Many foods are made up of small droplets of oils or fats in a liquid. These are known as emulsions and can include drinks, sauces, and even chocolate. Oil does not mix with many liquids, so other substances are added to stabilise the droplets. Otherwise, they will separate like a vinaigrette does into oil and vinegar.

Most food emulsions today contain proteins from eggs or milk so that they stay stable over their shelf life. These animal proteins have a large environmental footprint, and there is demand for alternative proteins that can fulfill the requirements for emulsion stability and taste.

However, current methods to test alternative proteins are relatively slow, costly, and need large volumes of ingredients. To address this challenge, MIPRODESIGN introduces a new technology based on microfluidic and intelligent software tools.

Microfluidic tools can be used to control small volumes of liquids through microchannels, similar to an inkjet printer. Droplets can be generated and observed under a microscope to measure how quickly they merge as a function of protein concentration, pH, salinity, and temperature.

The intelligent software tools will be used to design the microfluidic device, perform the experiments, and analyse the results. Together, the microfluidic and intelligent software tools will enable the rapid analysis of how alternative proteins affect droplet coalescence.

Lastly, these microscale findings will be translated to a larger volume using a membrane emulsification technique. This will confirm that the observed trends in microfluidic stability are maintained at the scale of real food products.

The information obtained in MIPRODESIGN will allow food producers to design new products with alternative proteins. Such an advance will significantly improve the sustainability of food production. MIPRODESIGN is coordinated by NTNU and is in collaboration with Wageningen University & Research, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, and TU Munich.

NTNU – PHASE Group (Coordinator)

• Nadia Shardt
• Gisle Øye
• Nicolas La Forgia

Wageningen University & Research – Food Process Engineering Laboratory

• Karin Schroen

Universitat Rovira i Virgili – Food Innovation & Engineering Research Group

• Carme Güell Saperas
• Montserrat Ferrando
• Carlos Pozo
• Mayreli Ortiz
• Aurélie Ballon

TU Munich – Chair for Design Automation

• Robert Wille
• Maria Emmerich
• Anisha Chowdhury

Project alumni: Evdokia Saiti and Simon Goyat (NTNU)

Background and Knowledge Gap

• Most food emulsions—such as drinks, sauces, and yogurts—depend on animal-based proteins to meet requirements for stability, digestibility, and taste.
• This reliance is unsustainable due to the high environmental footprint of animal proteins.
• A rapid protein transition is needed, yet little is known about how plant proteins function in emulsions, and current testing methods are slow, costly, and resource-intensive.

Novelty and Methods

• MIPRODESIGN addresses the limited knowledge about plant proteins by introducing an automated microfluidic technology combined with intelligent software tools. This methodology is anticipated to accelerate the development of sustainable, plant-based emulsions, as shown in the figure below
• Microfluidics drastically reduces material use, time, and costs compared to conventional techniques but is rarely applied in food science. Machine learning and physics-based models will guide the optimal design of microfluidic systems and enable real-time analysis of oil-in-water droplets.

• Proteins and oils will be selected and ranked based on consumer preferences, nutritional value, environmental impact, and stakeholder input.
• Microfluidic emulsions will then be tested for physicochemical stability and digestibility under key food-relevant conditions (protein concentration, pH, salinity, temperature), identifying optimal formulations.
• To validate scalability, the best microfluidic formulations will be transferred to a membrane emulsification process, which uses far less energy than conventional industrial methods. This will not only demonstrate the feasibility of the new design framework but also improve the sustainability of emulsion production.

Outcomes

• MIPRODESIGN will strengthen the link between plant protein producers and end users, enabling faster development of sustainable plant-based foods. The project contributes to environmental, economic, and social goals: reducing environmental impact, improving production efficiency, and supporting healthier diets. Once validated, the methodology can extend to other food systems, including nutrient-fortified functional foods. Microfluidics combined with intelligent software could become a powerful catalyst for screening, optimizing, and ensuring the safety of future food ingredients.