ABSTRACT
Industrial applications of extrusion technology have led to the launch of a rich extrusion processing culture. Polymer extrusion has had the benefit of widespread technical exploration and modeling, making it promising to forecast process performances. However, food extrusion processing, along with the reported designs, is fairly new, and it suffers from a deficiency of printed material. Extrusion is a process that combines several unit operations including mixing, cooking, kneading, shearing, shaping, and forming. Extrusion processing is the controlled incorporation of materials and energy into a food through restructuring or reassembling operations. Extrusion is rapid, flexible, and relatively inexpensive when compared to most other food processing operations. Feed composition, moisture content, and particle size have the greatest effects on extrusion. Animal and plant protein can be denatured by extrusion cooking. The modification of proteins during extrusion cooking is mainly attributed to thermal effects and shear.
