Cal Poly's New Dairy Ingredients Program

Dairy Foods, April, 2000 by Jack Mans

Visiting California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif., is always a treat. Cal Poly is one of the great dairy universities in the United States, and San Luis Obispo, just a few miles from the ocean, is one of the neatest little towns.

The university hosted a tour of its Dairy Product Technology Center on March 3, to introduce the Dairy Ingredients Applications Program as well as its new Dairy Powders and Concentrates Lab. Partially supported by Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) and the California Dairy Research Foundation, the program's goals are to provide technical support to manufacturers, users and marketers of dairy-based powders and concentrates.

The program included presentations by Phil Tong, assoc. prof., Dairy Products Technology Center; Bill Haines, v.p., business-to-business marketing, Dairy Management Inc.; Joseph O'Donnell, exec. dir., California Dairy Research Foundation; Dave Bush, v.p.-operations, California Dairies; and Larry Shirkey, dir.-ingredient marketing, U.S. Dairy Export Council.

The Dairy Products Technology Center (DPTC) is a 21,000 sq-ft facility dedicated to work on dairy foods, dairy ingredients and related products. It includes a fully operational, state-licensed, 600 gal-per-hour high temperature short time pasteurization system with state of the art process control for milk, ice cream mix and other fluid products. It also has the only two university-based systems for continuous processing of cream into butter. One of these has been modified to manufacture 40% fat spreads. Other equipment at the center includes a continuous ice cream freezer, vacuum evaporator and a stretch cooker and mixer molder for pasta filata cheeses such as mozzarella.

The new Dairy Powders and Concentrates Lab features a state-of-the-art small scale pilot plant for concentrating and drying dairy products, as well as specialized analytical capabilities. The pilot plant includes a Niro FilterLab FLG-60 spray dryer, Marriott Walker rising film evaporator Niro Model R Membrane filtration pilot plant that includes RO, UF, NF and MF membranes and associated reconstitution and dry solids blending equipment. Specialized analytical capabilities include a laser diffraction particle size analyzer, Hunter colorimeter and techniques for evaluation of solubility, emulsification, and heat stability. The center also includes staff specialists on dairy ingredient applications and sensory evaluation and test kitchen facilities.