products a protein source is needed, of course, and van Bommel said his team has been working with soybeans, wheat, yellow peas, lupins, and mungbeans.

All have different degrees of functionality, allergens, supply consistency, and don’t always have an optimal sensory quality yet.

3D printing offers the opportunity to improve the texture and juiciness of plant protein-based, meat-replacement products, said van Bommel, by printing a combination of formulations, blends of proteins, and a juiciness component. You can also introduce different kinds of flavours to make it taste like chicken or beef.

“Layered structures and complex 3D designs help with the overall look and feel, and also texture of your 3D-printed products.”

TNO mostly uses printers it has built and developed itself.

Van Bommel told the EcoSystem that TNO is looking for more partners for a three-year funded research project with Wageningen University and Research (WUR) on developing sustainable 3D foods using alternative proteins, and co-products such as surplus fruits and vegetables. They’re also looking for partners for a project to improve plant-based cheese using fermentation and 3D printing.

ViscoTec specializes in dosing technology for viscous fluids, sales engineer Andreas Metzenauer told the online meeting.

“For meat alternatives, of course, ‘inks’ are of a certain viscosity which are not easy to handle in regard to supplying the materials to 3D printers,” said Metzenauer. “We provide the solutions for this new market.”

Metzenauer explained how ViscoTec’s 3D printers are based on the endless piston principle, with a rotor in the shape of a screw that rotates eccentric inside a stator. This offers continuous and pulsation-free dosing, which helps to create a constant fibre structure for plant-based meat, and a low shear rate, which helps maintain juiciness of the product.

One of ViscoTec’s most well-known customers within this application is Redefine Meat, which is using plant-based materials, but the company is getting more and more inquiries about cell-cultured meat products and fermented products.

Metzenauer said there are five main challenges in 3D-food printing to scale up to an industrial level:

Material supply: Need to ensure there is a constant and continuous supply. ViscoTec offers different sizes of emptying stations, depending on raw material. They leave below one per cent residual in the barrel.
Compact design: Right design required to implement several dosing pumps into the small footprint of a 3D printer. Unique rectangular design of dosing pumps with customized nozzle plate is offered by ViscoTec.
Pressure drop: Take care to have right pumps to overcome pressure drops that come with high-viscous inks.
Continuous, gentle dosing: Important to have continuous dosing, with low shear forces, to get a good product, juiciness, and to ensure you don’t destroy any fibre structure.
Cleaning concept: You don’t want to manually clean multiple, small dosing pumps, you need an automated cleaning system such as the one developed by ViscoTec.

Viscotec is open to all kinds of partnerships in this area — from universities, startups and machine integrators — and wants to contribute with this technology to create better food, said Metzenauer.

A lot of the cooking we do today is still pretty primitive, done over an open flame much like cavemen, said Jonathan Blutinger of Columbia University, who also does some work with Redefine Meat and did his PhD research in this area.

“Where we came into this project is we wanted to apply 3D printing to food for two main reasons,” said Blutinger.

“For one, it has a high degree of customization, and it’s great for small-batch manufacturing.”

Blutinger looked at 3D-food printing not as something on a commercial level but at the consumer level that could be used as a kitchen appliance.

“This seems to work pretty well in our homes.”

Unlike traditional 3D printers, however, a home 3D food printer would require dozens of ingredients, so Blutinger envisioned a concept with multiple cartridges the machine could choose from — much like a Nespresso — and you would be able to cook from it as well.

He and his team have been working on the hardware and software for the past five years.

The machine is two feet by two feet by two feet, has a tool carriage for 18 ingredients, and two lasers that allow it not only to print the food, but to cook it.

It can print and cook not just sweets, but also savoury items.

The first items produced were simple shapes, but they have been working on improving the software to create more complex items as well as using simulation software.

“One key thing in generating these printed foods is that they have to look attractive while being reminiscent of the ingredients they are being made from,” said Blutinger. “If it doesn’t look good, people won’t eat it. I think people eat with their eyes a lot. It’s important things look the way they’re supposed to in terms of design. So we have to really have these simulations and checks in place to make sure it’s a robust process.”

This machine would be something that augments kitchen appliances, it wouldn’t be used exclusively by home cooks, he said.

“It plays in pretty nicely with the nutrition element because it brings you closer to your food,” said Blutinger. The machine would have all the ingredients in multiple “ink wells” and it’s important to think about it as working with the most basic ingredients.

“Instead of dough, we would have something like water, yeast, flour. If this machine has all the ingredients and the micros and the macros, it’s like having a nutritionist and a personal chef you can learn eating habits from. It’s a matter of what you want to do with it, but that’s kind of where I see it going.”

Laser cooking was used in contrast with current bulk cooking in ovens or microwaves where everything in a dish is cooked the same, whereas lasers can be dialed in on a millimetre basis so the different ingredients in an item can be cooked differently. “It gives you a lot more control.”

To wrap up the meeting Josh Mayers made a pitch on behalf of Swedish research institute RISE for partners who may be interested in joining a project they will be submitting to Horizon Europe in February.

They’ll be focusing on fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food systems from primary production to consumption, building a platform for 3D printing of foods on an industrial scale. The main aim is new food production processes with a focus on dysphagia foods, and whole-cut fish and meat analogues.

Current partners are DTI, University of Reading and the engineering firm ABB. The consortium can also include academic or industry partners from outside Europe.

If interested, companies should contact Evelina Hoglund at RISE.

Bridge2Food’s EcoSystem brings together more than 300 leaders from around the globe to advance the plant-based industry. For information about membership please contact Javier Berterreche.

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