Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Peter Fryer’s main research interest is in the hygienic design of food processes, food structure development and food manufacture. The aim of his research is to apply the principles of chemical engineering to the problems of the food industry. The food industry differs from conventional process industries in that product safety is as important as process safety (eg, his team study the hygienic design of processes and the ways in which sterility of products can be assured). They have developed (with Professor Z Zhang) a novel probe for measuring the forces needed to clean surfaces; work is underway to use this understanding to better define cleaning procedures. The team are also looking at how to assess safety, using enzyme measurements, and how to build mathematical models for processes. Currently a large (£3.6 million) project is underway, supported by Cadbury, Unilever, Scottish and Newcastle Brewery, GSK, Bruker, Ecolab, Alfa Laval and GEA, to design more environmentally friendly ways of cleaning.