Effect of inoculation time on fermentation ending time in cream cheese fermentation

Abstract

Cream cheese, a popular condiment, is widely used in people's daily diet and in dessert making. To ensure high-quality cream cheese production, the pH value is generally used as the indicator to determine the end point of cream cheese fermentation. Knowing the inoculation time and time-dependent concentrations of biomass, lactose, lactic acid is crucial for pH prediction. However, the inoculation time could vary for industrial applications with multiple fermenters. Moreover, the inoculation time impact on fermentation has not been investigated. This thesis aims to study the impact of inoculation time on the consumption of fermentation time through a Grey Box Model (GBM). This GBM includes a semi-batch kinetic model and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. The outputs of the kinetic model are fed to the ANN model to predict the pH. The outcome of this thesis will help the cream cheese industries understand the relationship between inoculation time and fermentation time so as to organize better fermenter scheduling.