Friday, May 20th

The day started around 6:30 am in the hostel Winterthur Depot 195 in Winterthur. Most of the people arrived to the hostel’s canteen around 7:00 am in order to have breakfast. Two groups were created, one for preparing breakfast and another one for cleaning. We left the hostel sharply at 7:45 am in order to travel 24km for Zurich. The trip was smooth and we arrived at 8:40 am at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH).  At the moment that we arrived, ETH people gave us a warm welcoming with some nice coffee and tea too. Then we moved into the big and comfortable presentation hall.

The first person who presented was Prof. Dr. Erich J. Windhab (09:00-09:20) from IFNH Food Process Engineering Group. He gave us a nice introduction to his group, how is it structured and the main research topics currently running in it. His presentation was followed by the introduction of our group to our hosts, made by Angelica (09:20-09:40) who was substituting Prof. Boom.

Directly afterwards, a PhD student from ETH, Lucie Rejman (09:40-10:00),  gave us a short introduction of her topic about ‘’How mould material and surface structures influence the cooling and detachment behaviour of chocolate’’.

Lu(10:00-10:20) from our group  followed with her presentation of the topic ‘’Study on break baking using miniature bread baking approach’’.

Then Lukas Boni (10:20-10:40) from ETH with ‘’ Unravelling the defence mechanism of hagfish slime: a rheological approach’’.

Victor (10:40-11:00) Aguirre from FPE presented his topic ‘’Membrane fractionation of agro-materials at high viscosities’’. After Victor’s presentation a coffee break(11:00-11:10) followed were we took our the very much needed dose of caffeine.

After the break, it was Anton’s turn (11:10-11:30) to present his topic ‘’ High efficient chromatographic fractionation of concentrated food streams’’.

Then ETH student, Lea Pokomy (11:30-11:50), presented the topic ‘’Influence of rough surface on flow structure in dynamic membrane filtration’’.

The last two presentations before the lunch were of Ali (11:50-12:10) and Birgit (12:10-12:30) with the titles ‘’ Isobaric vapour liquid - liquid equilibrium data for the quaternary system of water, ethanol, ethyl acetate, and isoamyl acetate’’ and ‘’ Towards understanding of fibrous structure formation in dense protein systems’’ respectively.

Then it was lunch time (12:30-14:00). The people of ETH led us to the main building of the university, build in 1880, where we could enjoy our lunch on the terrace with an amazing panorama of the city. The weather was were nice which gave us the opportunity to eat outside and take many pictures of the sunny landscape.

The first presentation after lunch was given by Meinou (14:00-14:20) with the title ‘’Satiety inducing encapsulates: the ileal breakthrough’’.

After Meinou, ETH student Linda Brutsch (14:20-14:40) gave a presentation about ‘’Quality and functionality of different flour fractions produced during roller miller’’.

Back to FPE students, Marlies(14:40-15:00) presented her topic ‘’ Mild fractionation of solid raw materials for food purposes’’.

Gene Lam(15:00-15:20) from ETH presented the topic ‘’Short time powder decontamination by novel Vacuum-Steam-Vacuum (VSV) processing’’.

Last but not least, Mauricio (15:20-15:40) presented his topic ‘’Digestion kinetics of proteins of plant origins – The quinoa case’’.

After the presentation of both groups, it was the time to visit some of the labs and pilot plants of our host group (15:40-17:00). We had a tour in their rheometry , powder, ice cream research and microfluidics lab. We saw some of the equipment that were mentioned in the presentations like the Vacuum-Steam-Vacuum set up and the chocolate moulds. In overall, their labs were very clean and well-equipped. The PhD students that were showing us around were very friendly, spontaneous and eager to answer all of our questions.

After all these presentations and the tours, we were a bit exhausted but our hosts knew how to wake us up. In their department there was a nice terrace with a few tables. As I mentioned before, it was very sunny so when we got outside everybody started chatting and drinking beers, which by the way were placed in a nice tub with ice. Around 18:00 the bus was ready to depart back to Winterthur. Martin thanked our hosts for the warm welcome and gave them the usual presents, stroopwafel and a book about the Netherlands.  Most of the people stayed longer and had the chance to enjoy some pizzas. The pizzas were offered by us as a thanks to the nice hospitality that we were enjoying. Late at night, we said goodbye to our hosts and took the train for the hostel and our last sleep in Switzerland.